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Art. XX.—Origin and Development of the Cuneiform Syllabary

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Art. XX.—Origin and Development of the Cuneiform Syllabary 625 ART. XX. — Origin and Development of the Cuneiform Syllabary. By G. BERTIN, M.R.A.S. INTRODUCTION.—Graphic development.—Pictorial stage.—Influence of material used for writing.—Primitive arrangement of the signs.—Change of order and position.—Modern order of the columns.—Decay of the primitive images.— Confusion of the signs.—Archaic and ornamental styles.—Fanciful archaic.— Cursive writing.—Period of its invention.—Phonetic development.—Figura- tive stage.—Second stage.—Phonetic complements.—Determinatives.—Third period.—Akkadian values. —Phonetic determinatives.—Prefixes and determi- natives.—Compound ideograms.—Akkadian phonology.—Its influence on the values attributed to the signs.—Fourth period.—Sumerian values.—Phonetic decay.—Fifth period.—Semitic renaissance.—Lists of words and signs.— Eclecticism.—Syllabic determinatives.—Pictorial origin of the signs.— Theories on its origin.—Akkadian theory.—Semitic theory.—Egyptian theory. —Pre-historic theory.—Kushite theory.—Egyptian and Babylonian signs.'—• Symbolism.— Phonetic changes.— Change of meanings.— Illustrations.— Syllabaries derived from the Babylonian one. PALAEOGRAPHY, never attracted much the attention of As- syriologists, and in only a few cases have they either turned their mind to the origin, growth and development of the Cuneiform syllabary. M. Menant, who tried in his grammar1 to give a list as complete as possible of all the signs of various styles and epochs, has unfortunately accepted many doubtful characters, and has not distinguished the really archaic from the ornamental style. F. Lenormant,2 who specially studied the Babylonian syllabaries now in the British Museum, has done much to elucidate many points, but his observations bear only on a few characters, and have for principal object to ascertain the values and meanings in order to help the decipherer in reading rightly the inscriptions. He made a great step DO doubt in attributing exclusively certain values 1 Manuel de la langue Assyrienne, Paris, 1880. 2 Etude sur quelques parties des Syllabaires CunSiformes, Paris, 1876. Les DownloadedSyllabaire from https://www.cambridge.org/cores Cuneiformes, Paris, 1877., INSEADetc. , on 06 Oct 2018 at 05:31:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00019729 626 DEVELOPMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM SYLLABARY. of the characters to Akkadian and others to the Assyrian texts, but other works seem to have claimed his attention, and he did not follow up the subject. In my previous paper,1 a few words only were said about the development of the Cuneiform syllabary, and nothing about its origin, because these two questions are too important to be treated incidentally. I now propose to take them, but will first follow the evolutions of the syllabary; for it is important that they be well understood before discussing the question of origin. The development of the Cuneiform syllabary and the modi- fications and adaptations it underwent, may be considered under two aspects; what may be called the graphic and the phonetic aspects, that is, the material modifications brought to the writing and those brought to the phonetic values given to the characters. Graphic Development.—The first stage of the writing was pictorial,2 objects being drawn not only to represent the objects themselves, as hand, foot, house, tree, but also abstract ideas and actions, as the forearm and fist for power, the mouth for speaking or language. The writing being little by little abbreviated and decayed, the images meant became unrecognizable, as in Egyptian hieratic, and also as illustrated by the letters of our alphabet; for instance, A is derived from the Egyptian emblem of divinity, the hatchet, through the Phoenician aleph, and has preserved very little of the primitive image.3 There are no Babylonian documents which take us back to this first stage, but its existence is not doubtful, as in many cases the figure of the object represented is still visible in the linear or even cuneiform signs. The material used for writing had naturally a great influence on the changes brought to the forms of the signs. At first probably papyrus, leaves, bark or other similar material was used,4 but at an early date the Babylonians 1 J.R.A.S. Vol. XVIII. Part III. 2 This has been recognized by the first Assyriologists, Sir H. Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, Norris, Dr. Oppert, etc. 3 Origin of the Phoenician Alphabet, London, 1882, p. 26 et seq. 4 Sayce, Use of Papyrus, etc., S.B.A. Trans, vol. i. p. 343 < Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 06 Oct 2018 at 05:31:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00019729 DEVELOPMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM SYLLABARY. 627 adopted clay, so abundant and so easily obtained. The use of clay as writing material, combined with the use of a square wooden style,1 gave to all the lines a peculiar form, and originated the Cuneiform writing, each line having the form of a nail or wedge. At about the same period stone was also used as a writing material; in that case, for some inscriptions at least, the scribe preserved to the signs a more primitive form ; curved lines were rare, but in the Cuneiform style they are impossible. < For this reason the linear inscriptions often give us forms nearer to the pictorial stage.2 One of the most important modifications, brought on by the use of clay as writing material, is that which affected the grouping of the characters and the direction of the writing. As I have already noticed,3 the inscriptions were at first written in horizontal columns, each column was divided by small divisions running from right to left, and in each of these divisions the signs (three, four or more in number, but forming one word or one connected expression, as powerful king, son of so and so, etc.), were grouped rather irregularly, the first sign of the expression, however, being always placed at the right hand top corner; representing each sign by one cipher, the following diagram will give an idea of the grouping. 1 2 1 3 2 1 1 4 1 2 1 3 1 2 3 4 4 2 3 4 3 4 2 Col. I. 4 5 3 5 2 3 2 1 2 1 4 1 1 3 1 1 4 3 2 3 2 2 2 Col. II. 6 5 3 3 etc. 4 3 1 2 Col. III. 1 Mr. Pinches lias noticed that on the tablets the grain of the wood impressed by the style is often visible. 1 In some cases the linear inscriptions seem to have been copied from a Cunei- form copy, and the linear character wrongly transcribed ; the same has happened in Egyptian, where the scribe or carver had hieratic copies for the texts he had to- engrave on the stone. In many cases he transcribed the wrong hieroglyphs. Downloaded3 fromJ.R.A.S https://www.cambridge.org/core. Vol. XVIII. p. 422. INSEAD, on 06 Oct 2018 at 05:31:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00019729 628 DEVELOPMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM SYLLABARY. When clay was used to write on, and a square piece of wood as style, the scribe was necessarily brought to turn the tablet, and to place what used to be the right hand side at the top.1 As a consequence of this change, the columns ran from. left to right, and the divisions in each column from top to bottom. The irregular grouping of the characters was still preserved, but then the first sign of each group appeared to be placed in the left hand top corner of each division, in consequence of the shifting of the tablet. The scribes preserved for a long time the ancient habit of dividing the tablet into small columns, so small in fact that many words could not have been written in one line if they had wished to do so; little by little they gave up this practice, and when the columns were more extended, the irregular grouping became impossible ; they therefore adopted the plan of placing all the characters after one another from left to right; the division lines were preserved only to mark what we call paragraphs. In some Omen tablets, no doubt, by tradition and in a few and exceptional cases, these division lines are retained and used as in the old documents. In writing afresh any old tablet, or in copying proper names, or quoting from ancient records, the scribes had naturally to restore to the words the phonetic sequence of the signs irregularly grouped in the original texts ; this was easily done for all phonetically written expressions; but when the scribes came to compound ideograms or compound ideo- graphical expressions, the elements of which had no relation to the pronunciation of the group, often, perhaps by ignorance or either because the position of these compound- ing elements had no importance as long as they carried to the mind of the reader the expression meant, they copied these groups irregularly, one or two characters being by so doing transposed. For instance, as I have already noticed, the name of the town of Lagash,2 written by means of a com- 1 This observation is due to the Rev. Mr. Tomkins (though I do not think it -vvas ever printed), at one of the meetings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. 2 Downloaded fromJ.R.A.S https://www.cambridge.org/core. Vol. XVIII. p. 422. INSEAD, on 06 Oct 2018 at 05:31:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
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