Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

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Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby Carmody » Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:57 am

Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby księżycowy » Thu Jun 16, 2022 1:54 pm

I can't say that I have, nor do I know how much overlap there is in any of the languages that use it, but I think it would probably be best to narrow the question down to a language, or languages.

I know that Hittite and Old Persian are both alphabetic cuneiform, for example. Where as Babylonian and Sumerian are both more akin to hieroglyphics at times.
Last edited by księżycowy on Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby Carmody » Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:02 pm

Your answer was obviously far more knowledgeable than my question.

I guess I just love the shapes of the written cuneiform that I have seen, so maybe I need to focus on Hittite and Old Persian. ???
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby księżycowy » Thu Jun 16, 2022 2:27 pm

I don't mean to suggest that Babylonian or Sumerian can't be Alphabetic too. It's just a bit complicated. But yeah, there are good resources for both Hittite and Old Persian (Ugaritic is also alphabetic cuneiform, if my memory doesn't fail me).

There's a free pdf floating around the net for Old Persian that might be of interest.

Dr. Huehnergard also released his Akkadian (Babylonian) grammar to the net as well here.

Both of those introduce cuneiform, and should help you decide where you want to invest your time and effort.
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:42 pm

The picture you posted of the Xerxes I inscription at Van is, as I'm sure you've read, in three different languages, Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. As księżycowy mentioned, Persian cuneiform is alphabetic. In fact, it probably unrelated to the other cuneiform writing systems, although it does seem to have been visually inspired by it. It only has five logograms, and you could probably learn it in an afternoon. Ugaritic (a very conservative Semitic language) also had a cuneiform-style alphabet that is unrelated to other cuneiform systems; it's an abjad that works very similarly to other Semitic alphabets.

https://omniglot.com/writing/opcuneiform.htm

The other cuneiform systems are more complex. Sumerian cuneiform was the original, and it is mainly logographic, although signs can be used to represent syllables, including grammatical elements. Akkadian (including the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects) is kind of the Japanese to Sumerian's Chinese. It uses a smaller subset of logograms (fewer and fewer as time went on), but relied heavily on a syllabary. Elamite and Hittite cuneiform were adapted from Akkadian cuneiform and use Sumero-Akkadian logograms. However, none of these four languages were even remotely related to each other (Sumerian and Elamite were isolates, while Akkadian was Semitic and Hittite was Indo-European), so learning to read one language doesn't mean you can necessarily read the others.

I spent a brief time dabbling in Sumerian, and you can check out my log here. However, you will have a much, much easier time with Old Persian since it is an Indo-European language with a vastly simpler writing system.
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby księżycowy » Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:47 pm

Deinonysus wrote:so learning to read one language doesn't mean you can necessarily read the others.

I thought that was the case, but wasn't overly sure. Thanks for providing more details, Deinonysus!
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby Carmody » Thu Jun 16, 2022 6:39 pm

My thanks to everyone for their thoughtful guidance.
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby Carmody » Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:05 pm

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Cracking Ancient Codes: Cuneiform Writing - with Irving Finkel



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Your name in cueniform
https://www.penn.museum/cgi/cuneiform.php
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jun 17, 2022 9:23 am

My daughter studied Akkadian - principally as an archeologist. I'd suggest you choose a language and go specifically from there. There are dozens of books on the languages and a few recorded university courses.
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Re: Has anyone here learned cuneiform and if so what were your resources?

Postby Carmody » Fri Jun 17, 2022 10:57 am

Trouble is that for me the appearance of Akkadian is definitely not cueniaform:
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During its 3,000-year history cuneiform was used to write around 15 different languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian and Old Persian.
Attribution from:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/ancient-near-east1/the-ancient-near-east-an-introduction/a/cuneiform#:~:text=During%20its%203%2C000-year%20history,Hittite%2C%20Urartian%20and%20Old%20Persian.

Looks like I have a lot to choose from.
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