2.1.2. Writing

Substratum

Simple texts were written with a stylus on clay tablets. Inscriptions were encarved on stone.

Orientation

A clay tablet has two sides, recto and verso. Each side is subdivided into (generally) two columns. Within each column, lines are from top to bottom, writing is from left to right.

Character inventory

Form and composition of characters

A character consists of a specific arragement of wedges.

Punctuation

Words are commonly separated by a small space. There are no regular punctuation marks, except that a “gloss wedge” (combination of two Winkelhaken) is occasionally used to mark a syntactic boundary. A sentence, but generally not a word may cross the end of a line.

Number of characters

The writing system employs ~600 characters.

Functions and classes of characters

A cuneiform character may have one of three functions:

1. logogram
2. determinative
3. syllabogram

Over time, syllabographic writing prevails. In the beginning, however, concepts are often represented by a logogram, which is supplemented by a set of syllabograms indicating inflection.

Akkadian does not have a very complex syllable structure. Nevertheless, the association among (phonological) syllables and syllabograms is far from biunique:

• A given character may represent more than one syllables (apart from the fact that it may serve as a logogram or determinative). Up to around -2,000, modes of articulation of consonants, esp. voiced vs. voiceless vs. pharyngealized, are not distinguished systematically.
• A given syllable may be represented alternatively by more than one syllabogram, even in one text.

History of writing

The Akkadians adopted cuneiform writing from the Sumerians at about -2500. However, the marked structural difference between the two languages necessitated profound changes in the writing system. Sumerian morphology is largely agglutinative, so that the lexeme remains essentially unchanged when it is used in sentences. It may therefore constantly be represented by the same logogram. Akkadian morphology (like Afroasiatic morphology in general), on the contrary, is highly fusional and in particular introflexive. I.e., morphological forms of words are built by inner modification of roots. Purely logographic writing would therefore not render the morphology and thus not represent the linguistic form of a sentence.

The Akkadians therefore took up the principle of syllabic writing, which the Sumerians had used only occasionally, and implemented it more systematically. They then applied the same principle to the Sumerian texts that they wrote, providing us – although belatedly – with the phonological form of Sumerian words which the Sumerians had withheld from posterity.

However, even Akkadian syllabic writing was not wholly systematic:

• The characters used were those inherited from the Sumerians. They were reinterpreted as syllabograms by the principle of paronomasia (better known as the rebus principle). This procedure, however, yielded syllabograms only for such Akkadian syllables that also existed in Sumerian. Several Akkadian sounds, esp. the (Semitic) emphatic consonants, remained indistinct in the writing.
• Logograms and determinatives never entirely dropped from usage.

Diffusion

After adopting cuneiform writing from the Sumerians, the Akkadians spread it over the entire Near and Middle East. Cuneiform writing was used in Assur, Elam, Mari, Mitanni¹, Northern Syria (from -2000), the Hittite empire (from -1900), Palestine. At around -1500, Akkadian, written in cuneiform, was even used in Egypt for diplomatic correspondence (Falkenstein 1964:12).

References

An excellent explanation of the cuneiform writing system is on John Heise's website.

A vivid impression of the physical properties of the script is gained on the website of the Digital Hammurabi project.

¹ The Mitanni kingdom existed in the 15th and 14 cent. BC in the region of what is roughly Kurdistan. The language spoken was Hurrian.