Homeschool Unit Study: The History of Cuneiform
Ancient Mesopotamia’s writing system offers a peek into geography, history, culture, and class in the ancient world. Learn more with a secular homeschool unit study.
Some time between 522 and 486 B.C.E., a patient scribe carved the story of the rise of Darius the Great into a cliff in western Iran, not once but three times in three different cuneiform script languages. The finished inscription is 49 feet high and 82 feet wide, a virtually indelible record of the triumph of the most famous man in the world at the time — but it would be more than 2,000 years before any English-speaking historian could read it.
Cuneiform, along with Egyptian hieroglyphics, is one of the two most ancient written languages in human history. The birth of writing 5,500 years ago in ancient Sumeria was probably born of economic need instead of creative energy: The earliest written records, tokens made of stone or clay, record business transactions. Later, these tokens became pictographs, symbols inscribed on clay tablets that represented numbers or objects. Gradually, these symbols became more complex and sophisticated, and writing became about telling stories as much as about conducting business. By the time cuneiform faded from use — around the first century C.E. — people used it write letters, do schoolwork, write religious texts, and more.
Unlike an alphabet, cuneiform uses between 600 and 1,000 characters to write words or syllables — which may help explain why it was so difficult for Western readers to discover. To read it, you have to learn the language being recorded and then all the signs, which tend to have multiple possible meanings. Like other languages, cuneiform seems to be easier for children to pick up than for adults — many of the surviving cuneiform documents we have today are actually spelling and handwriting exercises probably done by Sumerian students.
Part 1: How Cuneiform Works
Do this:
Try this:
Pretend the alphabet doesn’t exist, and you have to invent a form of writing based around simple pictures. Brainstorm a basic system, and see if you can use it to write:
your name
a verb (like dance or read)
adjectives (like delicious or fun)
Talk about this:
What does picture writing do well? What are some advantages it might have? What limitations does picture writing have?
What is the purpose of writing? Think about commercial reasons (like buying and selling), political reasons (writing laws or training an army), and social reasons (telling stories or organizing religions).
Part 2: The Story of Writing
Do this:
Work through the interactive online activity The Story of Writing, which explores the development of the cuneiform character for barley over time.
Talk about this:
How does the development of the symbol for barley show how cuneiform evolved over time?
Think about this:
Why did the ancient Mesopotamians simplify their pictographs over time? How might this make writing faster or easier? What might be the implications of changing from direct representation (pictures) to abstract representation? (Think about who has access to education.)
Part 3: Writing as Artifact
Talk about:
Cuneiform gives us an idea of what life was like in ancient Mesopotamia and about what kind of lives the people from that place and time lived. So what does it tell us about these people that they started writing in order to record agricultural transactions? Why would these records be important? Who would benefit from recording these commercial transactions? (Think beyond the buyers and sellers — how might these records affect things like taxes and services?)
What else might be important to keep records of? (Births, marriages, and deaths? Property ownership? Work contracts? Religious rules and rituals?) How could writing be used to legitimize and extend political power? (Think of the carvings we talked about at the beginning of this unit — what is their purpose? How well did they succeed at accomplishing that purpose?)
Do this:
Explore some of the artifacts in the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Tablet Collection. What do these artifacts tell you about life in ancient Mesopotamia?
