Expand Section - 4. Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos
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Hudson’s Original Note:
Along with economic accounts we find one other early kind of written record, and this is the word-list. Obviously, for scribes to be trained in account-keeping, they needed a lexicon of symbols to use. (Illustration 4Missing IllustrationHelp us track down an image to insert. from Deimel[1] 1923: p. 71Verify CitationIs this full citation of Deimel correct? shows the Title and Professions List, from the Writing Stage III and Fara period c. 2500 BC.)
Nissen[2] (1988bVerify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation?: p. 114) observed that lexical lists belong “to a category existing right from the beginning of the appearance of writing, and listing all kinds of things under a common heading.”Missing Quotation MarkThe end-quotation mark of the quotation was missing; we guessed at where it was. Can someone with access to this text please confirm?
Thus we know lists which enumerated all names of dogs, birds, fish, cattle, or names of places, of trees and wooden objects, of metals, textiles, etc. Among these lists we find one enumerating the titles of officials and professions. It must have been the most famous list of all, because in addition to 124 copies of this list among the Archaic Texts from Uruk we find this list continuously recopied all the way down into the middle of the third millennium BC.Missing Quotation MarkIt seems to us like Hudson’s voice here. Or was this paragraph a continuation of the quotation from Nissen 1988b above it?
Such lists show, for one thing, the system of categorizing phenomena. Thus, dictionaries and categorization were linked to basic organizational principles.Transition NoteOriginally here the author wrote “(Chapter 8 ['"`UNIQ--nowiki-0000000D-QINU`"'From the Temple Corporation to the Family Oikos (Household)], dealing with the archaic division of labor, will investigate just what these lists tell us.)” But it isn’t in Chapter 8 yet.
Seals were early writing. They were also symbol-systems, but their very artisticness was quite different from writing. The art which defined higher officials was complex, and writing must be standardized and regularized, and above all simple, to be understood (as pointed out by Gelb[3] in A Study of Writing).Collaborative ResearchCan you add some basic context about the materials used in early writing (the basics of cuneiform, reeds in clay, and cylinder seals) to Chapter 4’s opening?
[Illustration: From Nissen 1988b[4]: p. 121 (Fig. 29): changes in writing techniques, from Pointed to Triangular Stylus, and from Incising to Imprinting.]Missing IllustrationThere was a note here about illustrations. Can you help us find this illustration, or something like it?
“The signs of the oldest stage of writing were still, to some extent, naturalistic renderings of the item represented, incised into the surface of a tablet with a pointed implement” (Nissen 1988b: p. 121). But using reeds to press lines into the clay could be done much more speedily. However, “only straight lines could be produced. One consequence, therefore, was that formerly curved lines had to be broken up into a series of straight lines, or else were simplified altogether and replaced by a single straight line” (Nissen 1988b: p. 122).Add ContextThere’s more of a reliance on quotations than is typical of Hudson's other chapters in this section. Can you help us flesh it out with context?
Nissen (1988b: p. 125) noted that “for a long while writing was not used to its full capacity, but rather only as a means of producing catchwords for someone who was more or less familiar with the context, but needed to be reminded of particular details. Not only do we find no traces of a verbal system, but there are no hints as to syntactic relations.”Add ContextThere’s more of a reliance on quotations than is typical of Hudson's other chapters in this section. Can you help us flesh it out with context?
[See Illustration 4.: his Fig. 32, Archaic Economic Texts W…, pp. 214–246.]Illustration QueryCan you help us find this illustration, and check what text this should come from (its full title and name of the author)? This can be read in a number of ways. “Two sheep [delivered to] the temple (or house) [of] the [goddess] Inanna,” or “…[of the gods] An and Inanna,” or ‘Two sheep [received from] the temple/house [of] the goddess Inanna/[the gods] An and Inanna.”Add ContextThere’s more of a reliance on quotations than is typical of Hudson's other chapters in this section. Can you help us flesh it out with context?
Nissen (1988b: pp. 108f.) noted that the common denominator in all attempts at early writing and sign-systems “was to create controlling systems for use in economic life.” They were administrative and indeed, to achieve a “depersonalized control, which introduce[d] the element of protection against abuse. Numbers are the first items which it is deemed necessary to record.” “The consequence is that we should assume that the entire development leading up to the invention of writing has its historical place in a time of rapidly expanding economic units.”Add ContextThere’s more of a reliance on quotations than is typical of Hudson's other chapters in this section. Can you help us flesh it out with context?
[Put this with Indus seals:] Certainly Sumerian seals were “connected strictly to economic operations. Mostly, they were used for securing all kinds of locking devices, such as lumps of clay used to seal containers, or lumps of clay kneaded around the knot of ropes securing a roor,Spelling of TermWhen citation is confirmed in this query, can you figure out what this word was: roof or door, perhaps? or the like. Impressions of cylinder seals are found mostly on clay stoppers used to seal jars, or on lumps of clay which still show the traces of ropes inside.”Citation NeededCitation needed for this quotation.Add ContextThere’s more of a reliance on quotations than is typical of Hudson's other chapters in this section. Can you help us flesh it out with context?Transition NoteOriginally a note from the author accompanied this: “Put this with Indus seals.”
Higher officials needed regularized seals. Lower officials could use more machine-made standardized ones, which were simpler. The high-status ones had mythological scenes. This again linked the administrator to cosmology.Transition NoteCan you figure out what was meant by text omitted here so we can add it back to the chapter body?
- ↑ Anton Deimel, Schultexte Aus Fara (Leipzig: 1923), p. 71.Verify CitationThis citation was a guess. Can a German-speaker please confirm this is the right citation?
- ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b),Verify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation? p. 114.
- ↑ I.J. Gelb, A Study of Writing (Chicago: 1962).
- ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b).Verify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation?
