All Queries 4. Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos

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The Creation of Order » 4. Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos

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Verify Citation

Quoted text:

the Akkadian sign for water, mem, occupying the first position in the cuneiform syllabary described by Zimmern[1] (1896; see also Driver[2] 1948: pp. 157–158), subsequently evolved into the Canaanite (and hence Greek and modern) letter m, originally μῦ, recalling the wavy zigzag line traditionally used to denote water.

We guessed at the full citation for “Zimmern (1896)”:

  1. We guessed that the author’s full name is Heinrich Zimmern.
  2. We guessed that this was the 1896 publication that Hudson intended to cite: H. Zimmern, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Alphabets,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50 (1896), pp. 667–670.
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Stub Chapter

Chapter 4 is a stub chapter that would benefit from Collaborative Research volunteer expansion.

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Add a Section

Quoted text:

the Hermes/Mercury figure familiar from Chapter 4 with regard to writing

The author’s notes for Chapter 6 said that Chapter 6 should include mention of “the Hermes/Mercury figure familiar from Chapter 4 with regard to writing,” but this is not currently part of Chapter 4. Can you help us add it to Chapter 4’s body?

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Notes From the Chapter Bibliography

The following paragraphs of notes from the author for Chapter 4 include quotations from Mogens Trolle Larsen, “The Mesopotamian Lukewarm Mind: Reflections on Science, Divination, and Literacy,” in Francesca Rochberg-Halton (ed.), Language, Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner, American Oriental Series, Vol. 67 (New Haven: 1987), pp. 203–225. Can you help us work them into the body of Chapter 4?
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Hudson’s Original Note:

p. 208: “When writing first appeared in the cities on the [Mesopotamian] alluvium at the end of the fourth millennium [BC], it was used for two purposes: bureaucracy and lists. It is easy to understand these lists of signs as designed to facilitate the training of scribes, so that they form elements in the wider literate system of bureaucratisation which needed uniformity and standardisation.”

p. 209: Incidentally, these lists represented “a systematic and ordered picture of the world.” These lists led to organization by means of their written logogrammatic elements. (Hence, the mode of organization was not oral, Larsen emphasized.)

207: “A universe is created where every thing is in its place, related to other things and phenomena in an orderly and meaningful system. … Modern science operates with the concept of Chance on certain levels of explanation, but the Zande insist on a total explanation. They therefore introduce witchcraft as the final link in otherwise inexplicable causal chains.”

Irony: The study of writing is called “cryptology.” Is it hidden, or clear? Today: to make clear. Originally: for magic, hence, hermetic.

p. 210: The Sumerians had a “will to order,” that is, what Wolfram von Soden[3] (1936: p. 29) called an “Ordnungswillen.”

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  1. ↑ H. Zimmern, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Alphabets,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50 (1896), pp. 667–670.
  2. ↑ G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing From Pictograph to Alphabet (Oxford: 1948), p. 157–158.
  3. ↑ Wolfram von Soden, “Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer Wissenschaft,” Die Welt als Geschichte, Vol. 2 (1936), pp. 411–464 and pp. 509–557 (repr. Darmstadt: 1965).
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Notes From the Chapter Bibliography

The following paragraphs of notes from the author for Chapter 4 include quotations/sourced facts from the following Bibliography Items. Can you help us work them into the body of Chapter 4?
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Bibliography Items

J.V. Kinnier Wilson, “The Case for Accountancy,” in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta, Frontiers of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi: 1984), pp. 173–178.

B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta (eds.), Frontiers of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi: 1984).

Iravatham Mahadevan, “Terminal Ideograms in the Indus Script,” in Gregory L. Possehl (ed.), Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (New Delhi: 1982), pp. 311–317.

Asko Parpola, “Interpreting the Indus Script,” in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta, Frontiers of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi: 1984), pp. 179–191.

Hudson’s Notes on These Bibliography Items

J.V. Kinnier Wilson[1]Verify CitationOriginally this said “He noted” and it was unclear to whom this refers. Did we get this right?OpenSee All Queries noted that the earliest Indus writing is mainly economic record-keeping, presumably by public officials. On the “miniature seals,” numerals are invariably present. Also frequent are animal signs, which Kinnier Wilson suspected may represent calendrical constellations just as in the modern zodiac or perhaps years (as in the Chinese year of the rat, etc.). This would explain why all the extant Indus inscriptions are so short.

In any case, all Bronze Age scripts, from cuneiform to Linear B, have to do with bookkeeping in one form or another.

Likewise, Asko Parpola[2] (1984: p. 181) observed that the great majority of Indus inscriptions are seals, used by officials for administration and trade. And Iravatham Mahadevan[3] (1982: p. 313) found one of the most frequent signs the “jar” sign. This accounts for about a 10th of total sign occurrences, usually as a postfix.

MahadevanVerify CitationOriginally this said “He suspected” and based on context we guessed this meant Mahadevan. Is this correct?OpenSee All Queries suspected that it is “a sacrificial vessel used in priestly ritual,” or perhaps a suffix attached to names to denote priestly status. Or it might be simply an administrative measure to distribute commodities.

The “bearer” sign has similar positional and functional characteristics. “The term ‘bearer’ is applied idiomatically in Indian languages to be a person who ‘shoulders’ any responsibility or ‘bears’ the ‘burden’ of any office.” Thus the Sanskrit word for husband, “bhartr,” (literally one who sustains or maintains) is from the root “bhr,” “to bear.”Verify CitationCan someone with access to the original text(s) verify where the quote starts, stops, and continues, if at all?OpenSee All Queries

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  1. ↑ J.V. Kinnier Wilson, “The Case for Accountancy,” in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta, Frontiers of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi: 1984), pp. 173–178.
  2. ↑ Asko Parpola, “Interpreting the Indus Script,” in B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta, Frontiers of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi: 1984), pp. 179–191.
  3. ↑ Iravatham Mahadevan, “Terminal Ideograms in the Indus Script,” in Gregory L. Possehl (ed.), Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (New Delhi: 1982), pp. 311–317.
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Expand Section

The following text was included in Chapter 4 without a section heading and with contents that could be improved, so we omitted it. Can you help us add one, improve its contents, answer its queries, and place it in the right spot in Chapter 4?
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Also, the following section is out of date. Can you help us update it? In particular, we are looking for an update including the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat and Professor Silvia Ferrara at the University of Bologna.
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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.OpenSee All Queries from Deimel[1] 1923: p. 71Verify CitationIs this full citation of Deimel correct?OpenSee All Queries 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?OpenSee All Queries: 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?OpenSee All Queries

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?OpenSee All Queries

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-000020FF-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.OpenSee All Queries

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?OpenSee All Queries

[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?OpenSee All Queries

“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?OpenSee All Queries

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?OpenSee All Queries

[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)?OpenSee All Queries 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?OpenSee All Queries

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?OpenSee All Queries

[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?OpenSee All Queries 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.OpenSee All QueriesAdd 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?OpenSee All QueriesTransition NoteOriginally a note from the author accompanied this: “Put this with Indus seals.”OpenSee All Queries

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?OpenSee All Queries

  1. ↑ 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?OpenSee All Queries
  2. ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b),Verify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation?OpenSee All Queries p. 114.
  3. ↑ I.J. Gelb, A Study of Writing (Chicago: 1962).
  4. ↑ Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b).Verify CitationCan you help us verify the year in this citation?OpenSee All Queries
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Transition Note

Quoted text:

The breakthrough to alphabetic writing seems to have been inspired from quite a different direction. A set of about 28 symbols had been created to signify the days in the lunar month, the gamut of tones in the musical scale, or perhaps both. These signs were applied to the verbal phonemes which became the basis for the Canaanite-Greek-Roman alphabet, which has cuneiform precedents going at least as far back as Ugarit c. 1400 BC.

[Omitted text: Transition from MUSIC chapter to ALPHABET chapter 5:]

Snodgrass[1] (1980: p. 79) has remarked that “Linear B was essentially an administrative script, used by palace scribes for official documentation, and occasionally by craftsmen… But graffiti hardly appear, and public inscriptions not at all. We infer that very few people could read the script… If it was the almost exclusive preserve of the palace bureaucracies, as seems likely, then their disappearance will have removed its raison d’être. The early alphabetic inscriptions show a sharp contrast. … They refer to private matters—ownership, entertainment, personal comments; a striking proportion of them are in verse. … and permanent inscriptions on stone follow” “[a]lready before 700 BC.”

Originally here, the author had a note: “Transition from MUSIC chapter to ALPHABET chapter 5:”. We think it might be a suggestion that something from or related to Chapter 5 (Music, Temperament, and Social Concord) belongs here. Can you use this tip and the Key Concepts section of Chapter 4 to fill in what was intended to go here?

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Add Context

Quoted text:

The breakthrough to alphabetic writing seems to have been inspired from quite a different direction. A set of about 28 symbols had been created to signify the days in the lunar month, the gamut of tones in the musical scale, or perhaps both. These signs were applied to the verbal phonemes which became the basis for the Canaanite-Greek-Roman alphabet, which has cuneiform precedents going at least as far back as Ugarit c. 1400 BC.

Snodgrass[2] (1980: p. 79) has remarked that “Linear B was essentially an administrative script, used by palace scribes for official documentation, and occasionally by craftsmen… We infer that very few people could read the script… If it was the almost exclusive preserve of the palace bureaucracies, as seems likely, then their disappearance will have removed its raison d’être. The early alphabetic inscriptions show a sharp contrast. … They refer to private matters—ownership, entertainment, personal comments; a striking proportion of them are in verse. … and permanent inscriptions on stone follow” “[a]lready before 700 BC.”

Can you help add context about what Linear B is? Perhaps you can help add some context about Mycenaean Greek as per Wikipedia if that applies here, as no civilization is specified in or right before the second paragraph quoted above. Context can be added in a footnote or as a link in the chapter body text.

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Verify Citation

Quoted text:

H.T. Wade-Gery 1952
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Add Context

Quoted text:

But narratives written in this (non)grammatical format with its agglutinative word formation were difficult to follow for someone who did not already know their basic content. Many functions that today are expressed in writing had to be committed to memory. In sum, cuneiform texts were nowhere near as self-explanatory as are modern books. They are especially hard for modern outsiders coming in cold.

[Omitted text: [an archaic Natural Law to ground social traditions in the rhythms of physical nature.]]

[Unrelated omitted text: As Chapter 5 will elaborate, it] may not be merely coincidental that the Akkadian sign for water, mem, occupying the first position in the cuneiform syllabary described by Zimmern[3] (1896 see also Driver[4] 1948: pp. 157–158, subsequently evolved into the Canaanite (and hence Greek and modern) letter m, originally μῦ, recalling the wavy zigzag line traditionally used to denote water.
Originally written here was a note from the author: “an archaic Natural Law to ground social traditions in the rhythms of physical nature.” If you can help flesh this out and add a paragraph related to the author’s note, please let us know.
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Spelling of Term

Quoted text:

the Akkadian sign for water, mem, occupying the first position in the cuneiform syllabary described by Zimmern[5] (1896; see also Driver[6] 1948: pp. 157–158), subsequently evolved into the Canaanite (and hence Greek and modern) letter m, originally μῦ, recalling the wavy zigzag line traditionally used to denote water.

Can you help us check the spelling of this term? It's mû not mem according to Wikipedia.

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Verify Citation

Quoted text:

the Akkadian sign for water, mem, occupying the first position in the cuneiform syllabary described by Zimmern[7] (1896; see also Driver[8] 1948: pp. 157–158), subsequently evolved into the Canaanite (and hence Greek and modern) letter m, originally μῦ, recalling the wavy zigzag line traditionally used to denote water.

We guessed at the full citation for “Zimmern (1896)”:

  1. We guessed that the author’s full name is Heinrich Zimmern.
  2. We guessed that this was the 1896 publication that Hudson intended to cite: H. Zimmern, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Alphabets,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50 (1896), pp. 667–670.
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Verify Citation

Quoted text:

see also Driver[9] 1948: pp. 157–158

Originally in Chapter 4, this was written as “Driver 1976: 179”: the full citation was missing, and both the year and page numbers were different from what we found: G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing From Pictograph to Alphabet (Oxford: 1948), p. 157–158.

Can you help us to confirm the relevant part discussed here is on pages 157–158 of the text that we cite? It may be a different edition, or possibly the wrong text.

From our research, the author of this text, G.R. Driver, died in 1975, meaning that the original “1976” may have been either a posthumous edition we could not find that may have different page numbers or a typo. What do you think?
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See also in case it is affected: this query in Chapter 1, describing how Chapter 1’s citation of this originally was as follows, with no link:

G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing, From Pictograph to Alphabet (3rd ed., London: 1976).

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Symbol Query

Quoted text:

the Canaanite (and hence Greek and modern) letter m, originally μῦ, recalling the wavy zigzag line traditionally used to denote water.

There was a missing symbol here; μῦ was our best guess based on page 158 of Driver, but if you know this should be something else, please let us know.

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Key Concept Missing in Chapter Body

Quoted text:

Key image: Hermes (Sumerian Enki, Egyptian Thoth, and Roman Mercury)
This Key Concept is not discussed in this chapter’s body. Can you help us add it to the chapter body discussion and relate it to the chapter thesis? Please include what to add and where in the chapter to add it, and any sources.
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Key Concept Missing in Chapter Body

Quoted text:

Lunar symbol: Nisaba of Umma, the Sumerian patron goddess of scribes, seems to derive from Inanna
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Key Concept Missing in Chapter Body

Quoted text:

Solar symbol: The Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet of 30 signs

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peoples speaking alien languages. Instead of resulting in the Tower of Babel

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Spells were written down, and Hermes served as their patron in his manifestation as magician.
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Anton Deimel, Schultexte Aus Fara (Leipzig: 1923)

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Hans J. Nissen, Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years (Rome: 1988b).

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The Alphabet and Writing

The complexity of Ice Age notations increased from c. 28,000 BC to the end of the Ice Age c. 10,000 BC. Paleolithic artifacts were engraved or carved with patterns which often turned out not to be “a non-arithmetic form of observational lunar/solar record-keeping” rather than merely decorative (Marshack 1991: p. 9). Notation from the late European Ice Age—the Magdalenian period—“is the end product of a long tradition of non-arithmetical astronomical observation and record-keeping.” Marshack found “a developing, highly structured year—ritual, social, and economic.”

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“a non-arithmetic form of observational lunar/solar record-keeping”
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Marshack 1991: p. 9
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Notation from the late European Ice Age—the Magdalenian period—“is the end product of a long tradition of non-arithmetical astronomical observation and record-keeping.”
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Citation Needed

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Marshack found “a developing, highly structured year—ritual, social, and economic.”
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  1. ↑ Anthony Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (London: 1980), p. 79.
  2. ↑ Anthony Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (London: 1980), p. 79.
  3. ↑ H. Zimmern, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Alphabets,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50 (1896), pp. 667–670.
  4. ↑ G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing From Pictograph to Alphabet (Oxford: 1948), p. 157–158.
  5. ↑ H. Zimmern, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Alphabets,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50 (1896), pp. 667–670.
  6. ↑ G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing From Pictograph to Alphabet (Oxford: 1948), p. 157–158.
  7. ↑ H. Zimmern, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung des Alphabets,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 50 (1896), pp. 667–670.
  8. ↑ G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing From Pictograph to Alphabet (Oxford: 1948), p. 157–158.
  9. ↑ G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing From Pictograph to Alphabet (Oxford: 1948), p. 157–158.