General Queries 4. Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos
From The Observatory
General Queries
Stub Chapter
Chapter 4 is a stub chapter that would benefit from Collaborative Research volunteer expansion.
Could you help us expand Chapter 4 to include more of what is teased in its Key Concepts section, other general queries for the chapter, and anything else that makes sense?
Suggest ways to expand this chapter. Join the research!
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?
Suggest an edit or addition for this query. Join the research!
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?Suggest an edit or addition for this query. Join the research!
Hudson’s Original Note:
Note: This query offers opportunities to make specific suggestions hinted at above to help improve its stub nature, as well as to suggest large edits such as sections/paragraphs/text to add, etc.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[1] (1936: p. 29) called an “Ordnungswillen.”
- ↑ 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).
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?Suggest an edit or addition for this query. Join the research!
Note: This query offers opportunities to make specific suggestions hinted at above to help improve its stub nature, as well as to suggest large edits such as sections/paragraphs/text to add, etc.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? 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? 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?
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Iravatham Mahadevan, “Terminal Ideograms in the Indus Script,” in Gregory L. Possehl (ed.), Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (New Delhi: 1982), pp. 311–317.
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?Suggest an edit or addition for this query. Join the research!
Suggest an edit or addition for this query. Join the research!
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?
