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"may owls nest in your attic"
If I had the magic to insure that one human-made thing would last forever this might be it.
 The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI, clay, 7th Century BCE.
We saw this object in the ROM exhibition about Mesopatamia. There were a lot of other cuneiform clay tablets as well. This one is relatively recent, although the story itself predates this object. The first instances of cuneiform are from Sumeria. Those people were the first humans we know about to keep written records. Like many written languages, cuneiform started as pictograms and evolved into more abstract symbols. The little marks were made with the ends of reeds, which grew abundantly along the Tigris and Euphrates. Luckily, there was a lot of clay around too. This tablet was made by Assyrians, who followed the Sumerians as the predominant culture in the Fertile Crescent.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a pretty great story, an epic bro-mance, with lots of really erotic side-kick loyalty action and mythic monster-killing by physically fit young men. There's one section about an epic flood. One guy gets tipped off by the gods and builds a huge boat for his family and a bunch of animals. Once the rains stops, they send out a dove, but it comes back. Later they send out a swallow, and it comes back too. Eventually they send out a raven which doesn't return, so they figure it found some land. Sound familiar? Floods were a big deal in Mesopotamia.
The story also has some great curses. Gilgamesh is devastated when his BFF dies, and in an irrational fit he blames Shamat, the priestess of Ishtar. He says some truly awful things that he later takes back. Here is a snippet, from Stephen Mitchell's 21st century translation:
…may your roof keep leaking and no carpenter fix it,
may wild dogs camp in your bedroom, may owls
nest in your attic, may drunkards vomit
all over you....
Same parts of the curse, translated a bit more rigorously by Andrew George in 1999.
Your festive gown [the drunkard] shall stain [in the dirt!]
[...]
[The roof of your house] no builder shall plaster!
[In your bedroom] the owl shall roost!
Not all cuneiform is narrative. A lot of it is record keeping, or reports on battles, or, just, whatever it was that people need to write down. I think it's all gorgeous.
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"may owls nest in your attic"
If I had the magic to insure that one human-made thing would last forever this might be it.
We saw this object in the ROM exhibition about Mesopatamia. There were a lot of other cuneiform clay tablets as well. This one is relatively recent, although the story itself predates this object. The first instances of cuneiform are from Sumeria. Those people were the first humans we know about to keep written records. Like many written languages, cuneiform started as pictograms and evolved into more abstract symbols. The little marks were made with the ends of reeds, which grew abundantly along the Tigris and Euphrates. Luckily, there was a lot of clay around too. This tablet was made by Assyrians, who followed the Sumerians as the predominant culture in the Fertile Crescent.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a pretty great story, an epic bro-mance, with lots of really erotic side-kick loyalty action and mythic monster-killing by physically fit young men. There's one section about an epic flood. One guy gets tipped off by the gods and builds a huge boat for his family and a bunch of animals. Once the rains stops, they send out a dove, but it comes back. Later they send out a swallow, and it comes back too. Eventually they send out a raven which doesn't return, so they figure it found some land. Sound familiar? Floods were a big deal in Mesopotamia.
The story also has some great curses. Gilgamesh is devastated when his BFF dies, and in an irrational fit he blames Shamat, the priestess of Ishtar. He says some truly awful things that he later takes back. Here is a snippet, from Stephen Mitchell's 21st century translation:
Same parts of the curse, translated a bit more rigorously by Andrew George in 1999.
Not all cuneiform is narrative. A lot of it is record keeping, or reports on battles, or, just, whatever it was that people need to write down. I think it's all gorgeous.
- sally mckay 7-19-2013 2:25 pm
I Love A Man in Cuneiform!
- VB 7-20-2013 1:25 am
"Have you ever noticed that the letter Y is a picturesque letter open to countless different interpretations? A tree is in the shape of a Y; the fork of two roads forms a Y; two rivers flow together in a Y; the head of a donkey or that of an ox is in the shape of a Y; the stem of a glass is Y-shaped; a lily on its stalk is a Y; a man who prays to the heavens raises his arms in the shape of a Y.
"Besides, this observation can be applied to all aspects of what constitutes basic human writing. All that is to be found in the demotic language is there because it was put there by hieratic. the hieroglyph is the essential root of the written character. all letters began as signs, and all signs began as images." Victor Hugo, Travel Notebooks, 1839
I lifted this quote from an interesting book called "Proust And the Squid" by Maryanne Wolf. One especially neat section is about the early development of written language (like cuneiform and hieroglyphics) and speculates, from a neuroscience perspective, how, through time, the human brain re-wired itself in order to learn to read.
- r.e.c (guest) 7-21-2013 1:16 am