Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – Writing in Mesopotamia might be traced again to photographs created by historical cylinder seals on clay tablets and different artifacts.
A analysis group from the College of Bologna has found a collection of connections between these engraved designs, which date again roughly six thousand years, and a few indicators discovered within the proto-cuneiform script that developed in Uruk, a metropolis positioned in present-day southern Iraq, round 3000 B.C.
Background: White Temple ziggurat in Uruk. Credit score: tobeytravels – CC BY-SA 2.0 – Entrance: Instance of a cylinder seal (left) and its design imprinted onto clay (proper). Credit score: Franck Raux 2001 GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre) – Picture compilation AncientPages.com
Their examine, printed in Antiquity underneath the title “Seals and indicators: tracing the origins of writing in historical Southwest Asia,” provides new views on understanding how writing started. It might help researchers not solely in gaining deeper insights into the meanings behind cylinder seal designs, but in addition in deciphering many still-unknown indicators inside proto-cuneiform.
“The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a big growth in human cognitive applied sciences,” explains Silvia Ferrara, professor within the Division of Classical Philology and Italian Research on the College of Bologna and lead researcher.
“The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and historical past, and the findings of this examine bridge this divide by illustrating how some late prehistoric pictures had been included into one of many earliest invented writing techniques.”
Uruk, one of many earliest cities to develop in Mesopotamia, performed an important function all through the fourth millennium B.C. It influenced an enormous space stretching from southwestern Iran to southeastern Turkey. On this area, cylinder seals had been crafted—usually from stone and engraved with intricate designs. These cylinders had been rolled onto clay tablets to go away an impression of the design.
{Photograph} of proto-cuneiform pill exhibiting indicators mentioned within the article. Credit score: CDLI – Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Starting within the mid-fourth millennium B.C., cylinder seals grew to become integral to an accounting system used for monitoring the manufacturing, storage, and transportation of varied shopper items, particularly agricultural and textile merchandise. Inside this framework emerged proto-cuneiform: an early type of writing composed of quite a few pictographic indicators. Regardless of greater than half remaining undeciphered at this time, proto-cuneiform was primarily used for accounting functions and is usually documented in southern Iraq.
“The shut relationship between historical sealing and the invention of writing in southwest Asia has lengthy been acknowledged, however the relationship between particular seal pictures and signal shapes has hardly been explored,” says Ferrara. “This was our beginning query: did seal imagery contribute considerably to the invention of indicators within the first writing within the area?”
To seek out a solution, the researchers carried out a scientific comparability between the designs on the cylinders and proto-cuneiform indicators. They aimed to establish correlations that would point out direct relationships in each graphic kind and that means.
Diagrams of proto-cuneiform indicators and their precursors from pre-literate seals. Credit score: CDLI – Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
“We targeted on seal imagery that originated earlier than the invention of writing, whereas persevering with to become the proto-literate interval,” add Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano, each researchers on the College of Bologna and co-authors of the examine.
“This strategy allowed us to establish a collection of designs associated to the transport of textiles and pottery, which later advanced into corresponding proto-cuneiform indicators.”
This discovery reveals, for the primary time, a direct hyperlink between the cylinder seal system and the invention of writing, providing new views for finding out the evolution of symbolic and writing techniques.
See additionally: More Archaeology News
“Our findings show that the designs engraved on cylinder seals are straight related to the event of proto-cuneiform in southern Iraq,” confirms Silvia Ferrara. “Additionally they present how the that means initially related to these designs
The examine was printed within the journal Antiquity
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Workers Author
