Oct
7
As promised, I’m starting a series of articles about writing instruments through history. Today you learn to use the writing toys of a Sumerian scribe.
Here’s what you do.
1. Grab some clay. It’s marshy over here in Sumer, so there’s plenty of mud underfoot. It’s dirt cheap - literally - and thus it makes excellent material to write upon. (In the modern world, you may have to get some pottery clay.)
2. Shape the clay into a flat cushion-like lump, like so:
(Image by listentoreason)
3. Pick a stylus: it’s a wedge-shaped reed when you’re in Sumer, or a sliver of wood for a contemporary scribe.
(Image from Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts)
4. While the clay is still soft, hold the tablet in your left hand - or put it down flat if it’s a large tablet - and start pressing the end of the stylus into it.
NB: You will soon notice that soft clay prevents you from drawing curves. The earliest writing was pictorial, but for speed and efficiency it soon degenerated into wedges and straight lines. So your curves become angles formed by a junction of two lines. This angular writing is called cuneiform, from the Latin “cuneus” - wedge.
5. When you’re finished, you may want to let your tablet dry in the sun, but sun-dried clay is quite crumbly. You may want to bake your tablet in a kiln.
Baked clay tablets like these were pretty durable, and many of them were discovered in good condition. Some tablets found in Sumerian schools have the teachers’ writing on one side and the pupils’ efforts on the other, to show us how one learned to write in cuneiform.
Once this writing evolved, it was possible to use it in other languages: it was the method used by Babylonians, Assyrians, and latter the Hittites and Persians.
(Image from Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts)
The next article will take us to Egypt, where we can play with some reeds. If you enjoyed our Sumerian adventure, consider subscibing to my RSS feed for automatic updates.
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Sources and further reading:
1. Story of Handwriting by Alfred Faibank
2. Light From the Ancient Past by Jack Finegan
3. Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and customs by A.H. Sayce
4. Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts by Georges Jean
