History
Who created cuneiform?
Ancient Sumerians
What are pictograms?
Symbols; a picture that represents words or ideas.
What ancient language is it similar to due to the pictures?
Hieroglyphics
What is the name of a person who learned to write using cuneiform.
A scribe
Where was cuneiform first used?
Sumerians/Mesopotamia
What material did they write on?
Clay tablets
How many characters are there in Cuneiform?
thousands of characters
What direction did scribes first write in?
Vertical (up and down)
What did they originally record?
Animals & crops stored at the temple, business records, trade
What was Cuneiform used for?
Recording information, letters, and stories
When was the last recorded cuneiform script found?
75 A.D.
Later on, scribes changed the direction they wrote in. What direction did scribes write in later?
Horizontal (side to side)
What are ”economic transactions”?
Similar to receipts, when things are bought and sold, when money and services are traded.
What did people use to write?
Wedge Shaped Reeds/ stylus
What is another name for an oven used to bake clay tablets?
A kiln
How many years did it train to become a scribe?
About 12 years
How did cuneiform change over time?
Cuneiform became more complicated from simple pictograms to more complex symbols.
The writing changed direction.
How did they make the clay table more permanent? How did Cuneiform become permanent?
They Baked the clay tablets in the sun/bake it in a kiln
What does “cuneiform” mean?
"Wedge-shaped"
What are some challenges with being a scribe?
Learning several thousand symbols
The symbols represent words – not letters
Think about how many words you know…
Creating and storing a tablet