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114-657: The language was discovered through cuneiform tablets found in Ebla. The 1964 discovery at the Tell Mardikh site in Northern Syria of an ancient city from the second half of the third millennium BC completely altered archaeological knowledge of the time, as it indicated the existence of a contemporary urban culture during the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia , within a geographic zone where, at

228-478: A comparison with Akkadian, and pointing out that there is no other contemporary model with which to draw comparisons. In his "Considerations on the Language of Ebla", he highlighted the artificial character of this opposition between morphology and lexicon and noted that "Akkadian differs from Western Semitic as we knew it hitherto because the latter was documented only on the phase following Amorite innovation. If it

342-683: A complete reconstruction of the paradigms, and the gaps must be filled on the basis of linguistic comparisons as well as internal reconstitutions that take the language's own structures into account. Special forms for the masculine second and third person accusative and dative : Eblaite presents a nominal system that is comparable to that of Akkadian and whose traces are found in certain Semitic languages. In particular, there are three inflectional categories: gender , with masculine and feminine forms; number , with singular, dual, and plural; and finally case , covering both syntactical relationships like

456-401: A completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology . It was successfully deciphered by 1857. The cuneiform script changed considerably over more than 2,000 years. The image below shows the development of the sign SAĜ "head" (Borger nr. 184, U+12295 𒊕 ). Stages: The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from

570-707: A few rare literary texts: fragments of myths , epics , hymns , proverbs , as well as some documents for conjuration . From a linguistic perspective, although a great number of these documents were effectively written in Sumerian , a rather large portion of these only used the language ideogrammatically , as confirmed by certain Semitic elements added to the Sumerograms – such as morphological markers , suffix pronouns, or certain prepositions – which reveal an underlying language distinct from Sumerian. "the day when

684-559: A given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly phonological . Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, labeled the Early Bronze Age II epoch by historians. The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets,

798-506: A graphical system where each symbol may have collectively or separately an ideogrammatic and/or phonetic value. In the first case, the symbol or chain of symbols simply signifies an idea that is understandable by way of its Sumerian meaning; in the second case, the symbol indicates, with a more-or-less large approximation based on writing practices, the form of an Eblaite term following a principle of syllabic decomposition. The comparative study of Eblaite symbols reveals some differences with

912-582: A language structure typical of the non-Indo-European agglutinative Sumerian language . The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I–II periods c.  2800 BC , and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian. This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetic value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names. Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and

1026-659: A phonetic complement. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing. Elamite cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Iran from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th century BC. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite . The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text

1140-432: A pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform". Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000 BC. In the mid-3rd millennium BC, a new wedge-tipped stylus was introduced which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped cuneiform. This development made writing quicker and easier, especially when writing on soft clay. By adjusting

1254-483: A resemblance to Old Japanese , written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters. This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with

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1368-548: A sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes. Most Proto-Cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. The proto-cuneiform sign list has grown, as new texts are discovered, and shrunk, as variant signs are combined. The current sign list is 705 elements long with 42 being numeric and four considered pre-proto-Elamite. Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were

1482-576: A slightly different way. From the 6th century, the Akkadian language was marginalized by Aramaic , written in the Aramaic alphabet , but Akkadian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250 BC–226 AD). The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until

1596-620: A stylus. Writing is first recorded in Uruk , at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near-East . An ancient Mesopotamian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing : Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat [the message], the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay. The cuneiform writing system

1710-428: Is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl. c.  2600 BC ). Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the arrival of Sargon, it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its king. Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script , and, probably, [were] invented under

1824-619: Is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. An example is found in the first lines of the Divine Comedy by Dante , who originated the form: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (A) mi ritrovai per una selva oscura (B) ché la diritta via era smarrita. (A) Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura (B) esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte (C) che nel pensier rinnova la paura! (B) In ottava rima , each stanza consists of three alternate rhymes and one double rhyme, following

1938-768: Is a couplet), as well as long prose passages, so that at ~1.8 million words it is roughly twice the length of Shahnameh , four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa , and roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. Famous examples of epic poetry include the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh , the ancient Indian Mahabharata and Rāmāyaṇa in Sanskrit and Silappatikaram and Manimekalai in Tamil,

2052-561: Is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BC. Some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BC. The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad king Nāramsîn and Elamite ruler Hita , as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy". The most famous Elamite scriptures and

2166-597: Is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c. 1800 BC to the Hittite language and was used from the 17th until approximately the 13th century BC. More or less the same system was used by the scribes of the Hittite Empire for two other Anatolian languages , namely Luwian (alongside the native Anatolian hieroglyphics ) and Palaic , as well as for the isolate Hattic language . When the cuneiform script

2280-641: Is as follows: Old English, German and Norse poems were written in alliterative verse , usually without rhyme . The alliterative form can be seen in the Old English " Finnsburg Fragment " (alliterated sounds are in bold): Ac on w acnigeað nū, w īgend mīne e alra ǣ rest e orðbūendra, But awake now, my warriors, of all first the men While the above classical and Germanic forms would be considered stichic , Italian, Spanish and Portuguese long poems favored stanzaic forms, usually written in terza rima or especially ottava rima . Terza rima

2394-429: Is called gunû or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional Winkelhaken , they are called šešig ; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called nutillu . "Typical" signs have about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated, but distinct signs);

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2508-400: Is not a complete biography of Roland, but picks up from the plot of Orlando Innamorato , which in turn presupposes a knowledge of the romance and oral traditions . Epic catalogues and genealogies are given, called enumeratio . These long lists of objects, places, and people place the finite action of the epic within a broader, universal context, such as the catalog of ships . Often,

2622-408: Is perhaps Catullus 64 . Epyllion is to be understood as distinct from mock epic , another light form. Romantic epic is a term used to designate works such as Morgante , Orlando Innamorato , Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme Liberata , which freely lift characters, themes, plots and narrative devices from the world of prose chivalric romance . Long poetic narratives that do not fit

2736-486: Is still preserved in other semitic languages which have lost the diphthong. However, the reality of this phoneme is heavily discussed by I. Gelb: "The main difference between Fronzaroli's treatment of the diphthong /aj/ at Ebla and mine is that Fronzaroli believes (...) that the original diphthong /aj/ was preserved in Eblaite (even though not written), while I take it to have developed to /ā/." Here we should also highlight

2850-550: Is the most popular. In Serbian poetry, the decasyllable is the only form employed. Balto-Finnic (e.g. Estonian, Finnish, Karelian) folk poetry uses a form of trochaic tetrameter that has been called the Kalevala meter. The Finnish and Estonian national epics, Kalevala and Kalevipoeg , are both written in this meter. The meter is thought to have originated during the Proto-Finnic period. In Indic epics such as

2964-422: Is traced back to the time before these innovations, a northwestern pre-Amorite Semitic begins to emerge, which is concordant with Akkadian just because the latter preserved its earlier character after Amorite invasion". Essentially basing his study on the lexicon, G. Pettinato was nevertheless the first to announce in 1975 the discovery of a new Semitic language, to which he gave the name "Paleo- Canaanite ." Although

3078-601: The Iliad ) or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, particularly as they pertain to heroism . In the proem or preface, the poet may begin by invoking a Muse or similar divinity. The poet prays to the Muses to provide them with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero. Example opening lines with invocations: An alternative or complementary form of proem, found in Virgil and his imitators, opens with

3192-641: The epyllion (plural: epyllia), a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme . The term, which means "little epic ", came into use in the nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the erudite, shorter hexameter poems of the Hellenistic period and the similar works composed at Rome from the age of the neoterics ; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the English Renaissance , particularly those influenced by Ovid . The most famous example of classical epyllion

3306-458: The Iron Age (c. 10th to 6th centuries BC), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. The characters remained the same as those of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiforms, but the graphic design of each character relied more heavily on wedges and square angles, making them significantly more abstract: Babylonian cuneiform was simplified along similar lines during that period, albeit to a lesser extent and in

3420-572: The Mesopotamian corpus. Only a small portion of documents found are syllabic, compared to the large quantity of texts written using Sumerian logograms . This led G. Pettinato to consider, at first, that these documents were written in Sumerian. Such a hypothesis obviously no longer holds today with regard to our understanding of the writing and formulation practices particular to Sumerian and Eblaite scribes. These graphical conventions are so specific that they are very often sufficient to identify

3534-494: The Neo-Sumerian Empire . The poem details the exploits of Gilgamesh , the king of Uruk . Although recognized as a historical figure, Gilgamesh, as represented in the epic, is a largely legendary or mythical figure. The longest written epic from antiquity is the ancient Indian Mahabharata ( c.  3rd century BC –3rd century AD), which consists of 100,000 ślokas or over 200,000 verse lines (each shloka

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3648-456: The Ramayana and Mahabharata , the shloka form is used. The primary form of epic, especially as discussed in this article, is the heroic epic , including such works as the Iliad and Mahabharata . Ancient sources also recognized didactic epic as a category, represented by such works as Hesiod 's Works and Days and Lucretius's De rerum natura . A related type of poetry is

3762-776: The Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum . Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world. The decipherment of cuneiform began with

3876-531: The Winkelhaken impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are: Except for the Winkelhaken , which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition. Signs tilted by about 45 degrees are called tenû in Akkadian, thus DIŠ is a vertical wedge and DIŠ tenû a diagonal one. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this

3990-406: The laryngeals and pharyngeals of Eblaite. However, to overcome these difficulties, they used – just like ancient Akkadian – graphical conventions such as the use of the symbols E and MA to render the phonemes /ḥ/ or /ʿ/, or else by playing on syllabic symbols which end in the vowel /e/, which is nothing but the vocalic trace of one of the two preceding articulations. Additionally, as shown by

4104-409: The nominative , accusative , and genitive cases, but also more concrete relationships like the dative and locative cases. This organization of the nominal morphology was likely that of all Semitic languages until the first millennium BC. Eblaite's verbal system follows the same structure as that of other Semitic languages, where the paradigmatic framework is organized based upon a double axis:

4218-653: The performative verb "I sing". Examples: This Virgilian epic convention is referenced in Walt Whitman 's poem title / opening line "I sing the body electric". Compare the first six lines of the Kalevala : These conventions are largely restricted to European classical culture and its imitators. The Epic of Gilgamesh , for example, or the Bhagavata Purana do not contain such elements, nor do early medieval Western epics that are not strongly shaped by

4332-528: The 16th century the Spenserian stanza and blank verse were also introduced. The French alexandrine is currently the heroic line in French literature, though in earlier literature – such as the chanson de geste – the decasyllable grouped in laisses took precedence. In Polish literature, couplets of Polish alexandrines (syllabic lines of 7+6 syllables) prevail. In Russian, iambic tetrameter verse

4446-433: The 1974 discovery in the ancient ruins of a Bronze Age palace (2400–2225 BC) of 42 cuneiform tablets , then of 17,000 others the following year, revealing a language different from Amorite , which exhibited archaic morphological characteristics present in Akkadian, with incontestable lexical similarities to West Semitic languages such as Hebrew or Aramaic . Excavations were directed by Professor Paolo Matthiae and

4560-401: The 23rd century BC ( short chronology ). The Akkadian language being East Semitic , its structure was completely different from Sumerian. The Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs. Still, many of the Sumerian characters were retained for their logographic value as well: for example the character for "sheep"

4674-509: The 3rd millennium Sumerian script. Ugaritic was written using the Ugaritic alphabet , a standard Semitic style alphabet (an abjad ) written using the cuneiform method. Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by

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4788-461: The ABABABCC rhyme scheme . Example: Canto l'arme pietose, e 'l Capitano Che 'l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo. Molto egli oprò col senno e con la mano; Molto soffrì nel glorioso acquisto: E invan l'Inferno a lui s'oppose; e invano s'armò d'Asia e di Libia il popol misto: Chè 'l Ciel gli diè favore, e sotto ai santi Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti. The sacred armies, and

4902-480: The Akkadian period, at the time of the Uruk ruler Lugalzagesi (r. c. 2294–2270 BC). The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone stelas until the middle of the 2nd millennium. Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. The spoken language died out between about 2100 and 1700 BC. The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from

5016-520: The Homeric epics, the earliest works of Western literature, were fundamentally an oral poetic form. These works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all of Western epic (including Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy ) self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems. In his work Poetics , Aristotle defines an epic as one of

5130-550: The Mesopotamian particularities and was not accepted. Therefore, without a name to fit this new language's different linguistic characteristics, "Eblaite" was finally chosen. Of the Eblaite corpus, whose publication began in 1974 as stated above, the majority of discovered documents are administrative or economic in nature, along with about a hundred historical tablets as well as some scholastic writings: lexicons , syllabaries , or bilingual texts. To this list, we must also add

5244-671: The Mongols , the Kyrgyz Manas , and the Malian Sundiata . Epic poems of the modern era include Derek Walcott 's Omeros , Mircea Cărtărescu 's The Levant and Adam Mickiewicz 's Pan Tadeusz . Paterson by William Carlos Williams , published in five volumes from 1946 to 1958, was inspired in part by another modern epic, The Cantos by Ezra Pound . The first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral history poetic traditions. Oral tradition

5358-548: The Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring Semitic languages , the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Elamite cuneiform appears to have used far fewer signs than its Akkadian prototype and initially relied primarily on syllabograms, but logograms became more common in later texts. Many signs soon acquired highly distinctive local shape variants that are often difficult to recognise as related to their Akkadian prototypes. Hittite cuneiform

5472-1152: The Persian Shahnameh , the Ancient Greek Odyssey and Iliad , Virgil 's Aeneid , the Old English Beowulf , Dante 's Divine Comedy , the Finnish Kalevala , the German Nibelungenlied , the French Song of Roland , the Spanish Cantar de mio Cid , the Portuguese Os Lusíadas , the Armenian Daredevils of Sassoun , the Old Russian The Tale of Igor's Campaign , John Milton 's Paradise Lost , The Secret History of

5586-471: The Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion. The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically difficult to know in which language they were written. Different languages have been proposed, though usually Sumerian is assumed. Later tablets dating after c.  2900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show

5700-429: The Sumerian system is organized upon a tense~lax opposition and can only with great difficulty render the voiced~unvoiced opposition as well as the emphatics of Semitic languages. Thus we find the syllables /da/, /ṭa/, and /ta/ transcribed with the same symbol DA, as well as the syllables /gu/, /ku/, and /qu/ with the same symbol GU. For the same reasons, it is equally impossible for the Sumerian writing system to render

5814-523: The Sumerians was not intuitive to Semitic speakers. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BC), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akkadian: Old Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and

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5928-478: The academic community was in favor of this idea, they were not unanimous regarding Pettinato's proposed name. In fact, while indicating advantageously its similarity to Hebrew , Ugaritic , or Phoenician , the name proved nevertheless incapable of indicating its morphological roots in East Semitic languages . G. Garbini then proposed the term "Paleo- Syrian ," but again, this proved just as inadequate to convey

6042-414: The beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life" [til] and "arrow" [ti] were written with the same symbol (𒋾). As a result, many signs gradually changed from being logograms to also functioning as syllabograms , so that for example, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti". Syllabograms were used in Sumerian writing especially to express grammatical elements, and their use

6156-546: The caste system of Indian society and the life of the lower levels of society, such as cobblers and shepherds, see C.N. Ramachandran, "Ambivalence and Angst: A Note on Indian folk epics," in Lauri Honko (2002. p. 295). Some Indian oral epics feature strong women who actively pursue personal freedom in their choice of a romantic partner (Stuart, Claus, Flueckiger and Wadley, eds, 1989, p. 5). Japanese traditional performed narratives were sung by blind singers. One of

6270-653: The classical traditions, such as the Chanson de Roland or the Poem of the Cid . Narrative opens " in the middle of things ", with the hero at his lowest point. Usually flashbacks show earlier portions of the story. For example, the Iliad does not tell the entire story of the Trojan War, starting with the judgment of Paris , but instead opens abruptly on the rage of Achilles and its immediate causes. So too, Orlando Furioso

6384-431: The compound IGI.A (𒅆𒀀) – "eye" + "water" – has the reading imhur , meaning "foam"). Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a symbol. For instance, the word 'raven' (UGA) had the same logogram (𒉀) as the word 'soap' (NAGA), the name of a city (EREŠ), and the patron goddess of Eresh (NISABA). To disambiguate and identify

6498-548: The course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC . The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite , Elamite , Hurrian , Luwian , and Urartian . The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to

6612-447: The cuneiform logo-syllabary proper. The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 AD. Cuneiform was rediscovered in modern times in the early 17th century with the publication of the trilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions at Persepolis ; these were first deciphered in the early 19th century. The modern study of cuneiform belongs to the ambiguously named field of Assyriology , as the earliest excavations of cuneiform libraries – in

6726-514: The decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform in 1836. The first cuneiform inscriptions published in modern times were copied from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in the ruins of Persepolis , with the first complete and accurate copy being published in 1778 by Carsten Niebuhr . Niebuhr's publication was used by Grotefend in 1802 to make the first breakthrough – the realization that Niebuhr had published three different languages side by side and

6840-434: The derivational axis, within which the verb's basic form goes through a certain number of modifications, and the inflectional axis, where the verb takes on an aspectual , personal , or modal value through a system of suffixation and prefixation . Eblaite has been described as an East Semitic language or a "North Semitic" language; scholars notice the great affinity between Eblaite and pre-Sargonic Akkadian and debate

6954-549: The development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter. But given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Others have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..." Early cuneiform inscriptions were made by using

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7068-446: The early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BC down to the 4th century BC. Because of its simplicity and logical structure, the Old Persian cuneiform script was the first to be deciphered by modern scholars, starting with the accomplishments of Georg Friedrich Grotefend in 1802. Various ancient bilingual or trilingual inscriptions then permitted to decipher the other, much more complicated and more ancient scripts, as far back as to

7182-453: The epic as received in tradition and add to the epic in their performances. Later writers like Virgil , Apollonius of Rhodes , Dante , Camões , and Milton adopted and adapted Homer's style and subject matter , but used devices available only to those who write. The oldest epic recognized is the Epic of Gilgamesh ( c.  2500–1300 BCE ), which was recorded in ancient Sumer during

7296-499: The forms of poetry, contrasted with lyric poetry and drama (in the form of tragedy and comedy). Harmon & Holman (1999) define an epic: Harmon and Holman delineate ten main characteristics of an epic: The hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat them in their journey, and returns home significantly transformed by their journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by

7410-466: The general area), but also of Egyptian , and may therefore be either a surviving feature of the Semito-Hamitic (or Afro-Asiatic) or a cross-linguistic areal feature." Eblaite has two forms of personal pronouns : independent and suffix. Additionally, the texts have also revealed a determinative pronominal form as well as interrogative forms. The epigraphical material does not always allow

7524-451: The god of his father had his festival" Such writing practices obviously made approaching Eblaite difficult. Fortunately, some rare documents, bilingual letters or tablets, mostly written syllabically, enabled the breaking down of this graphical barrier and the clarification of our knowledge of this language. Of course, even if we add to this collection the onomastic material, which in Semitic languages typically consists of short sentences,

7638-503: The godly knight, That the great sepulchre of Christ did free, I sing; much wrought his valor and foresight, And in that glorious war much suffered he; In vain 'gainst him did Hell oppose her might, In vain the Turks and Morians armèd be: His soldiers wild, to brawls and mutines prest, Reducèd he to peace, so Heaven him blest. From the 14th century English epic poems were written in heroic couplets , and rhyme royal , though in

7752-420: The graphical barrier, of "the existence and autonomy of the phonemes /h/, /ḥ/, and /ḫ/ confirmed by the realization of the vowel /a/ as [ɛ] in the closed syllables /ḥaC/ and /ʾaC/, as well as the tendency to extend this phenomenon to the vowel /a/ followed by a pharyngeal . It is currently lacking the elements to determine the existence of a phoneme /ġ/ or a variant [ġ]." Also through a contextual analysis of

7866-486: The ideographic principle. Included in the first category is mostly the incantatory texts and the writing of anthroponyms ; in the second, the epistolary, historical, and literary documents, not to mention some diplomatic texts; and in the third, economic and administrative texts, relating to the management and stewardship of the palace where ideography is a sufficient system for the writing of realia . Qualitatively and quantitatively, this situation entirely resembles that of

7980-412: The importance of line consistency and poetic meter. Ancient Greek epics were composed in dactylic hexameter . Very early Latin epicists, such Livius Andronicus and Gnaeus Naevius , used Saturnian meter. By the time of Ennius , however, Latin poets had adopted dactylic hexameter . Dactylic hexameter has been adapted by a few anglophone poets such as Longfellow in " Evangeline ", whose first line

8094-413: The influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". There are many instances of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform script before

8208-414: The inscriptions translated by Giovanni Pettinato . This opposition between a West Semitic lexicon and an Akkadian morphology led to controversies surrounding the nature of this language. For P. Fronzaroli, the opposition suggested an Akkadian dialect that had undergone a strong Western influence. On the other hand, Giovanni Garbini favored a more nuanced approach, drawing attention to the fragility of

8322-454: The issue of the unstable realization of liquids with the alternation of /r/ and /l/. I. Gelb speculated two reasons for this phenomenon: "If the weakness of the r / l phoneme (which is amply exemplified at Ebla) should be considered as an indication of the Hurrian influence on Eblaic phonology, then we should note that this feature is characteristic not only of Hurrian (and other languages in

8436-408: The king Ibbit-Lim of Ebla , soon contradicted this hypothesis. It therefore became possible not only to identify this city as the ancient city of Ebla, referred to in numerous Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources, but additionally, considering the strong linguistic connotations of the king's name, to specify the identity as Amorite . It became necessary, however, to revise these conclusions again, after

8550-407: The language underlying the ideograms. Thus, for example, the Sumerian practice of writing filiation following the formula X DUMU Y ("X son of Y") stands out from the Akkadian and Eblaite practice which prefers the phrasing X DUMU.NITA Y . However, if, as we just saw, we can identify a signified of Semitic origin beneath a Sumerogram, it remains difficult to extract its signifier. Fortunately,

8664-407: The ligature KAxGUR 7 consists of 31 strokes. Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary , together with logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. The complexity of the system bears

8778-443: The meaning and the other the pronunciation (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' was combined with the sign 𒉣 nun 'prince' to express the word 𒅻 nundum , meaning 'lip', formally KA×NUN; cf. Chinese phono-semantic compounds ). Another way of expressing words that had no sign of their own was by so-called 'Diri compounds' – sign sequences that have, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example,

8892-567: The mid-19th century – were in the area of ancient Assyria . An estimated half a million tablets are held in museums across the world, but comparatively few of these are published . The largest collections belong to the British Museum ( approx. 130,000 tablets), the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection ( approx. 40,000 tablets), and Penn Museum . Writing began after pottery

9006-506: The most famous, The Tale of the Heike , deals with historical wars and had a ritual function to placate the souls of the dead (Tokita 2015, p. 7). A variety of epic forms are found in Africa. Some have a linear, unified style while others have a more cyclical, episodic style (Barber 2007, p. 50). People in the rice cultivation zones of south China sang long narrative songs about

9120-468: The near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BC. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tell Brak , and date to the mid-4th millennium BC. It has been suggested that

9234-477: The ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual Behistun inscriptions , commissioned by the Achaemenid kings. The inscriptions, similar to that of the Rosetta Stone 's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was Old Persian , which was deciphered in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after

9348-494: The performer has the license to recontextualize the story to a particular audience, often to a younger generation. The English word epic comes from Latin epicus , which itself comes from the Ancient Greek adjective ἐπικός ( epikos ), from ἔπος ( epos ), "word, story, poem." In ancient Greek , 'epic' could refer to all poetry in dactylic hexameter ( epea ), which included not only Homer but also

9462-446: The plural of nas 11 "the people." Furthermore it is not uncommon that the writing presents a defective character, where all the morphological markers are not indicated: ḫa-za-an šu-ba-ti = * ḫazānum yimḫur "the mayor takes it." To these issues we can also add those connected with the intrinsic limits of the Sumerian writing system, incapable of rendering a portion of Semitic languages' phonological system. As Diakonoff specifies,

9576-706: The poet is also paying homage to the ancestors of audience members. Examples: In the Homeric and post-Homeric tradition, epic style is typically achieved through the use of the following stylistic features: Many verse forms have been used in epic poems through the ages, but each language's literature typically gravitates to one form, or at least to a very limited set. Ancient Sumerian epic poems did not use any kind of poetic meter and lines did not have consistent lengths; instead, Sumerian poems derived their rhythm solely through constant repetition and parallelism , with subtle variations between lines. Indo-European epic poetry, by contrast, usually places strong emphasis on

9690-437: The portion of the Eblaite corpus that is usable from a linguistic perspective remains relatively narrow and limited from a morphological , syntactical , or lexical point of view. The main difficulty faced by those studying the language of Ebla arose largely from issues in the writing system . Indeed, Eblaite shares its cuneiform writing system with the Sumerian , Akkadian , Hittite , Hurrian , and Elamite languages,

9804-497: The recognition of the word "king". Epic poetry An epic poem , or simply an epic , is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces , gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to oral tradition , epics consist of formal speech and are usually learnt word for word, and are contrasted with narratives which consist of everyday speech where

9918-410: The relationship between the two. By supporters of a classification as East Semitic, Eblaite is considered a language which exhibits both West Semitic and East Semitic features. Grammatically, Eblaite is more similar to Akkadian, but lexically and in some grammatical forms, Eblaite is more similar to West Semitic languages. Cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo - syllabic writing system that

10032-449: The relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized. The direction of writing was from top-to-bottom and right-to-left. Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in kilns to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence

10146-399: The restoration of phonetic values to these symbols has been made possible by the existence of bilingual lexical lists, where each Sumerian ideogram has its Eblaite form specified in a glossary using syllabic writing. Even when the phonetic value of the word is specified, a whole series of semantic problems remains, still obstructing our understanding. For example, when an Eblaite scribe uses

10260-489: The society the epic originates from. Many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native cultures. In the Indian mahākāvya epic genre, more emphasis was laid on description than on narration. Indeed, the traditional characteristics of a mahākāvya are listed as: Classical epic poetry recounts a journey, either physical (as typified by Odysseus in the Odyssey ) or mental (as typified by Achilles in

10374-415: The syllable [ɡu] had fourteen different symbols. The inventory of signs was expanded by the combination of existing signs into compound signs. They could either derive their meaning from a combination of the meanings of both original signs (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' and 𒀀 a 'water' were combined to form the sign for 𒅘 nag̃ 'drink', formally KA×A; cf. Chinese compound ideographs ), or one sign could suggest

10488-447: The symbol LUGAL meaning "king" in Sumerian, he transcribes it with its Akkadian value šarrum but translates it as "dignitary." This simple example shows the gaps in interpretation that may result from reading Eblaite symbols while only considering their Sumerian values. As for the strictly syllabic system of writing, it is not free of issues either. The rarity of Vowel + Consonant -type symbols (VC) require certain approximations in

10602-409: The symbols z + Vowel (V): ze 2 , s + V: se 11 , š + V, Pelio Fronzaroli confirmed the existence of the phonemes /s/, /ṣ/, /ḍ/, and /ẓ/, as well as the phonemes /s/, /š/, and /ṯ/, a group to which it is perhaps also necessary to add /z/. As for the existence of diphthongs , this remains questionable. The diphthong /ay/ seems to be conserved in Eblaite as illustrated by the form /ʿayn-ʿayn/ though it

10716-457: The systems used by other schools of scribes . On the other hand, the Eblaite syllabary, without being identical, bears significant similarities with that of the ancient Akkadian used in Kish during the Early Dynastic Period (DA II). In fact, three transcription practices appear in the Ebla texts: one exclusively syllabic, another using both syllabism and ideography, and the last largely employing

10830-476: The third century AD. The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. Old Persian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BC. Most scholars consider this writing system to be an independent invention because it has no obvious connections with other writing systems at

10944-471: The time, previous excavations had revealed nothing on the same scale. In agreement with Ignace Gelb 's theories on the subject of all inhabited centers in Syria of the same era, it appeared that the Tell Mardikh civilization's cultural identity did not necessarily fall within the Semitic family. However, in 1968, the discovery at the same site of a statue bearing an ancient Akkadian inscription, mentioning

11058-432: The time, such as Elamite , Akkadian, Hurrian , and Hittite cuneiforms. It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" ( 𐏎 ), "king" ( 𐏋 ) or "country" ( 𐏌 ). This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by

11172-669: The token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first unequivocal written documents start with the Uruk IV period, from circa 3,300 BC, followed by tablets found in Uruk III, Jemdet Nasr , Early Dynastic I Ur and Susa (in Proto-Elamite ) dating to the period until circa 2,900 BC. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with

11286-568: The traditional European definition of the heroic epic are sometimes known as folk epics. Indian folk epics have been investigated by Lauri Honko (1998), Brenda Beck (1982) and John Smith, amongst others. Folk epics are an important part of community identities. The folk genre known as al-sira relates the saga of the Hilālī tribe and their migrations across the Middle East and north Africa, see Bridget Connelly (1986). In India, folk epics reflect

11400-401: The transcription of words. Thus we find the term ʾummum "mother" syllabically rendered as u 3 -mu-mu . Additionally, while Sumerian sometimes proceeds morphologically by reduplication of a word to make it plural, Eblaite reuses this practice with the same meaning, but transforming it into a simple graphical signified. In this way we find forms along the lines of nasi 11 -nasi 11 to write

11514-601: The two languages are related, their writing systems seem to have been developed separately. For Hurrian, there were even different systems in different polities (in Mitanni , in Mari , in the Hittite Empire). The Hurrian orthographies were generally characterised by more extensive use of syllabograms and more limited use of logograms than Akkadian. Urartian, in comparison, retained a more significant role for logograms. In

11628-399: The vowel /a/ is used equally to represent the syllables /ʾa/, /ya/, and /ay/. As shown above, the difficulties with reading Eblaite texts complicate approaching its phonological system. Studying the usage context for the symbols I, I 2 , A, ʾA, ḪA, etc. with regard to the writing conventions of Akkadian scribes enabled the determination, beyond some identification difficulties created by

11742-478: The wisdom poetry of Hesiod , the utterances of the Delphic oracle , and the strange theological verses attributed to Orpheus . Later tradition, however, has restricted the term 'epic' to heroic epic , as described in this article. Originating before the invention of writing, primary epics, such as those of Homer , were composed by bards who used complex rhetorical and metrical schemes by which they could memorize

11856-565: The word more precisely, two phonetic complements were added – Ú (𒌑) for the syllable [u] in front of the symbol and GA (𒂵) for the syllable [ga] behind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird', MUŠEN (𒄷) was added to ensure proper interpretation. As a result, the whole word could be spelt 𒌑𒉀𒂵𒄷, i.e. Ú.NAGA.GA (among the many variant spellings that the word could have). For unknown reasons, cuneiform pictographs, until then written vertically, were rotated 90° counterclockwise, in effect putting them on their side. This change first occurred slightly before

11970-418: The written forms la-ḫa for / laḫān / or ba-da-a for / baytay / for example, the phonemes /w/, /y/, /m/, and /n/ are not rendered graphically in the final or initial position. Taking these two examples again, notice that, for one, the quantity of the vowels is not rendered by the writing (the form da-za-a for / taṣṣaʾā / "they will go out" shows us that double consonants face the same fate) and secondly, that

12084-561: Was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings, also known as Akkadograms, was added to the script, in addition to the Sumerian logograms, or Sumerograms, which were already inherent in the Akkadian writing system and which Hittite also kept. Thus the pronunciations of many Hittite words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown. The Hurrian language (attested 2300–1000 BC) and Urartian language (attested 9th–6th century BC) were also written in adapted versions of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. Although

12198-406: Was further developed and modified in the writing of the Akkadian language to express its sounds. Often, words that had a similar meaning but very different sounds were written with the same symbol. For instance the Sumerian words 'tooth' [zu], 'mouth' [ka] and 'voice' [gu] were all written with the original pictogram for mouth (𒅗). Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance,

12312-452: Was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 31st century BC down to the second century AD. The latest firmly dateable tablet, from Uruk, dates to 79/80 AD. Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing , in the general sense, in the course of the Roman era , and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as

12426-483: Was invented, during the Neolithic , when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. In recent years a contrarian view has arisen on the tokens being the precursor of writing. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes ( clay bullae ) and then stored in them. The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with

12540-451: Was not needed. Most surviving cuneiform tablets were of the latter kind, accidentally preserved when fires destroyed the tablets' storage place and effectively baked them, unintentionally ensuring their longevity. The script was widely used on commemorative stelae and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many homophones and near-homophones, and in

12654-406: Was retained, but was now pronounced immerum , rather than the Sumerian udu . Such retained individual signs or, sometimes, entire sign combinations with logographic value are known as Sumerograms , a type of heterogram . The East Semitic languages employed equivalents for many signs that were distorted or abbreviated to represent new values because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by

12768-455: Was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and importance. This facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it. Parry and Lord also contend that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that

12882-458: Was used alongside written scriptures to communicate and facilitate the spread of culture. In these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means. Early 20th-century study of living oral epic traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated the paratactic model used for composing these poems. What they demonstrated

12996-591: Was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East . The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era . Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions ( Latin : cuneus ) which form their signs . Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq ). Over

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