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85-569: Tannin appears in the Baal Cycle as one of the servants of Yam ( lit.   ' Sea ' ) defeated by Baʿal ( lit.   ' Lord ' ) or bound by his sister, Anat . He is usually depicted as serpentine , possibly with a double tail. The tanninim ( תַּנִּינִים ) also appear in the Hebrew Bible 's Book of Genesis , Exodus , Deuteronomy , Psalms , Job , Ezekiel , Isaiah , and Jeremiah . They are explicitly listed among

170-481: A vegetation god whose death and rebirth is responsible for the Levant 's summer drought and autumn rains. However, Oldenburg argues against this, saying it instead represents "a special catastrophe of drought and infertility when the rain does not come in its season". The cycle’s elaborate details about the building of Ba'al's palace is thought to reflect rites of a forgotten Canaanite autumnal festival that involved

255-545: A Northwest Semitic language , and written in a cuneiform abjad . It was discovered on a series of clay tablets found in the 1920s in the Tell of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra ), situated on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria , a few kilometers north of the modern city of Latakia and far ahead of the current coastline. The stories include The Myth of Baʿal Aliyan and The Death of Baʿal . A critical edition of

340-401: 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

425-413: A court like other gods, meaning that he has to live in the dwelling of his father El and Athirat . Anat thus makes a threat against El, threatening to make his grey hair run with blood unless he allows Baʿal to have a palace. The earthquakes at her feet cause El to be exposed from his chamber. Though the text following is lost, it is clear this attempt was unsuccessful, so Baʿal dispatches Qodesh-wa-Amrur ,

510-472: A feast and to acknowledge his sovereignty. In the ending, which is lost, Mot makes his reply. The final part of the Baʿal cycle is concerned with Baʿal's battle against Mot, a personification of Death . Continuing from the preceding section, Mot concludes his reply to Baʿal. His reply is that he, like a lion in the desert, hungers constantly for human flesh and blood. By inviting Mot to a meal of bread and wine, Mot

595-559: 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,

680-499: A human child, whom he dresses in his robes and offers as a gift to Mot. When the text continues, two deities, presumably Gupan and Ugar arrive at El's abode, and they announce to him that they have been searching for Baʿal, but found him dead by the bank of the river of the dead. El then descends from his throne and sits on the ground, and mourns, strewing dust on his head, wears clothes of sackcloth, shaves off his beard and beats his chest in grief. Anat too wears sackcloth when she finds

765-481: A kingdom without end, and fetches two divine clubs for Baʿal's use. He gives them magic names, and strikes Yam the first two times himself. Baʿal then drags out Yam and finishes him off. Then Athtart tells Baʿal to scatter his rival, which he does, and then he cries out that Yam is dead, and that he shall be King. A description of the palace of Baʿal follows. It begins with a description of a banquet thrown in honour of Baʿal on Mount Zephon (modern-day Jebel Aqra ). When

850-582: 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

935-457: A magic weapon. Yam then sends word to El, on the mount of Lel , El's abode, demanding the surrender of Baʿal and his henchmen. However, Baʿal, upon hearing this on the mount of Lel attacks the envoys, though Anat and Athtart hold him back. When the story resumes, Baʿal has already started to battle Yam, but is in despair due to the power of Yam, and the fierce sea-creatures. Kothar-wa-Khasis assures Baʿal that he will be victorious and will win

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1020-849: 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

1105-420: A net into the sea so she may have provisions to entertain the guests with. He does so, and when the text continues we see Anat encouraging Baʿal as they come closer to Athirat, reminding that he will have an eternal kingdom. However, Baʿal is still anxious. They persuade Athirat of their case. She proceeds to El's abode, and makes her case. Reluctantly, he gives his assent for a house to be built for Baʿal. Baʿal

1190-438: A personal name. El then proclaims that his name should be 'darling of El'. However, he informs Yam that he would have to drive his rival Baʿal from his throne and the seat of his dominion. Following this there is a banquet. When the story resumes, Kothar-wa-Khasis has arrived under the sea and tells Yam that he has risen presumptuously to his position, and that Baʿal cannot stand idly by. He threatens that Yam will be destroyed by

1275-659: 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

1360-432: 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

1445-483: 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

1530-548: 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

1615-576: 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

1700-404: A speaker, who is probably Shapash the sun-goddess, addresses Baʿal. She is advising him to find a substitute in his image, which will be sought out and slain by Mot. She then promises to bury his body, and advises him to go to the two mountains which mark the entrance of the underworld, and to move them aside. Then he is to go down into the earth and hide. He finds a heifer in the fields, and with it

1785-411: A specific rite, and she will give them an important communication for Baʿal, the secret of the lightning. Together, Anat and Baʿal will search for the secret on the hill of Zephon. She replies that she would only perform the rite if Baʿal should set his thunderbolt in the sky and flash his lightning. She then joins Baʿal at Zephon. When the text resumes Baʿal complains to Anat that he hasn't a house, nor

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1870-620: 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

1955-500: A sword, shaking him, burning him, crushing him, then throwing his remains to the birds. When the text continues, Anat returns to El and announces that Mot is dead. El then has a dream which tells him that Baʿal lives. Shortly after that, Baʿal returns. However, soon Mot comes back to life and complains to Baʿal of the treatment he has received. He demands that Baʿal surrender one of Mot's brothers. When Mot has returned, Baʿal sends messengers telling him that he will banish him, and that if he

2040-411: A torch down, the purpose of which is not known due to the damaged text, but s/he is confronted by Shapash , who tells her/him that El is to bestow royal power on Yam, and so opposition is useless. Athtar then complains that he has no place or court, and that he now fears defeat at the hands of Yam. Shapash suggests the reason to be that he has no wife, perhaps meaning he is too young. The text following

2125-428: 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

2210-494: Is a Dolphin -class submarine in commission since 2014. In modern Hebrew usage, the word tanin (תנין) means crocodile . Baal Cycle The Baal Cycle is an Ugaritic text (c. 1500–1300 BCE) about the Canaanite god Baʿal ( lit. "Owner", "Lord"), a storm god associated with fertility . The Baal Cycle consists of six tablets, itemized as KTU 1.1–1.6. Tablets one (KTU 1.1) and two (KTU 1.2) are about

2295-561: 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

2380-597: 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

2465-429: 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);

2550-416: Is hungry, he may eat the servants of Baʿal. However, this fails to please Mot, and so the two gods fight on Mount Zephon until exhausted. Shapash arrives and warns Mot that fighting Baʿal is useless, and that El is now on Baʿal's side and will overturn Mot's throne. Mot is afraid, and so declares that Baʿal is king. The death of Baʿal and the reign of Mot has been regarded as a seasonal myth, marking Baʿal as

2635-399: Is in danger of passing to Mot. He then sends messengers to Sheger and Ithm, who are responsible for Cattle and Sheep, and asks them to provide animals for a feast, to which he will invite Mot. When the texts continue, a messenger from Mot arrives in the divine assembly, demanding to know where Baʿal is. They both go up to El's house where El asks what has been happening. When the text continues,

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2720-505: Is limited, attained by difficult single combat and with the help of other gods, and his overcoming of his enemies is not permanent. The beginning of the story of the battle between Baʿal and Yam is lost, but we first hear of Kothar-wa-Khasis , the craftsman of the gods being summoned to El , who resides at the confluence of the rivers and the two oceans. El tells him to build a palace for Yam, and to do so quickly in case Yam should take hostile action. When Athtar hears of this, s/he takes

2805-443: Is lost, but resumes with El sitting in his banquet hall. Here he is addressed by the other deities, who complain that Yam is being put to shame, though the damaged text makes the reason unclear, it is clear the reason is connected to his palace. The gods threaten that unless this situation is resolved they will wreak destruction. El gives them curdled milk , apparently a mark of esteem. El calls that his son's name hitherto has been Yaw,

2890-460: Is not tall enough, confirming El's suspicion that he is too weak for the position. When the text recontinues, Anat is searching in the netherworld for the shade of her brother. She demands that Mot restores him to her. However, Mot answers that he had searched for him over the earth, where he found him at the entrance of his domain, and then he simply ate him. Anat continues her search, until she loses patience, and she seizes Mot, and attacks him with

2975-431: Is offended, and threatens to cause the heavens to wilt and collapse, breaking Baʿal into pieces. Mot then will eat him piece by piece. When the text continues, Baʿal, or a speaker on his behalf admits his fear and dread of Mot. The speaker then tells Gupan and Ugar to go back to Mot and tell him that Baʿal will be eternally his slave, news to which Mot rejoices. When the text continues Baʿal complains to El that his dominion

3060-721: Is then instructed to collect cedar-wood, bricks and precious metals in order to build his house. Kothar-wa-Khasis builds him a palace, but Baʿal insists that it is built without windows, in case that his daughters may escape, or that Yam may come again and trouble him. The work is completed and Baʿal rejoices. When the text resumes, Baʿal recalls his triumph over Yam, and then marches out taking many cities his own. He then consents to having windows to his Palace, and does so by thundering them out. While sitting in his palace he asks himself whether anybody would resist his power, and if anybody should, he should send word to Mot, god of death, to deal with them. He sends two messengers to Mot inviting him to

3145-531: The Book of Job ( Job 7:12 ) the protagonist questions God "Am I the sea or the sea dragon that you have set a guard over me?" The name has subsequently been given to three submarines in the Israeli Navy : the first, an S-class submarine formerly known as HMS Springer , was in commission from 1958 until 1972. The second, a Gal -class submarine , was in commission from 1977 until 2002. The third INS Tanin

3230-458: 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

3315-413: 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

3400-531: 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

3485-401: 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"

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3570-509: 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

3655-480: 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

3740-676: The Baal Cycle (Baal's victory over the Sea god Yam, his heavenly enthronement in his palace, and his battles against Mot, the underworld god). Cuneiform script Cuneiform is a logo - syllabic writing system that 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

3825-478: The Baal Cycle was published by Virolleaud in 1938. Recently, a fragment of the Baal Cycle has been discovered in pre-Islamic Arabia . The Baʿal Cycle series of stories are summarized as: The main characters of the Baal Cycle are as follows: Though Baal attains kingship, he is not to be compared to the exalted status gods of other narratives like Marduk from the Enuma Elish or Yahweh . His kingship

3910-548: 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

3995-471: 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

4080-523: 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

4165-458: The attendant of Athirat, to deliver a message to Kothar-wa-Khasis, whose home is in Egypt. When the text continues, Qodesh-wa-Amrur delivers Baʿal's message, which is that Kothar-wa-Khasis should fashion gifts for Athirat, presumably so she will support Baʿal's bid for a palace. He enters his forge, and produces magnificent pieces of furniture, a pair of sandals, and a decorated table and bowl. When

4250-414: 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

4335-513: The building of booths representing Ba'al's palace (perhaps a precursor to the Jewish holiday of Sukkot ), and a Canaanite belief that building them precisely was imperative to renewal of the rains. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle is one of several ancient near eastern narratives that record a cosmic battle between a sea and a storm god. Such narratives are also known from ancient Israel and Judah , Babylonia , Ancient Egypt , and Anatolia . In particular,

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4420-469: 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 the cuneiform logo-syllabary proper. The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 AD. Cuneiform

4505-490: 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 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

4590-431: 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

4675-509: The cosmic battle between the storm-god Baal and the sea god Yam , where the former attains victory. The next two tablets (KTU 1.3–1.4) describe the construction of Baal's palace that marks his cosmic kingship. The last two tablets (KTU 1.5–1.6) describe Baal's struggles against Mot , the god of the underworld. The text identifies Baal as the god Hadad , the Northwest Semitic form of Adad . The stories are written in Ugaritic ,

4760-628: The creatures created by God on the fifth day of the Genesis creation narrative , translated in the King James Version as "great whales ". The tannin is listed in the apocalypse of Isaiah as among the sea beasts to be slain by Yahweh "on that day" , translated in the King James Version as "the dragon ". In Judaism , tannin is the term used for sea monsters such as Leviathan and Rahab . Along with Rahab, "Tannin"

4845-514: 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

4930-497: 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

5015-446: 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

5100-412: The fake dead body. Shapash aids Anat in burying Baʿal upon Mount Zephon, and Anat slaughters large numbers of oxen, sheep, goats, and asses as a memorial. Anat returns to El, and tells Athirat and her family (many of whom were on the side of Mot) that they can rejoice since Baʿal was dead. El asks Athirat who can he appoint in Baʿal's place, and she suggests Athtar. Athtar seats himself on Baʿal's throne but

5185-535: The genre of Sumerian and Akkadian disputation poems. Some have contended that the contest between Baʿal and Yam is a prototype for the vision recorded in the 7th chapter of the Biblical Book of Daniel . Others have related the sequence of eschatological events in Revelation 21 :1–4 (death of the Sea, coming of the city of heaven to earth, and the final defeat of Death) to the narrative progression of

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5270-413: 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

5355-407: 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

5440-443: 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,

5525-468: 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

5610-477: 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

5695-449: 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

5780-415: 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

5865-500: The text continues we see Athirat performing her woman's work by the seashore, when she then sees Baʿal and Anat approaching. She wonders whether he has come to kill all her sons and kinsfolk, perhaps a reference to the Hittite myth of Elkunirsa where the storm-god boasts of having killed the many sons of Athirat. However, her anger subsides when she sees the gifts, and so supports Baʿal in his bid, and she calls upon Qodesh-wa-Amrur to cast

5950-538: The text resumes, we see Anat closing the door of her mansion and meeting her servants in a valley where there are two cities, which possibly represent Ugarit and its port. She kills the guards and warriors, and then drives away the townspeople. She then slaughters the guards and warriors in her palace, ending with a peace-offering. When the text resumes again, Baʿal is addressing his messengers, picturing his sister Anat sitting with her lyre and singing of her affection for him and his daughters. The messengers are told to perform

6035-476: 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

6120-432: 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

6205-669: 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

6290-601: 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

6375-480: The version of this sea/storm god battle in the Baal Cycle more closely groups with other versions found from Egypt and Anatolia (which may be termed "Version A"), whereas the Israelite and Babylonian versions group with each other (which may be termed "Version B"). The ancestral version of the two versions has the following general sequence: Version B is distinguished with its placement of a creation narrative after

6460-503: The victory of the storm god. Version A on the other hand (including the Baal Cycle) has additional elements between (1) and (2), where the sea god seeks to exact tribute from the other gods, followed by an attempt from the grain goddess to appease the storm god, finally followed by the grain goddess attempting to seduce the storm god. The closing hymn of the Baal Cycle, on the sixth and final tablet, has been related by Ayali-Darshan to

6545-565: 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

6630-674: Was a name applied to ancient Egypt after the Exodus to Canaan . The word Tannin is used in the Hebrew Bible fourteen times. Aaron 's staff becomes Tannin in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 7:9-12), it is used in the meaning "snake" in the Book of Deuteronomy (Deut 32:33) and Psalms (Psalm 91:13). It represents Nebuchadnezzar II (the king of Babylon ) in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 51:34) and Pharaoh in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 29:3, 32:2). In

6715-561: 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

6800-406: 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,

6885-452: 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

6970-483: 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

7055-451: 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

7140-428: 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 the mid-19th century – were in the area of ancient Assyria . An estimated half

7225-406: 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

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