Wednesday, September 29, 2010
3500years old Cover and letter made of CLAY from Sumeria

Cover and letter on clay tablet with crunieform inscription of  Akkadians,found in Sumerian region is 3500years old.Even in this time  court Judgments were given in sealed cover,the Difference is Clay cover  and document are not of paper but of CLAY baked ofter writing and was  signed by TWO JUDGES BENCH,the the petitioners are nine village  heads,with seals of Judges,an Museum collection[OIM]
This is the First example of writing,postal system,Judiciary,etc
The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written  expression. Created by the Sumerian’s from ca. 3000 BC, cuneiform  writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial  representations became simplified and more abstract.
The cuneiform writing system originated perhaps around 2800 BC in Sumer; its latest surviving use is dated to 75 AD.
The cuneiform script underwent considerable changes over a period of more than two millennia.
Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn  with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus  were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform .
The Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian,  Elamite, Hittite languages, and it inspired the Old Persian and Ugaritic  national alphabets.
The characters consist of arrangements of wedgelike strokes generally  impressed with a stylus on wet clay tablets, which were then dried or  baked. The history of the script is strikingly parallel to that of the  Egyptian hieroglyphic  The normal Babylonian and Assyrian writing used a  large number (300–600) of arbitrary cuneiform symbols for words and  syllables; some had been originally pictographic. There was an  alphabetic system, too, making it possible to spell a word out, but  because of the adaptation from Sumerian, a different language, there  were many ambiguities. A single symbol could be used to represent a  concept, an object, a simple sound or syllable, or to indicate the  category of words requiring additional definition. Cuneiform writing was  used outside Mesopotamia also, notably in Elam and by the Hittites.  There are many undeciphered cuneiform inscriptions, apparently  representing several different languages. Cuneiform writing declined in  use after the Persian conquest of Babylonia (539 B.C.), and after a  brief renaissance (3d–1st cent. B.C.) ceased to be used in Mesopotamia.
 
