Writing originally was invented independently in three separate countries including the cuneiform writing system in Mesopotamia which was first introduced at around 3200 BC in southern Mesopotamia (Houston, 3). To be specific, the system was created during the Uruk period, which “is characterized by strong urbanization and increased societal complexity” (Houston, 4). During this period, there was an increase in the population, advanced irrigation of land and cultural growth (Beaulieu, Unit 2). “The temples played an important role in exchange of goods, necessitated by the division of labor that accompanied urbanization.
It is in this context that record keeping developed into writing” (Houston, 4). The cuneiform writing system was created as means to keep record of “the amount of grain and numbers of sheep and cattle which was entering or leaving their stores and farms” (Hooker, 1). Thus it was used mostly used for counting goods and keeping track of business transactions, but in order to do so, the people of Mesopotamia needed a system of counting goods. That is when tokens were first introduced. Soon after, tokens evolved, envelopes were introduced, and then the use of tokens faded.
Instead, tokens were imprinted on the envelopes and later inscribed as repetitive logograms signs on the surface of the envelope portraying a message (Grigorenko et al, 8). When the tablets emerged, “they were purely pictographic (picture writing)” (Hooker, 17). Thus, no one was sure exactly what language was being used at that period. ” but soon the scripes modified the pictures and standardized them so that is common to everyone, many of the early tablets show a mixture of signs drawn and written in cuneiform” (Hooker, 17).
Phenotization was then invented and required new signs to represent sounds in order to name individuals involved in the trade (Grigorenko et al, 8), and understand the contents of the envelope based on the writer’s language (Glassner, 49). The cuneiform system once fully developed, moved away from commercial trading to other uses such as funeral functions (Grigorenko et al, 8). Not only that, but a second writing system was developed based on the Sumerian cuneiform system called the Semitic system for Akkad (Glassner, 50).
The cuneiform writing system was incorporated in many historical sources such as Chronographic Texts, Royal Inscriptions, Historical Literary Texts, and Archival Texts. The Shana, 3 Cuneiform Writing System is truly significant in the history of Mesopotamia, for it allowed the many civilizations contained within Mesopotamia to evolve and flourish, with its progression from tokens to pictographs, to phonetic signs, to the actual script that has formed many historical sources throughout the decades.
Tokens as a System for Counting The cities that formed ancient Mesopotamia, specifically Sumer and Akkad, in the 3rd and 4th millennium were mainly commercial cities in which relied heavily on the trade of domestic animals, and resources. For this reason, a system of counting sheep, cattle, and grains such as cereal was necessary to keep this trade functioning (Grigorenko et al, 3). This system consists of tokens, with each token representing a unit of goods. Tokens were fairly easy to make and the resources required were abundant in Mesopotamia.
Such resources include water from the two river canals that run through central Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and Tigris, combined with mud that resulted in moist material known as clay. Clay is known to be easily modeled when moist and if left in the sun to dry, it tends to become a relatively permanent, hard, and solid material (Grigorenko et al, 3-4). These tokens also came in different geometric shapes and sizes including “cones, spheres, cylinders, ovoids, disks and tetrahedrons” (Grigorenko et al, 3).
The success of this system was due to the rather compelling geometric shapes that were easily recognized by the merchants, and the simple manufacture of tokens from the abundant resources that was already accessible to the people of Mesopotamia. In fact, this system was quickly adapted by nearby cities, and gradually progressed in shape, variety and representation during the fourth millennium with each token defining specific sex, age, and type of species that was involved in the trade (Glassner, 64).
This was evident when archeologist recovered more than 250 diversely shaped tokens in Uruk (Grigorenko et al, 6). Additionally, in the fourth millennium, “the city state administration became concerned with storing accounts of tokens featuring debts, probably unpaid taxes” (Grigorenko et al, 6). To solve this problem, Envelopes were created from the same materials and methods as the tokens, but in a rather different Shana, 4 shapes such as clay balls.
The main purpose of these envelopes was to “hold securely the tokens representing the amount due until it was paid” (Grigorenko et al, 6). The idea to place imprinted seals on the surface of the envelope as a way help identify the sender (such as the individual owing the money) and the receiver (city state officials) resembles modern techniques of mailing a letter (Grigorenko et al, 7). The Fading of Tokens At around 3200 BC, The system of tokens slowly drifted from the three dimensional signs to the two dimensional signs inscribed on the outside of the envelope.
In other words, instead of physically exchanging the three dimensional tokens, the tokens themselves were engraved on the surface on the envelope (Grigorenko et al, 7). “the impressions were first made using the tokens themselves, then by means of the ends of a stylus” (Glassner, 65). The act of drawing images symbolizing the tokens was known as Pictography. Pictography “refers to a type of notation that represents meanings through the use of figurative and conventional drawings intended to have a communicative function” (Glassner, 84).
According to Invention of Cuneiform by Glassner, Pictography influenced the development of the Cuneiform Writing System, however, it was not considered a form of writing (Glassner, 48-49, 84). There were absolutely no words associated with the signs which made it harder to identify the language spoken by the writer whether being summer or Akkadian. It can be thus said that this “system has no connection to the spoken language” of the writers. (Glassner, 3). Soon after, the signs symbolizing the imprinted tokens became “independent entities. They constiuated a script” (Grigorenko et al, 7).
Although this transition completely shifted from imprinted tokens to written signs on tablets, some parts of the old system remained untacked. For instance, “tokens were used to represent one unit of goods as do the new signs, and since the token system was used mostly for counting goods such as domestic animals and grains, the new system was also used for the same purpose” (Grigorenko et al, 8). The only difference was that the imprinted tokens on the envelope revealed the contents of the tokens, whereas, the written Shana, 5 signs revealed an actual script. Schmandt-Besserat, 55).
These new incised signs consisted of a “repertory of logograms, each conveying the concept of one specific unit of goods” (Grigorenko et al, 8). Logograms “represents a single word or group of semantically related words. Assigning semantically related words to a common graph was done in the interest of economy as it limited the number of signs the writing system required and facilitated the learning of the script” (website).
Phonetization About 3000BC, two things gave rise to the invention of Phonetization, first being the state administrators demanded the names of those involved in the trade of goods be written on the tablets for record keeping (Grigorenko et al, 8). Secondly, since the old systems including pictography has absolutely no way of telling the spoken language of the writer, “thus it became necessary to know the language of the writer in order to understand the message” (Glassner, 49).
In order to create sounds (phenograms) to associate names and languages, new signs needed to be created (Grigorenko et al, 8). The written script at this stage of the development of the Cuneiform Writing system, consisted of “three types of signs (1) logograms standing for units of goods, (2) numerals indicating the number of units of goods and (3) phonograms transcribing the name of the doner or recipient of the stipulated goods” (Grigorenko et al, 8).
The invention of Phenotization was a transition that had some overlapping characteristics from the previous systems such as the pictographs, yet it also embodied changes. For instance, “each character preserved its pictographic significations, referring to objects but at the same time also assumes corresponding phonetic values” (Glassner, 50). In addition, phenotization gave rise to “increasingly abstract stylization of the writing signs.
The stylization became fully “cuneiform” and the drawing of objects can no longer be seen in it. The ancient “pictograms now deformed and unrecognizable, gave away to abstract signs to “ideograms” which replaced them and each of these represented a certain number of words that were conceptually related. This method allowed to indicate the objects they had originally represented but also expressed the words with which these objects could be associated as a second value” (Glassner, 50).
