The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer (Paperback)
Unavailable
Sorry we can't get this title, the button below links through to AbeBooks who may have this title (opens in new window).
|Short Description for The Invention of Cuneiform Returning to early Mesopotamian texts that have been little studied or poorly understood, this book traces the development of writing from the earliest attempts to the sophisticated system of roughly 640 signs that comprised the Sumerian repertory by about 3200 B.C.
Full description- Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
- Published: 01 December 2007
- Format: Paperback 288 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Linguistics | Palaeography (history Of Writing) | Language Teaching & Learning Material & Coursework | Historiography | Ancient History: To C 500 CE | Archaeology
- ISBN 13: 9780801887574 ISBN 10: 0801887577
Other books
Full description for The Invention of Cuneiform
As the first known system of writing, the cuneiform symbols traced in Sumerian clay more than six millennia ago were once regarded as a simplistic and clumsy attempt to record in linear form the sounds of a spoken language. More recently, scholars have acknowledged that early Sumerian writing - far from being a primitive and flawed mechanism that would be "improved" by the Phoenicians and Greeks - in fact represented a complete written language system, not only meeting the daily needs of economic and government administration, but also providing a new means of understanding the world. In "The Invention of Cuneiform", Jean-Jacques Glassner offers a compelling introduction to this seminal era in human history. Returning to early Mesopotamian texts that have been little studied or poorly understood, he traces the development of writing from the earliest attempts to the sophisticated system of roughly 640 signs that comprised the Sumerian repertory by about 3200 B.C. Glassner further argues - with an occasional nod to Derrida - that the invention of writing had a deeper metaphysical significance. By bringing the divinely ordained spoken language under human control, Sumerians were able to "make invisibility visible," separating themselves from the divine order and creating a new model of power.
