I read Philosophy Before the Greeks, by Marc Van De Mieroop, and thought I’d summarize some of the interesting parts.
The book covers the Mesopotamian literary tradition from the 3nd millennium to the first. The form of writing was called cuneiform, which is a form of writing that uses reeds to inscribe marks and dashes onto clay tablets. Because clay doesn’t last very long unless it’s fired, the archaeological records can get a little spotty in the less well-maintained libraries. Speaking of libraries, the kings and scribes loved to collect the works of others. Often times when a power would ransack a city they would try and send as much of the tablets back to their home city as much as possible. The main power of the time was Babylon in terms of the sheer amount found there, although Assyria gave them a good run for their money, although it was known more for its prowess in war instead of a capital attractive to an intelligentsia in and of itself.
Example of Cuneiform writing:
The main languages in use were Sumerian and Akkadian. Akkadian, being a Semitic language, was the first to be deciphered by Assyriologists due to discovering a trilingual inscription containing Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. Eventually they discovered a much older language they weren’t immediately able to decipher due to a lack of cognates, and named it Sumerian, after the well-known title “King of Sumer and Akkad.” Cuneiform writing was first developed in Sumer, but since the conquest of Sargon more writing was presented in Akkadian. In spite of this Sumerian writing never fell out of use until the second century BC. Sumerian was interesting because it as an agglutinative language, meaning they would append sounds and syllables to words to alter their meaning, instead of altering other parts of the word (which is what a more “inflective” language does). An example was given early on.
One of the names of Marduk was (d)LUGAL.AB2.DU10.BUR3. Below is a description of each cuneiform sign, and what it means in Sumerian and sometimes Akkadian
(d) = a sign indicating a divine name follows (Akkadian equivalent = “in front”)
LUGAL = "king" (LU in Akkadian = "whose")
BUR3 = "to scatter, thwart" (Akkadian = "uproot")
DU10 = "to build, act, or maneuver" (Akkadian = "weapons")
AB2 = "sea" (Akkadian = "tamtu", i.e. Tiamat)
“du.bur” = (Sumerian = "foundation, support")
The Babylonians were very fond of compiling lexicography lists, and in one tablet this above cuneiform sign was translated as “The king who thwarted the maneuvers of Tiamat and uprooted her weapons, whose support was firm in front and rear.” The numbers in front of the syllables indicate which version of the syllable is being used. There are many cases in which there are many many cuneiform signs for the same syllable but which have different meanings (e.g. in the above the tenth sign discovered to have the phoneme DU was used, and the third sign found to have BUR as its phoneme).
It took me awhile to wrap my head around this, but it was a very curious way of compressing many concepts into a small amount of space. It almost made me think of reading DNA, and how there are codons and introns and exons and slippage during protein translation from mRNA transcripts. A scribe would read the signs themselves, but then also use the sounds of words themselves and semantic associations to make connections not easily apparent.
Cuneiform writing began as a way to track economic transactions, and only after did it develop a connection to literary language. This is a marked departure from writing systems which are directly connected to spoken language in terms of phonemes, grammar, synatx, and so on. For example in Sumerian the word “waterskin” is “ummund,” but this was written in cuneiform as KUS.A.EDIN.LAL, which supposedly means “leather object to carry water in the steppe.”
This fanciful way of writing down certain concepts could only happen in a language that was unmoored from the limitations of speaking plainly. Clint Eastwood would not have enjoyed writing in Sumerian. But it was this level of complexity that allowed scribes to explore concepts in interesting ways that would have been harder to do through speech.
Another interesting thing I learned about Babylon was that nobody really attributed writings to themselves. The authors of most writings were unknown, unless referred to in the text itself or in an aside on the writing itself. It was seen as completely acceptable, when writing a document, to update it as required or add things to improve the writing. As a literary culture they did not have the same understand of plagiarism; since the author is “dead” to begin with there was no credit to steal, so to speak.
Lexical Lists
The most common writings were these lexicography lists, which scribes would practice with to learn to read into the signs and what they mean. It was an exercise in and of itself, with no immediate practical benefit other than to train the scribes on how to read into the cuneiform using all their available knowledge. The lists were gigantic, and often would have word entries which were completely fantastical (e.g. solar eclipse at midnight). But the purpose of such lists were not to establish empirical facts, but rather to explore the limits of the cuneiform in refining one’s ability to think about things. In the words of the author,
The most common devices to connect signs to concepts, such as synonyms, homonyms, cognate terms, and so on. These were explored endlessly by lexical composers, and they often were done both in Sumerian and Akkadian. Often the similarities between the marks on reeds themselves would play a role not only in interpretations, but also in how lexical lists were organized. An example was how in one tablet the word sheep was explored, and what came up was “sheep, male sheep, white male sheep, three year old white male sheep.” Then the many variations would be iterated, including black sheep, yellow sheep, brown sheep, female sheep, pregnant female sheep, sheep under one year old, one year old, two years old, and so on. It was a sign of erudition that a scholar could write down a word to be as specific as possible.
These lists were composed for over a thousand years, with relatively little variation in their structure, and were ends in themselves for scholars to explore the limits of the written word and its ability to place concepts in other people’s minds using as many devices as possible within the signs of the text.
Omen Lists
The second most common form of writing in Mesopotamia, apart from these lexical lists, were omen lists. These were structured into two parts: the protasis and apodosis. The protasis is the “if” part, and the apodosis is the “then” component of the equation. They treated the omens as direct messages from the Gods, whose wills could be bent if the correct propitiation was done.
The most common form of divination was the reading of internal organs from sacrificed animals. Such an omen list was as follows:
Whole organ systems were examined to look for blemishes, and if so where were they on the organs, how they were arranged in the body, if a blemish was on the left side or the right side of this or that organ, what color it was, et cetera. The liver in particular had very large sets of omen lists to help determine how to read it.
Since the Babylonian calendar is a lunar calendar, and full moons only occur between the 14th and 16th, there obviously could never been an eclipse on the 21st day of any of such a month. This was well known to the Babylonians, who had impeccable astronomical science. There was intrinsically rewarding about coming up with apodoses and fitting it into a pointilized system.
Another humorous “huh?” moment in the book came from reading about how the Babylonians used cuneiform signs for cities situated a certain direction from Babylon as cardinal directions: Akkad (south), Elam (east), Amurru (west), and Subartu (north). The Hittities applied these names to describe their city Hatti as between “Elam” and “Amurru,” which was geographically absurd. But the scholars would have understood what was meant, otherwise they would have become terribly confused.
Law Codes
Of more practical value were the codes of laws, the third most common form of writing in Babylon. Long lists following the same format as Omen Lists were produced:
Law codes themselves tended not to be complete lists of all judicial decrees, and even in official codes like that of Hammurabi some things simply weren’t dealt with, for example laws governing sheep husbandry, while much was devoted to cattle husbandry, and in particular oxes which gore people. The codes themselves tended to try and highlight the wisdom of the King or other lawgiver, in hopes they would read between the lines at what the King was actually getting at and follow through in legal matters. Again we see higher, more abstract concepts existing in a more implicit fashion, rather than directly explicated.
Some modern scholars have criticized this lack of development across all their literature (lexical, divinatory, and legal) as a sign of an unscientific attitude, since in their own minds they would have liked to see the lists be less additive and aggregative/combinatoric and more analytical and abstract, similar to how the Greeks tended to practice philosophy and science. The simple fact is that the Greeks, with their relatively simple alphabet writing system, could not make use of the same sort of multilayered devices that the Babylonian scholars could, and so they were forced to lay out their own thoughts in a more straightforward and analytical fashion. This makes ancient greek writings a lot easier to understand than the cuneiform, mind you. But was there something lost in this multilayered way of conveying information? Perhaps, actually. Hard to be sure.
The book covers the Mesopotamian literary tradition from the 3nd millennium to the first. The form of writing was called cuneiform, which is a form of writing that uses reeds to inscribe marks and dashes onto clay tablets. Because clay doesn’t last very long unless it’s fired, the archaeological records can get a little spotty in the less well-maintained libraries. Speaking of libraries, the kings and scribes loved to collect the works of others. Often times when a power would ransack a city they would try and send as much of the tablets back to their home city as much as possible. The main power of the time was Babylon in terms of the sheer amount found there, although Assyria gave them a good run for their money, although it was known more for its prowess in war instead of a capital attractive to an intelligentsia in and of itself.
Example of Cuneiform writing:
The main languages in use were Sumerian and Akkadian. Akkadian, being a Semitic language, was the first to be deciphered by Assyriologists due to discovering a trilingual inscription containing Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. Eventually they discovered a much older language they weren’t immediately able to decipher due to a lack of cognates, and named it Sumerian, after the well-known title “King of Sumer and Akkad.” Cuneiform writing was first developed in Sumer, but since the conquest of Sargon more writing was presented in Akkadian. In spite of this Sumerian writing never fell out of use until the second century BC. Sumerian was interesting because it as an agglutinative language, meaning they would append sounds and syllables to words to alter their meaning, instead of altering other parts of the word (which is what a more “inflective” language does). An example was given early on.
One of the names of Marduk was (d)LUGAL.AB2.DU10.BUR3. Below is a description of each cuneiform sign, and what it means in Sumerian and sometimes Akkadian
(d) = a sign indicating a divine name follows (Akkadian equivalent = “in front”)
LUGAL = "king" (LU in Akkadian = "whose")
BUR3 = "to scatter, thwart" (Akkadian = "uproot")
DU10 = "to build, act, or maneuver" (Akkadian = "weapons")
AB2 = "sea" (Akkadian = "tamtu", i.e. Tiamat)
“du.bur” = (Sumerian = "foundation, support")
The Babylonians were very fond of compiling lexicography lists, and in one tablet this above cuneiform sign was translated as “The king who thwarted the maneuvers of Tiamat and uprooted her weapons, whose support was firm in front and rear.” The numbers in front of the syllables indicate which version of the syllable is being used. There are many cases in which there are many many cuneiform signs for the same syllable but which have different meanings (e.g. in the above the tenth sign discovered to have the phoneme DU was used, and the third sign found to have BUR as its phoneme).
It took me awhile to wrap my head around this, but it was a very curious way of compressing many concepts into a small amount of space. It almost made me think of reading DNA, and how there are codons and introns and exons and slippage during protein translation from mRNA transcripts. A scribe would read the signs themselves, but then also use the sounds of words themselves and semantic associations to make connections not easily apparent.
Cuneiform writing began as a way to track economic transactions, and only after did it develop a connection to literary language. This is a marked departure from writing systems which are directly connected to spoken language in terms of phonemes, grammar, synatx, and so on. For example in Sumerian the word “waterskin” is “ummund,” but this was written in cuneiform as KUS.A.EDIN.LAL, which supposedly means “leather object to carry water in the steppe.”
This fanciful way of writing down certain concepts could only happen in a language that was unmoored from the limitations of speaking plainly. Clint Eastwood would not have enjoyed writing in Sumerian. But it was this level of complexity that allowed scribes to explore concepts in interesting ways that would have been harder to do through speech.
Another interesting thing I learned about Babylon was that nobody really attributed writings to themselves. The authors of most writings were unknown, unless referred to in the text itself or in an aside on the writing itself. It was seen as completely acceptable, when writing a document, to update it as required or add things to improve the writing. As a literary culture they did not have the same understand of plagiarism; since the author is “dead” to begin with there was no credit to steal, so to speak.
Lexical Lists
The most common writings were these lexicography lists, which scribes would practice with to learn to read into the signs and what they mean. It was an exercise in and of itself, with no immediate practical benefit other than to train the scribes on how to read into the cuneiform using all their available knowledge. The lists were gigantic, and often would have word entries which were completely fantastical (e.g. solar eclipse at midnight). But the purpose of such lists were not to establish empirical facts, but rather to explore the limits of the cuneiform in refining one’s ability to think about things. In the words of the author,
The most common devices to connect signs to concepts, such as synonyms, homonyms, cognate terms, and so on. These were explored endlessly by lexical composers, and they often were done both in Sumerian and Akkadian. Often the similarities between the marks on reeds themselves would play a role not only in interpretations, but also in how lexical lists were organized. An example was how in one tablet the word sheep was explored, and what came up was “sheep, male sheep, white male sheep, three year old white male sheep.” Then the many variations would be iterated, including black sheep, yellow sheep, brown sheep, female sheep, pregnant female sheep, sheep under one year old, one year old, two years old, and so on. It was a sign of erudition that a scholar could write down a word to be as specific as possible.
These lists were composed for over a thousand years, with relatively little variation in their structure, and were ends in themselves for scholars to explore the limits of the written word and its ability to place concepts in other people’s minds using as many devices as possible within the signs of the text.
Omen Lists
The second most common form of writing in Mesopotamia, apart from these lexical lists, were omen lists. These were structured into two parts: the protasis and apodosis. The protasis is the “if” part, and the apodosis is the “then” component of the equation. They treated the omens as direct messages from the Gods, whose wills could be bent if the correct propitiation was done.
The most common form of divination was the reading of internal organs from sacrificed animals. Such an omen list was as follows:
Whole organ systems were examined to look for blemishes, and if so where were they on the organs, how they were arranged in the body, if a blemish was on the left side or the right side of this or that organ, what color it was, et cetera. The liver in particular had very large sets of omen lists to help determine how to read it.
Since the Babylonian calendar is a lunar calendar, and full moons only occur between the 14th and 16th, there obviously could never been an eclipse on the 21st day of any of such a month. This was well known to the Babylonians, who had impeccable astronomical science. There was intrinsically rewarding about coming up with apodoses and fitting it into a pointilized system.
Another humorous “huh?” moment in the book came from reading about how the Babylonians used cuneiform signs for cities situated a certain direction from Babylon as cardinal directions: Akkad (south), Elam (east), Amurru (west), and Subartu (north). The Hittities applied these names to describe their city Hatti as between “Elam” and “Amurru,” which was geographically absurd. But the scholars would have understood what was meant, otherwise they would have become terribly confused.
Law Codes
Of more practical value were the codes of laws, the third most common form of writing in Babylon. Long lists following the same format as Omen Lists were produced:
Law codes themselves tended not to be complete lists of all judicial decrees, and even in official codes like that of Hammurabi some things simply weren’t dealt with, for example laws governing sheep husbandry, while much was devoted to cattle husbandry, and in particular oxes which gore people. The codes themselves tended to try and highlight the wisdom of the King or other lawgiver, in hopes they would read between the lines at what the King was actually getting at and follow through in legal matters. Again we see higher, more abstract concepts existing in a more implicit fashion, rather than directly explicated.
Some modern scholars have criticized this lack of development across all their literature (lexical, divinatory, and legal) as a sign of an unscientific attitude, since in their own minds they would have liked to see the lists be less additive and aggregative/combinatoric and more analytical and abstract, similar to how the Greeks tended to practice philosophy and science. The simple fact is that the Greeks, with their relatively simple alphabet writing system, could not make use of the same sort of multilayered devices that the Babylonian scholars could, and so they were forced to lay out their own thoughts in a more straightforward and analytical fashion. This makes ancient greek writings a lot easier to understand than the cuneiform, mind you. But was there something lost in this multilayered way of conveying information? Perhaps, actually. Hard to be sure.
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