Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Cuneiform script has been known about since the late seventeenth century. Partially successful attempts to decipher it were made in 1802 and again in 1846. But a complete understanding of Babylonian culture was only possible after the discoveries of a ‘footloose young Englishman’, a newly qualified solicitor, Austin Henry Layard. On his way overland to Ceylon (as Sri Lanka then was), he stopped off in the Middle East and got no further than western Persia (now Iran). ‘After undertaking some unofficial intelligence work for the British Ambassador in Istanbul, he won his backing for a period of excavation in Iraq, where he chose a huge mound called Nimrud, twenty miles south of Mosul.’²⁸ Though he was not a trained archaeologist (hardly anybody was in those days), Layard was blessed with luck. He discovered a series of huge slabs, great limestone bulls up to fourteen feet high, images so striking that his account of his researches became a best-seller. But Layard also found many examples of what appeared to be wedge-shaped inscriptions on stone, and the dating of the site – 3500–3000 BC – made this the earliest known form of writing. Sumerian was not finally understood until the twentieth century but once it was, the discoveries came thick and fast.²⁹

Our new understanding shows that there were in Mesopotamia several forms of ‘proto-writing’ in use before writing proper. Of these, stone cylinder seals were both more permanent and at the same time more flexible versions of the clay ‘envelopes’ examined by Schmandt-Besserat. The seal itself took the form of a hollow cylinder, on which was inscribed a set of engravings. The cylindrical seal would be rolled over wet clay, which therefore reproduced the engraved inscription as a reversed, embossed image.³⁰ The clay seals were used everywhere: they could be moulded over the knot of a rope tied around a bundle; or over the rope fastening of a door. The idea was that the seal should bear a clear mark, identifying its owner.³¹ Like the clay envelopes studied by Schmandt-Besserat, seals were instruments of economic control, guaranteeing the supervision of proceedings, or confirming that a transaction had taken place. In practice, the Sumerians produced some very imaginative devices with which to identify owners: worshipping at a temple, processions of boats, prisoners before a ruler, the feeding of animals. They were, in effect, pictographical signatures.³² Later, a new type of seal emerged, produced by cutting machines. This clearly suggests that trade was increasing and that the need for identifying marks was likewise growing.

So much for proto-writing. But cuneiform actually developed out of the archaic Uruk pictographic system, which took over many of the signs used with the earlier tokens, such as the sign for sheep, and wavy lines for water. The birth of writing proper is clearly shown by the use the first scribes made of the so-called ‘bevel-rimmed’ bowls of Uruk. These were cheap, coarse and very porous. They could not have been made to hold water and yet they were so common that, at some sites, they made up three-quarters of the pottery found. The fact that they were so porous – suitable only for containing solid matter – and were all the same size, provides a key to their use. Texts that have been deciphered tell us that the workers of Uruk, at least the workers on the large temple projects, were paid in kind – i.e., with a daily ration of food. Since the bulk of the workers’ rations would have been grain, it stands to reason that these were the ‘standard’ bowls by which the workers were paid.³³

Shown in Figure 4, is the very ancient sign for ‘eat’. This quite clearly shows a head, with an open mouth, receiving food from one of these ‘bevel-rimmed bowls’. It was, in other words, a picture, or pictograph. Many other words began as pictographs, too (see Figure 5, below).