Terrien De Lacouperie, “The Old Babylonian Characters and their Chinese Derivatives”, 1888 was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Jean Bottero, “The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia”, also was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Here I present: Joshua Bowen & Megan Lewis, “Learn to Read Ancient 𒅴𒂠 Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners”, 2020.
When human beings first learned writing it was Cuneiform script. Thus, I decided to go back to this earliest writing system in this blog post.
The book consists of an Introduction, eleven (11) Body Chapters, and a Conclusion, plus an Appendix shown BELOW.
I. INTRODUCTION.
II. BODY.
1. “Cuneiform Signs and Sounds.”
2. “Introduction to Verbs and the Genitive.”
3. “Case Endings.”
4. “The Verbal “Chain” Part One: Case Elements.”
5. “Verbal Inflection.”
6. “Possession, Independent Pronouns, and Intransitive Verbs.”
7. “Transitive Verbs: Ḫamtu.”
8. “Transitive Verbs: Marû.”
9. “Remaining Verbal Prefixes.”
10. “Compound and Auxiliary Verbs.”
11. “Imperatives and Several Non-Finite Forms.”
III. CONCLUSION.
IV. APPENDIX.
Sumerian cuneiform is phonetically a syllabary, shown BELOW.
Cuneiform are also based on “graphic” patterns; and, patterns contain a specific numerical value. Below is Cuneiform and Kanji for “wood” and “god”.
4 strokes (s) = 3 wedge-lines, for “wood”.
9 strokes = 3 wedge-lines (wl.), for “god”.
Here I presented: Joshua Bowen & Megan Lewis, “Learn to Read Ancient 𒅴𒂠 Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners”, 2020.
This book is unique in being for Beginners of Sumerian. Most books in Cuneiform Studies are treatise written for experts. Now we a textbook here that anyone can use.
The goal of Joshua Bowen & Megan Lewis
is to make Cuneiform Studies (Assyriology) was popular as Egyptian Studies. Assyriology and Egyptology and two-sides of the same coin of the earliest writing systems.
In 4100 BC the first city-state in history was Mesopotamia. To paraphrase writer Michael Crichton, man went from:
“trees to caves,
caves to farms,
farms to cities,
cities to cyberspace.”
Jean Bottero, “The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia”, was the topic of an earlier blog post.
