Julia Musto
Tue 5 November 2024
THE INDEPENDENT
Researchers have made another major stride in understanding humanity’s origins of writing.
In Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, the earliest known writing system started around 3,000 BCE.
Developed by the Sumerians and written on clay tablets, the first cuneiform is largely sourced back to the urban city of Uruk, or modern day Iraq. Thousands of tablets have since been unearthed, as well as small stone cylinder seals that were often used as signatures.
Now, academics at Italy’s University of Bologna have identified links between the designs engraved on these 6,000-year-old cylinders and pictographs in proto-cuneiform script – which came before cuneiform – that emerged in Uruk.
“We wanted to see whether the traditional explanation of how writing was born in Mesopotamia in Uruk in the fourth millennium is really valid,” Professor Silvia Ferrara, the lead researcher, told The Independent on Monday.
The work was published Tuesday in the journal Antiquity.
Ferrara said that the findings add to previous research, which found that tokens were the devices that led to the possibility of writing.
The clay tokens came in multiple sizes, and are believed to have been shaped like the commodities of daily life.
A cylinder seal, left, and its design is imprinted on clay. Cylinder seals were made out of stone and are another piece of the puzzle in understanding the origins of writing in Mesopotamia (Franck Raux © 2001 GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre))
Ferrara said they are geometric and don’t have iconic imagery like these seals whereas the signs of the proto-cuneiform writing system start off as being being very iconographic: “They resemble things.”
“We realized that a number of images on the cylinder seals actually do resemble signs of the proto-cuneiform writing system that were used a couple of centuries later,” she said.
“Cylinder seals that are part of a network of exchanges between Uruk and other cities in its precinct ... were a responsible mechanism for the creation of writing.”
These findings mark the first time there’s been a link between the cylinder seal system and the invention of writing. The seals were also used as an accounting system, tracking various agricultural and textile goods.
Co-authors and research fellows Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano worked alongside Ferrara. Kelley explained that they wanted to understand what encouraged people to leap into a writing system.
“We wanted to try to establish the other kind of relationship from seals, originally prehistoric sealing technology, into writing,” she said. “And, that’s the link. The crucial link that we’re presenting in the paper is a first concrete set of a few signs where we can explicitly say: these are there before writing and they’re used in similar ways and they have some sort of semantic association that is carried over into the invention of writing.”
A proto-cuneiform tablet is seen in this image. Proto-cuneiform was an ancient Mesopotamia writing system that came at the end of the fourth millennium BC (Courtesy of CDLI - Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative)
Ferrara said that the researchers are not saying that the seals are the only source for writing. The findings give nuance to human understanding of the practice’s origins.
“But, we are showing some very concrete evidence that pre-literate image traditions, and in this case seals, are part of the stimulus for moving the information technology in a different direction,” she said.
The four original inventions of writing are in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the South American Mayan culture. There may, however, be another source. There are cases in modern India and Pakistan and Easter Island. Both systems remain undeciphered.
“And, for instance, with the case of Easter Island, we actually have more than indirect evidence right now that leads us to think that this is in fact the fifth invention of writing in the world,” Ferrara said.
The origin of writing in Mesopotamia is tied to designs engraved on ancient cylinder seals
Università di Bologna
image:
Example of a cylinder seal (left) and its design imprinted onto clay (right)
view moreCredit: Franck Raux © 2001 GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre)
The origins of writing in Mesopotamia lie in the images imprinted by ancient cylinder seals on clay tablets and other artifacts. A research group from the University of Bologna has identified a series of correlations between the designs engraved on these cylinders, dating back around six thousand years, and some of the signs in the proto-cuneiform script that emerged in the city of Uruk, located in what is now southern Iraq, around 3000 BCE.
The study—published in Antiquity—opens new perspectives on understanding the birth of writing and may help researchers not only to gain new insights into the meanings of the designs on cylinder seals but also to decipher many still-unknown signs in proto-cuneiform.
" The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant development in human cognitive technologies," explains Silvia Ferrara, professor in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna and lead researcher. "The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this divide by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the earliest invented writing systems."
Among the first cities to emerge in Mesopotamia, Uruk was an immensely important centre throughout the fourth millennium BCE, exerting influence over a large region extending from southwestern Iran to southeastern Turkey.
In this region, cylinder seals were created. Typically made of stone and engraved with a series of designs, these cylinders were rolled onto clay tablets, leaving a stamped impression of the design.
Starting in the mid-fourth millennium BCE, cylinder seals were used as part of an accounting system to track the production, storage, and transport of various consumer goods, particularly agricultural and textile products.
It is in this context that proto-cuneiform appeared: an archaic form of writing made up of hundreds of pictographic signs, more than half of which remain undeciphered to this day. Like cylinder seals, proto-cuneiform was used for accounting, though its use is primarily documented in southern Iraq.
"The close relationship between ancient sealing and the invention of writing in southwest Asia has long been recognised, but the relationship between specific seal images and sign shapes has hardly been explored," says Ferrara. "This was our starting question: did seal imagery contribute significantly to the invention of signs in the first writing in the region?"
To find an answer, the researchers systematically compared the designs on the cylinders with proto-cuneiform signs, looking for correlations that might reveal direct relationships in both graphic form and meaning.
"We focused on seal imagery that originated before the invention of writing, while continuing to develop into the proto-literate period," add Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano, both researchers at the University of Bologna and co-authors of the study. "This approach allowed us to identify a series of designs related to the transport of textiles and pottery, which later evolved into corresponding proto-cuneiform signs."
This discovery reveals, for the first time, a direct link between the cylinder seal system and the invention of writing, offering new perspectives for studying the evolution of symbolic and writing systems.
"Our findings demonstrate that the designs engraved on cylinder seals are directly connected to the development of proto-cuneiform in southern Iraq," confirms Silvia Ferrara. "They also show how the meaning originally associated with these designs was integrated into a writing system."
The study was published in Antiquity under the title Seals and signs: tracing the origins of writing in ancient Southwest Asia. The authors are Kathryn Kelley, Mattia Cartolano, and Professor Silvia Ferrara from the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna.
Diagrams of proto-cuneiform signs and their precursors from pre-literate seals
Credit
Courtesy of CDLI - Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Journal
Antiquity
Article Title
Seals and signs: tracing the origins of writing in ancient South-west Asia
Article Publication Date
5-Nov-2024
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