Cuneiform tablet

“ No more cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs; the pottery is different, and the “high place” has disappeared. The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the walls of the newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children which they once contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish [159] power increased the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened. When the cuneiform syllabary finally made way for the so-called Phœnician alphabet is still uncertain, but it was at all events before the days of Solomon. ”

“ We must look for information to the systematic excavations that are at last being made on the sites of the old Canaanitish towns. Already cuneiform tablets have been found on them, and though these belong to the Egyptian period we may hope that before long others may be discovered of later date. We have still to bridge over the age which elapsed between the final withdrawal of Egyptian domination and the conquest of the country by Philistines and Israelites. When that age begins the script and official language of Canaan are still Babylonian ”

“ This is what Professor Maspero has done, and it must be no slight satisfaction to him to find that on the whole his system of transliteration is confirmed by the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna.
The difficulties attaching to the spelling of Assyrian names are different from those which beset our attempts to reproduce, even approximately, the names of ancient Egypt. The cuneiform system of writing was syllabic, each character denoting a syllable, so that we know what were the vowels in a proper name as well as the consonants. ”

“ On the other hand, apart from the cuneiform tablets the more strictly archæological evidence of Babylonian influence upon Canaan is extraordinarily scanty. Naturally we should discover no traces of “the goodly Babylonish garments” which, as we learn from the Book of Joshua, were imported into the country, the climate of Palestine not being favourable to their preservation; but it is certainly strange that so few seal-cylinders or similar objects have been disinterred, either at Gezer and Lachish in the south, or at Taanach and Megiddo in the north. What makes it the stranger is that Mr. ”

“ Like the cuneiform tablets, they bear witness to the long-continued influence of Babylonian culture in Canaan on its literary side.
When we turn to theology and law, the same influence is recognizable. The deities of Canaan were to a large extent Babylonian, with Babylonian names. The Babylonian gods Ana, Nebo, Rimmon (Rammân) , Hadad and Dagon meet us in the names [153] of places and persons, and Ashtoreth, who shared with Baal the devotion of the inhabitants of Palestine, is the Babylonian Istar with the suffix of the feminine attached to her name. ”

“ Meissner at a dealer's shop in Bagdad and acquired for the Berlin Museum. The tablet consists of four columns (two on the obverse and two on the reverse) and deals with the hero's wanderings in search of a cure from disease with which he has been smitten after the death of his companion Enkidu. The hero fears that the disease will be fatal and longs to escape death. It corresponds to a portion of Tablet X of the Assyrian version. ”

“ Quinine is best given in solution; the nauseous taste can be somewhat disguised by adding chloroform water or essence of ginger or lime juice to the solution. Many men take the drug in a little beer or spirit for the same purpose.
Quinine pills are, as a rule, very insoluble, therefore they are not suitable for explorers. Quinine in the form of a tablet, or in a capsule, or wrapped in tissue paper, acts well, but even tablets should be cracked or crushed. Sugar-coated products are inadmissible in the tropics. ”

“ The approximate number of the inscribed baked clay tablets and fragments that have come from Kuyûnjik and are now in the British Museum is 25,073. It is impossible to over-estimate their importance and value from religious, historical and literary points of view; besides this, they have supplied the material for the decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions in the Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian languages, and form the foundation of the science of Assyriology which has been built up with such conspicuous success during the last 70 years. ”

“ There is no allusion to the necessity of a good life; no recommendation to be just and hate iniquity; no assurance that he who loveth what is just shall triumph. The tablet on which this strange inscription is found has upon it the figures of several of the Egyptian gods, in whom it professes faith, but the religion must have been already at its end when such a text could be inscribed on a funereal tablet. ”

“ The writing of a family altar tablet is an important matter with many people. The wisest and most learned man available is asked to write it; he puts on his best official robes and breathes upon his pencil to give life to it and to the tablet.
The ancient ancestral tablet 門中歷代高曾遠祖位 mên chung li tai kao tsêng yüan tsu wei, has largely been ousted by the Heaven and Earth tablet; but some scholars still use it because they consider Heaven and Earth are only to be worshipped by the emperor. ”

“ The presence of short inscriptions in Aramaic on a few contract-tablets naturally raised hopes, in the early days of decipherment, of finding some check upon the reading of cuneiform. So far as these went they were by no means inconsistent with the readings of the cuneiform. ”

“ As a rule the tablet bears two names—those of husband and wife—so that each human soul is not necessarily supposed to have a tablet to itself. Just as the bodies of husband and wife share a single grave, so do their spirits (according to the theory accepted in Weihaiwei) share a single tablet, and the prayers and sacrifices that are offered to the one are intended in equal measure for the other. ”

“ Nature myths have been entwined with other episodes in the epic and finally the theologians took up the combined stories and made them the medium for illustrating the truth and force of certain doctrines of the Babylonian religion. In its final form, the outcome of an extended and complicated literary process, the Gilgamesh Epic covered twelve tablets, each tablet devoted to one adventure in which the hero plays a direct or indirect part, and the whole covering according to the most plausible estimate about 3000 lines. ”

“ In this year also began the great series of publications called Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, &c., in the British Museum, printed by order of the Trustees. Vols. ii, iv, vi, and viii (1896, 1897, 1898, 1899) , contain copies of no fewer than 395 texts mostly of this period, a most valuable addition to our knowledge of the subject. They were from the practised hand of T. G. Pinches, who gave in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1897 and 1899, some transliterations and translations with notes and comments on fifteen of them. They were all Sippara tablets. ”

“ The tablet which I think to be the eighth appears to give the Creation and Fall of Man, and is followed by several other tablets giving apparently the war between the gods and the powers of evil, but all of these are very mutilated, and no number can be positively proved beyond the fifth tablet. ”

“ It measures 41⁄2 inches in height by 31⁄4 in width. The design is supposed to represent the fate of the soul according to Assyrian or Phenician belief. The tablet is divided into four compartments horizontally, the lowest being the largest and highest the most narrow. In the top compartment various astronomical symbols occur, many of which, as M. Canneau points out, occur on other Assyrian monuments. On the extreme right are the seven stars, next to these the crescent, next the winged solar disk, then an eight-rayed star in a circle. ”

“ The books of Babylonia and Assyria took the form of thick clay tablets of various sizes. The wedge-shaped characters they bore were made by impressing the wet, soft clay with a triangular-pointed instrument of wood, bone, or metal. The tablet was then baked, and as recent discoveries prove, rendered exceedingly durable. It is a matter of conjecture as to whether the form of the original documents of the Old Testament was that of the Babylonian tablets, or of the Egyptian papyrus rolls, or of rolls of parchment. ”

“ Cuneiform writing is essentially composed of thin short lines, placed in juxtaposition or crossing each other in a somewhat clumsy fashion; it has the appearance of numbers of nails scattered about at haphazard, and its angular configuration, and its stiff and spiny appearance, gives the inscriptions a dull and forbidding aspect which no artifice of the engraver can overcome. ”

“ The Introduction, the Commentary to the two tablets, and the Appendix, are by Professor Jastrow, and for these he assumes the sole responsibility. The text of the Yale tablet is by Professor Clay. The transliteration and the translation of the two tablets represent the joint work of the two authors. In the transliteration of the two tablets, C. E. Keiser's "System of Accentuation for Sumero-Akkadian signs" (Yale Oriental Researches—Vol. IX, Appendix, New Haven, 1919) has been followed. ”

“ In the best class of tablets every tenth line is often numbered—a proof that the Assyrians and Babylonians were very careful with the documents with which they had to deal. The Babylonian tablets closely resemble the Assyrian, but the style of the writing differs somewhat, and it is, in general, more difficult to read than the Assyrian. None of the tablets of the Creation-series are, unfortunately, perfect, and many of the fragments are mere scraps, but as more than one copy of each anciently existed, and has survived, the wanting parts of one text can often be supplied from another copy. ”

“ Modern archæologists seem to be in peculiar danger of taking things for granted. It is not without reason that a prominent Old Testament scholar proposes to change the title of the third edition of a book entitled The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament into The Cuneiform Scholar and the Old Testament. It is stated, for example, without qualification by Delitzsch that the name "Yahweh" has been discovered on inscriptions belonging to the period of Hammurabi. No hint is given that the reading is questioned by many Assyriologists. ”

“ It would then be our earliest extant source. It is also of value in dating the erection of the palace whose mention shows that the tablet is complete. That the compiler had before him the document used by the Annals in its account of the Nairi campaign [Footnote: Ann. IV. 71 ff.] is proved by his writing "from Tumme to Daiene" for these are the first and last names in the well known list of Nairi states. The order of the tablet is neither chronological nor geographical. Another tablet dates from year five to which most of its data belong. ”

“ In primitive times nothing was undertaken without an attempt to consult the wishes of the superior gods, and it is interesting to trace through the tablets on which are inscribed the wonderful cuneiform inscriptions, discovered and deciphered during the past fifty years, how the people were taught by their prophets or priests to consult the predestinations of Nebo, who inscribed at birth what would befall each person during life. ”

“ The actual contents of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets are of secondary importance to the fact that cuneiform writing was in use in Palestine fifteen hundred years before Christ, and, therefore, that Babylonian myths and legends had, in all probability, circulated freely there centuries before the Book of Genesis took shape. ”

“ In a real existence, a real meteorologist, suspecting that cinders had come from a fire engine—would have asked a fireman.
Tablets of Davenport—there's not a record findable that it ever occurred to any antiquarian—to ask a Mormon.
Other tablets were found. Upon one of them are two "F's" and two "8's." Also a large tablet, twelve inches by eight to ten inches "with Roman numerals and Arabic." It is said that the figure "8" occurs three times, and the figure, or letter "O" seven times. "With these familiar characters are others that resemble ancient alphabets, either Phoenecian or Hebrew." ”

“ Thorndyke chuckled. "Some fool," he replied,
THE INVERTED CUNEIFORM
"has said that 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' Compared with much knowledge, it may be; but it is a vast deal better than no knowledge. Here is a case in point. I have read with very keen interest the wonderful history of the decipherment of the cuneiform writing, and I happen to recollect one or two of the main facts that seemed to me to be worth remembering. This particular inscription is in the Persian cuneiform, a much more simple and open form of the script than the Babylonian or Assyrian ”

“ Have mercy on yourselves and on those beneath you, and judge ye between them according to the precepts prescribed by God in His most holy and exalted Tablet, a Tablet wherein He hath assigned to each and every thing its settled measure, in which He hath given, with distinctness, an explanation of all things, and which is in itself a monition unto them that believe in Him. ”

“ The cuneiform script had its origin in Babylonia and its inventors were a people whom we call the Sumerians. Before the Semitic Babylonians conquered the land it was inhabited by a people of unknown origin variously Origin. classified, by different scholars, with the Ural-altaic or even with the Indo-European family, or as having blood relationship with both. This people is known to us from thousands of cuneiform inscriptions written entirely in their language, though our chief knowledge of them was for a long time derived from Sumerian inscriptions with interlinear translations in Assyrian. ”