Research source

It was developed from picture-writing, and indeed some of the more highly significant of the pictorial signs…

Date of account: Ancient traditions presented in a work published 1916
Source: Myths & Legends of Babylonia & Assyria
Reference: Myths & Legends of Babylonia & Assyria · selected passage 15
Rights: public_domain
Language: English synthesis of Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian material
Translation: Lewis Spence, with cited translations and retellings
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

It was developed from picture-writing, and indeed some of the more highly significant of the pictorial signs can still be faintly traced in their cuneiform equivalents

Published source text

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Source passage

Source text · mention only

It was developed from picture-writing, and indeed some of the more highly significant of the pictorial signs can still be faintly traced in their cuneiform equivalents. This early picture-writing was inscribed on stone, but eventually soft clay was adopted as a medium for the script, and it was found that straight lines impressed upon this medium tended to the shape of a wedge. The pictures therefore lost their original character and came to be mere conventional groups of wedges. The plural was represented by doubling the sign, and a term might be intensified by the addition of a certain stroke: thus the sign for 'house,' if four small strokes were added to it, would mean 'great house,' and so forth. The script was badly suited to the Assyrian language, as it had not been originally designed for a Semitic tongue. It consists of simple syllables made up of a vowel by itself or a vowel and a consonant, ideograms or signs which express an entire word, and closed syllables such as _bit_ or _bal_. Again, many of the signs have more than one syllabic value, and they may be used as ideograms as well as phonetically.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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