NMC102H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Ashurbanipal, Sippar, Nimrud
16 Sep 2018
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Document Summary
What is writing: a marker of civilization, writing arose independently in each region, there has always been instruments of record keeping-clay tokens, numerical tablets, tokens, tokens were used for administrative purposes. First writing came from uruk: earliest texts are administrative, some symbols can be understood by comparing with known symbols from later periods. Logarams in capital letters and slabic in lower case. Sumerian and akkadian: text was written with wooden/reed stylus onto clay, clay can be wetted and erased or not be baked and the text can be rewritten. Is more uniform and neat than clay which sometimes have bad handwriting. Sippar library: mesopotamia. co. uk---> shuma al, tablets found here (the location where they were used) are primary contents, tablets found elsewhere/discarded are secondary contents. Library of assurbanipal: wanted copies himself so he sent scribes to babylonian temples to copy them.
