this is my initials "JSJ" as a Mesopotamian would have written it - in cuneiform(though quite a bit bigger - my laptop is approximately14 inches across - you can see it in the bottom right hand corner and use that as a rough scale if you'd like). i fully understand that this would have been engraved into soft clay with a special tool, thus expediting the process greatly, but i enjoyed the process quite a bit. the thing that struck me the most both in doing my little writing project and in searching for something to write was the complexity of the language. i originally thought i would write "reinventing knowledge" but figuring out which symbols to use to phonetically spell that became near impossible, not to mention that i would have had to use a different medium if i were writing 20 characters instead of 3. the cuneiform number system is relatively simple and easy to understand - like we talked about in class, there is one mark for each item you had - one little arrow w/ a stick per object, with tens denoted by little skewed triangles. i think my favorite thing is the progression of cuneiform words from simple drawings to complex triangle-line symbols:
last but not least, i realized the importance of the writing medium - if you had to lay out sticks to write everything, noone would have ever written cuneiform - but making marks on clay pots or tokens or later tablets makes the system possible - the medium and methods of writing have a huge impact on the system itself. i believe this to be true of our modern English - the reason we don't carry clay tablets to class (among others) is that English lends itself very easily to being written in semi continuous motions of a marking tool that leaves a uniform, straight line, (ie. a pencil on a piece of paper)i wonder, however, if digital media is making the ease of a writing system obsolete? (since it takes just as much effort to push the R button as it does to push the I button)
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