Cuneiform writing activity for students

With the extraordinary growth of the academic discipline of history in the 19th century, the history of the Middle Ages was absorbed into academic curricula of history in Europe and the United States and established in university survey courses and research seminars. Journals of… History of historiography All human cultures tell stories about the past. Deeds of ancestors, heroes, gods, or animals sacred to particular peoples were chanted and memorized long before there was any writing with which to record them.

South Haven, Michigan 7th grade class 1. Make cuneiform "tablets" by placing 11 popsicle sticks side by side. Glue 3 sticks crosswise to hold them together. Paint the smooth sides of the tablets in earth colors. Draw your cuneiform monograms on the smooth sides with ink, paint, or pipecleaners which can be bent and glued into place.

Got a classroom project? The first pictograms were drawn in vertical columns with a pen made from a sharpened reed. Then two developments made the process quicker and easier: People began to write in horizontal rows, and a new type of pen was used which was pushed into the clay, producing "wedge-shaped" signs that are known as cuneiform writing.

Cuneiform was written on clay tablets, and then baked hard in a kiln. Cuneiform was adapted by the Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians and Assyrians to write their own languages and was used in Mesopotamia for about years. Clay tablets were the primary media for everyday written communication and were used extensively in schools.

Tablets were routinely recycled and if permanence was called for, they could be baked hard in a kiln. Many of the tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were baked when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept.

Clay was an ideal writing material when paired with the reed stylus writing tool. The writer would make quick impressions in the soft clay using either the wedge or pointed end of the stylus.

By adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. While many wedge positions are possible, awkward ones quickly fell from use in favor of those that were quickest and easiest to make.

Like sloppy handwriting, badly made cuneiform signs would be illegible or misunderstood. Becoming a Scribe On a hot sunny day years ago in the city of Nippur under the rule of the Hammurabi Dynasty circa - BC a young boy was learning to be a scribe.

His classroom was most likely in a private home; his materials: The lesson of the day was to practice writing thousand year old Sumerian cuneiform characters. Higher levels of Babylonian learning involved studying the Sumerian roots of their civilization, much like modern students study Greek and Latin.

Literacy and knowledge were the tickets to a prosperous life as a scribe in the ever-growing government and religious bureaucracies. These Babylonians spoke Akkadian and wrote in cuneiform on clay tablets. Akkadian and cuneiform continued to thrive for more than another thousand years under the Assyrians and the later Babylonian revival of Nebuchadnezzar.

The use of Aramaic became widespread after the beginning of the first millennium and the Aramaean alphabet gradually replaced cuneiform. There are 4 rows of signs on the front of the tablet.The history of books starts with the development of writing, and various other inventions such as paper and printing, and continues through to the modern day business of book benjaminpohle.com earliest history of books actually predates what would conventionally be called "books" today and begins with tablets, scrolls, and sheets of benjaminpohle.com hand-bound, expensive, and elaborate books known as.

Cuneiform writing was first written in columns, from the top down, although early in its existence (around 3, BC), it evolved into the left-to-right style of notation modern English uses today.

let your students try cuneiform with these classroom projects.

1. With this breakthrough, the recording of written language developed so that cuneiform writing not only counted things, but could also tell stories.

The Sumerians lived along the lower Tigris and Euphrates valley in what is now Iraq. • The Chinese Language [Asia for Educators] This overview of the Chinese language, both spoken and written, includes an introductory reading for teachers; a pronunciation guide to Mandarin Chinese; and a reading about the history, pronunciation, and writing system of the Chinese language.

Historiography: Historiography, the writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical.

A history of ancient Babylon (Babylonia) including its cities, laws, kings and legacy to civilization. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five.