The Materiality of Writing in the Ancient World: Sumerian, Cuneiform, and Beyond

SUMERIAN 143 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Cuneiform, the world’s earliest writing system, was invented over 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It was originally used to write the Sumerian language, a language that continued to be written for over 3 millennia and produced a corpus of well over 100,000 preserved texts. The act of writing—a means of externalizing and visually representing language—has an inherent materiality to it, one that was new and innovative in the ancient world. In this class, we explore the relationship between the Sumerian language and the materiality of its writing, covering topics such as the invention and development of cuneiform; the material process of making a clay tablet; the use of Sumerian writing in conjunction with other media; and wider functions of cuneiform writing. Over the course of the semester, students learn enough Sumerian grammar and vocabulary to read simple Sumerian royal inscriptions from the original cuneiform. 

The class meets in the collections of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and provides students the opportunity to work directly with cuneiform objects.