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Describe laws and rules of the code of hammurabi
Describe laws and rules of the code of hammurabi
How many laws were in hammurabi's code
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Cuneiform Writing in the Ancient Near East
1. Writing was invented about 3100 BCE (B.C.). At this time, settlements were being established and writing became a necessity due to economics; sales of grain, animals, claims to land, etc. needed to be recorded. Reliable records had to be kept for all sorts of transactions -- animals kept in warehouses, land sales, and money paid for slaves, bills of sale, etc. Before writing was invented, clay tokens, sticks and other kinds of objects were used to keep records of household and commercial bookkeeping. These kinds of tokens were used as far back as 10,000 BCE.
2. The earliest writing was in the form of pictograms, where pictures represented objects and numerals, represented by about 1,200 symbols. Cuneiform developed from these early pictograms (see chart). The earliest writing did not fully represent all of the intricacies of language and there were few grammatical aspects. The symbols changed considerably over time. The earliest Sumerian pictograms were written from top to bottom, but as the symbols became more abstract, they were written from left to right. Eventually, as Cuneiform was used to write in Akkadian, the symbols were used to represent sounds and syllables.
(Diagram Source: Nemet-Nejat, Karen Rhea, Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia.
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Many of our surviving cuneiform scripts are in the form of inscriptions – writing carved into walls, stones or “stele” (pillars that rulers erected to publicize their power and accomplishments.) These steles contained pictures as well as cuneiform text. The most famous stele is the one which contains Hammurabi’s code. This stele is 7.4 ft. tall. In the detail at the top of the stele, Hammurabi (standing) is receiving symbols of authority from Shamash, the god of justice in Akkadia and Babylonia (or possibly from the god Marduk). The laws are written 360°around the pillar below the picture. A detail of the actual cuneiform script of Hammurabi’s code is shown
Cuneiform was the first ever form of writing. The Sumerians were the main inventors of this writing. The symbol as we know them now consist of lines and wedges. One of the
Writing is perhaps the most important building block of communication - after verbal speech, of course. Writing, like most of human civilization, has its roots in ancient Mesopotamia. The first writing systems began in a style known as cuneiform (Cuneiform, 2013). These wedge-shaped markings have their roots in Sumerian culture and were used predominantly for record keeping and accounting. At the archaeological site of Uruk in what is modern day Iraq, a great wealth of knowledge has been gained from the artifacts located there. Uruk was a ceremonial site and is home to the world’s oldest known documented written documents (Price and Feinman, 2013). The documents discovered list quantities of goods that may have been stored at Uruk, leading archaeologists to believe that writing in this part of the world was developed primarily to keep lists of transactions and stockpiled quantities of goods located at the site.
At the beginning of recorded history, writing was mainly used by societies to keep track of crops and trade transactions. However, as civilization progressed, writing had taken on a life of its own, with it uses evolving from keeping records to literature and law. Law codes at the time were few and far between, it wasn’t until King Hammurabi set laws for the Old Babylonian Empire were they etched into stone. Multiple empires in the region with kings also considered god-like, Hammurabi exalted himself above others and said that he was sent to Earth by their storm-god Marduk and it was said that he shall banish evil-doers, bring righteousness, and further mankind.
82).” According to Walter Ong, the act of communication through writing heightens ones consciousness and begins to change the way in which the writer thinks. This in turn facilitates the development of increasingly sophisticated technological advancements. Early pictographs were typically monotone and very simplistic in nature. However, as the technology evolved, humankind developed multi-hued writing media that improved the visual accuracy of the images created and subsequently improved the complexity of the message delivered. Essentially more visual detail equals a more complex symbology and abstraction. Some major milestones in the evolution of communication technology include the simplification of earlier literal depictions in the late Paleolithic era, the development of the first “alphabets” as quasi-abstract symbols representing the basic sounds of spoken language. These early alphabets were extremely complex and cumbersome until the Phoenicians developed a “totally abstract and alphabetical system of twenty-two simple phonetic signs, replacing the formidable complexity of cuneiform and hieroglyphs (Higgins, 2003).” The inhabitants of Greece and Rome adopted this system of writing which was in effect by 1500 B.C. and later developed what we know as the
The Archaeology magazine offers compelling narratives about the human past from every corner of the globe. This have have been published continuously for more than 65 years and it is a publication of the Archeological Institute of America, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of human heritage. According to this article, the editors explained that cuneiform is the key to understanding all manner of cultural activities in ancient Near East. Explaining how cuneiform was used for many purposes, such as translating letters, recipes, laws, maps, medicine, religion, kings, and
The earliest writing in Mesopotamia was a picture writing invented by the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets using long reeds. The script the Sumerians invented and handed down to the Semitic peoples who conquered Mesopotamia in later centuries, is called cuneiform, which is derived from two Latin words: cuneus , which means "wedge," and forma , which means "shape." This picture language, similar to but more abstract than Egyptian hieroglyphics, eventually developed into a syllabic alphabet under the Semites (Assyrians and Babylonians) who eventually came to dominate the area.
One civilization that developed writing was the Sumerians in Mesopotamia which is located in present day Iraq. The Sumerians impressed wet clay with the end of a reed leaving a wedge-shaped form. This kind of writing on clay is called cuneiform, from the Latin "cuneus", meaning "wedge." Cuneiform owes its origins to the need arising from public economy and administration. With the rise in production of the country, accumulated surplus were sent to the cities. This necessitated a method of keeping account of all the goods coming into the cities as well as of manufactured goods leaving for the country. However before the first tablet was written, the Sumerians used an uncomplicated but inefficient system of recording transactions. It involved enclosing clay tokens signifying certain commodities and their quantities in a round clay object called a bulla. Seals of the individuals involved in the transaction were placed on the outside to validate the even. However to check the honesty of the deliverer, the bulla had to be destroyed to reconcile the goods with the tokens inside thereby destroying the record of the transaction as well. So to preserve the record, they impressed the tokens on the outside of the bulla before sealing them in. As time passed the bulla became the tablet and the impressions of tokens became symbolized by wedge-shaped marks. Eventually these marks came to denote distinct words and syllables of their spoken language. The purposes for writing also evolved.
Many of the civilizations had adopted their own kind of cuneiform whether it is hieroglyphics or
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is one the oldest and most interesting forms of written language developed. There is evidence of its use from before 3200 BCE and Egyptian hieroglyphs remained in use for over 3,500 years. The Egyptian name for hieroglyphs translates to “language of the gods,” although the term hieroglyph actually came from Greek words meaning “sacred carving,” which the Greeks used to define the writing found on Egyptian monuments and temples (Ancient Egypt, Hieroglyphics, n.d.).
Since the papyrus had to be cut, prepared and laid out to dry, it became evident that it was much quicker to be writing these messages out on tablets because of the demand that government orders and letters had to be written. While there was an increase speed of these documents, it left the scribe no other choice than to start abbreviating and modifying the picture signs, until only the most prominent characters remained (Budge 7). Eventually, this became the issue and hieroglyphics lost much of their illustrative character
The symbols turned into a system of wedge-shaped marks and lines called cuneiform. Cuneiform was developed around 3100 B.C.E and because of it we can learn about the Sumerian culture and
There are many interesting hieroglyphic discoveries in history. Ancient Egyptians had several thousand words, all made with a series of pictures. this type of writing was very complex and labor-intensive.(UkuleleCari) The Egyptians would write left to right, right to left,
From the very start, writing was used as a form of accounting. It was used to track agriculture, trade, and settling of towns. These records were first taken on clay tablets with markings represents a variety of things. These tablets date back as 9000 BCE to pre-historic Mesopotamia. Nearly 6000 years later, around 3000 BCE Sumerians began using a more advanced type of writing in the form of pictograms, prompting the beginning of recorded of history.
The Cuniform writing system had around three to four hundred signs. Egyptian hieroglyphics is a completely different type of writing that had around six hundred basic signs in their writing system that they used daily. ( Wilker and Mulroy . ) The Greeks went back and borrowed the Phoenician signs as consonants in their writing system and alphabet. With the remaining signs from the alphabet, the Greeks used them to represent the pure vowel sounds.
Ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by their god Thoth, and they called their writing “mdju netjer,” which roughly translates to “words of the gods” (“Egypt”). However, they are more commonly known as “hieroglyphics” because of the word’s Greek origins. The word can be broken up into two phases; the first one being the latin root hieros, which means sacred, and the second is glypho, which translates to inscriptions. With a total of some 1,000 distinct characters, hieroglyphics combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements to write out complex messages and rituals.