Ancient Languages: Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet

Lesson 2

Artwork: Cuneiform Tablet
Date of Work: 2034-2033 BCE
Grade: 6th
Time: 2 to 3 - 45 minute lessons
Materials: Downloaded and duplicated visuals, graphic organizers, and worksheets—bold lettered. The image may be projected from an acetate overhead, or in a power point slide show

California State Content Standards
History Standards
6.2 Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Kush.
6.9 Trace the evolution of language and its written forms.

Procedure:

1. Name 5 things that a salesclerk in a clothing store has to count.
   Clothes sold; clothes not yet sold, money, people in the store, number of employees at work, minutes before closing, days before Christmas....
   OR
   
   Name 5 things that a young person running a lemonade stand has to count.
   Number of ingredients, amounts of ingredients, cost of ingredients, number of cups, napkins etc..., number of sales, money earned...
2. Explain:
   People in business use numbers to keep track of their goods, sales, and losses/profits. It appears that thousands of years ago the bookkeeping needs of traders promoted the invention of symbols we call numbers. Symbolic ways to count and measure evolved in Mesopotamia starting about 7000 BCE and are linked to the writing system that shows up around 3500 BCE . Mesopotamian writing is called cuneiform, which refers to the wedge-shaped marks that scribes pressed into wet clay with a stylus. The emergence of cuneiform script may have stimulated the development of concepts like fractions, squares and square roots, reciprocals, equations and more.
3. Download and duplicate the following page entitled Review of Place Value in Hindu Arabic Numbers. That will be a good guide for how place value works in Cuneiform numbers. Students may wonder why they are doing math in history. It's a great opportunity to discuss that the numbers we take for granted had to be invented. In fact people have invented many number systems over the ages. This lesson looks at the logical development, and the systematic thinking of the oldest number system we know.
4. Counting with Cuneiform Numbers as a Way of Experiencing/Exploring the Cuneiform Symbol System
   Show the Cuneiform tablet. Make a list of everything that can be observed about the clay tablet. Students may need leading questions to help them look hard at the sample. Have them speculate on the purpose of the horizontal stripes (like lines on notebook paper). How might they have been made? How were the marks produced (they were pressed into the clay with a tool). Was the tool sharp? How can you tell? How might the tablet have been read? Top to bottom? Left to right? (In fact numbers and text in Cuneiform at first were written in vertical rows top to bottom, then it was decided to rotate the writing surface and the symbols counterclockwise 90°. Then everything could be read from left to right, presumably because it was easier that way.)
5. Download and copy the Cuneiform Symbols—Flowchart, 2-page Version. Students should shade in all the diamonds in a light color—high light pens or crayons work well. The diamonds in a flowchart are yes/no decisions. Color helps underscore their importance. The answer yes leads one direction. The answer no in this case leads back to an earlier point—a loop. Rectangles are discreet steps that move toward an end point. Beginning and End points are ovals. The object is to start at the Beginning, understand each loop in the logical flow, and finally reach the End. Have students cut out the rectangles from the half page entitled Four Steps for Flow Chart and glue them in the flow chart where they fit logically. Alternately, students can write the information. A Flowchart Answer Sheet is provided on one page for the teacher's reference.
6. To explore the Cuneiform number system itself, distribute the Hindu-Arabic/Cuneiform Chart. The idea is to write Cuneiform equivalents in the spaces labeled with familiar Hindu Arabic values. Discuss the logical progression of Cuneiform upright wedges for 1, 2, 3. Think domino dots for 4 and 9 patterns. And non-domino dots for 5, 6, 7, 8 patterns. Fill out the page as a guess and check activity, leading students to make guesses which are then compared to the real Sumerian inventions. The number 10 requires a shift in thinking, a sideways wedge stands for 10. Multiples 20 and 30 are consistent with earlier patterns. Numbers 40 and 50 are less obvious. Multiples of 10-patterns are combined with ones-patterns to make all the counting numbers 1 to 59. An Answer Chart is provided for checking and changing guesses. It could be projected for easy reference.

Possible Extension Activity
Students might want to know how Sumerians represented numbers greater than 59. This activity is an optional exploration to that end. Like Hindu-Arabic, Cuneiform uses place value. And places to the left have a higher value than places to the right. The review of place value could fit here if it was not completed as a Review earlier in the lesson.

Following is a chart to help students follow Cuneiform place value. A calculator is helpful for this exploration, for this system is Base 60, and numbers get big quickly.

For beginners, it is a good idea to create Cuneiform numbers in a chart, just to keep the different places distinct. Sumerians did not use such a device. Interestingly, it took them a long time to invent a place holder. Hindu Arabic uses 0 for that purpose. Download and duplicate the Creating Cuneiform Numbers Greater than 59. Have students complete the chart independently or as a class activity.

Synthesis and Application Activity
Look again at the image of the Cuneiform tablet. Make a list of the facts and ideas that the class now understands about this clay tablet—note it is a tablet, not a clay ball. The list might include the following:

• traders needed ways to keep track of their deals
• earliest records of trade transactions used stone tokens to keep track of trade items
• each token stood for one trade item
• new tokens were created to stand for multiple trade items
• tokens were enclosed in clay balls
• to know what was inside clay balls, token impressions were made on the surface
• eventually coded impressions were enough of a record
• surface impressions simplified to simple wedges, ie., Cuneiform
• writing words with Cuneiform symbols also developed at the same time
• inventions for writing seem to have promoted thinking in arithmetic
• arithmetic developed past basic needs of counting and measuring

Leave the list of ideas in a prominent location in the room. And again show the image of the Cuneiform tablet. Ask students to write a five sentence paragraph to the following prompt:

What would be a reasonable guess about the meaning of the clay tablet in the image?

Students should create a topic sentence out of the prompt which is a guess as to the function of the clay tablet in the image. Next comes three fact sentences to explain or justify the guess. Using ideas from the list is fair and in fact a good idea. The explanation should conclude with a sentence that is a general statement consistent with everything else that has been said in the paragraph. That makes 5 sentences. This, of course could be urged as a minimum. If students wanted to say more, they could.

Interactive computer activity
Students can match Hindu Arabic numbers on the right to Cuneiform numbers on the left.

Here’s a review of place value in Hindu-Arabic Numbers. The symbol in each place is multiplied by the value of that place. Then all the values are added. 

Here’s a review of place value in Hindu-Arabic Numbers. The symbol in each place is multiplied by the value of that place. Then all the values are added.

Cut out the rectangular steps for the Cuneiform Symbols Flowchart. Glue the squares where they fit logically in the flowchart.

Cut out the rectangular steps for the Cuneiform Symbols Flowchart. Glue the squares where they fit logically in the flowchart.

Hindu-Arabic/Cuneiform Chart—Guess and Check

Use the chart to create numbers greater than 59. Then use a calculator to figure out its equivalent value in Hindu Arabic numbers. Remember to multiply the symbol amount in each place by the value of that place.

Use the chart to create numbers greater than 59. Then use a calculator to figure out its equivalent value in Hindu Arabic numbers. Remember to multiply the symbol amount in each place by the value of that place.

Match Game

Write the letter labels of Cuneiform numbers in the boxes besides the Hindu-Arabic numbers that they match. Patterns that stand for multiples of 10 can be combined with ones-patterns to make values from 1 to 59.

Match Game - ANSWERS

Write the letter labels of Cuneiform numbers in the boxes besides the Hindu-Arabic numbers that they match. Patterns that stand for multiples of 10 can be combined with ones-patterns to make values from 1 to 59.

Object

About the sumerian Tablet

• 

We know the year in which this tablet was produced because the scribe recorded, the year when Shu-Sin built the Mardu Wall. This occurred 17 years before western nomads succeeded in invading Sumer , which led to the collapse of the Ur Empire. There are also dark marking along the edge of the tablet indicating exposure to fire either in the original production or surviving a subsequent fire.

Lines 1 through 8 appear on the “back” side of the tablet, not visible in this image. Lines 9 through 22 appear on the visible side of this tablet. This is a report on the number of sheep transferred to the wool account. The following translation of this text was made by R. David Freedman from the University of California , Davis in 1976:

1 - 200 unshorn sheep
2 – from the sheep-account
3 – from which
4 – 7 unshorn sheep
5 – and ewes (?) on the tablet of Inim-Shara
6 – as regular receipts for the year's wool
7 – 6 talents and 32 minas of carded wool
8 – their sheep are 401
9 – their tablets are 3
10 – sealed by Lu-kala
11 – 144 unshorn lambs
12 – overdraft of the sheep account
13 – Total: 408 unshorn sheep
14 – Total: 144 unshorn lambs,
15 – were withdrawn (from the sheep account and applied to the wool account).
16 – Overdraft: 208 unshorn sheep
17 – and 144 unshorn lambs
18 – are overdrawn
19 – for the wood account.
20 – (Accounting of) Urda.
21 – Year when Shu-Sin, the King
22 – built the Mardu Wall.

Context

About the Sumerians

• 

Mesopotamia site of one of the world's earliest civilizations, is the name given to the area between the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates . By 5000 BC, highly productive farms were established throughout the fertile southern area. This area was called Sumer , but is today known as the country of Iraq . Although regular flooding by the Euphrates River nourished the crops, the land became hard and dry between floods. In time, farmers learned how to store water and build irrigation channels to cultivate their fields. The results were increased population, surplus food supplies, and diversification of trades. Some of the larger settlements then grew into cities, and eventually independent city-states.

There is significant evidence of art production in Sumer . The early Sumerians produced objects by hammering out lumps of copper. By 4000 BC, they learned to produce copper ore and how to cast molten copper, gold and silver in molds. During the Bronze Age – 3000 BC to 1000 BC
– Sumerians improved on their metal making skills by combining copper and tin to make bronze.
They acquired timber, stone and metals by trading crops, cloth and other manufactured goods.

The Sumerian culture contributed several political, economic and social developments. Between 4000 BC to 3000 BC the Sumerians invented writing, a legal system, advanced mathematics and astronomy. The first written records documented crop and related economic transactions.
This coincides with the increased agricultural activity, and development of more complex trade relations.

In the ensuing centuries, Sumer was invaded by the Akkadians from 2400 BC to 2100 BC, and then the Gutians. In 2100 BC, a leader named Ur-Nammu restored Sumer to its glory. Internal rivalries over the next century, and invasion by the Elamites, once again destroyed Sumer . Later rulers were effective in reviving the culture of Sumer . Having a common writing and symbol system helped to unify people.

About the Development of Writing in Sumer

Sumerians developed writing between 4000 BC and 3000 BC as a way of keeping records. The oldest records of economic transactions date from 4,500 years ago. To produce these records, scribes used sharp reeds to scratch symbols, in a pattern of vertical columns, into small blocks of soft clay. The process improved with the use of a wedge-shaped instrument to produce the marks in horizontal rows, both of which increased the speed and ease of producing the tablets.
These wedge-shaped marks were known as cuneiform writing (the term cuneiform comes from the word for the wedge-shape). The wedge-shaped stylus or pen could produce a larger variety of markings, which in turn, increased the written vocabulary. A limited number of scholars were trained to make clay tablets, to keep transaction records, to record laws, songs and stories.
Their training included reading, writing and mathematics.

Initially the marks on clay tablets were pictographs (writing in images rather than an alphabet).
Through repeated use over the years, pictographs were simplified into abstract symbols that conveyed meaning through individual or combined markings. Only scribes were trained to understand these meanings, but the very fact that written records were produced marked a significant advancement in civilization. This cuneiform writing developed by the Sumerians was adopted and adapted by the sequence of invaders and new cultures in the region:
Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hittites and Assyrians. The last known cuneiform writing appeared in 75 AD.

Knowledge of cuneiform writing was lost over the centuries until 1835 when a British Army officer, Henry Rawlinson found inscriptions on a cliff in Persia . In time, they determined that the text was produced sometime between 522-486 BC and repeated in three official languages: Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite. Referred to as the Behistun inscription because of the place where the writing was discovered, this text proved to be a significant key to deciphering the ancient languages. This text in three languages was as valuable to understanding
Sumerian cuneiform, as the Rosetta Stone was to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Because clay is so accessible and so easy to manipulate, it is one of the oldest art media.
Baked clay is also one of the most durable media. Many of the tablets survived when attacking armies burned buildings, thus reinforcing the strength of the baked clay material. These amazing Sumerian clay tablets have survived nearly 5,000 years, connecting us to the everyday life and culture of the ancient Sumerian people.