How to Write in Cuneiform, the Oldest Writing System in the World: A Short Introduction

Teach­ing child vis­i­tors how to write their names using an unfa­mil­iar or antique alpha­bet is a favorite activ­i­ty of muse­um edu­ca­tors, but Dr. Irv­ing Finkel, a cuneiform expert who spe­cial­izes in ancient Mesopotami­an med­i­cine and mag­ic, has grander designs.

His employ­er, the British Muse­um, has over 130,000 tablets span­ning Mesopotamia’s Ear­ly Dynas­tic peri­od to the Neo-Baby­lon­ian Empire “just wait­ing for young schol­ars to come devote them­selves to (the) monk­ish work” of deci­pher­ing them.

Writ­ing one’s name might well prove to be a gate­way, and Dr. Finkel has a vest­ed inter­est in lin­ing up some new recruits.

The museum’s Depart­ment of the Mid­dle East has an open access pol­i­cy, with a study room where researchers can get up close and per­son­al with a vast col­lec­tion of cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia and sur­round­ing regions.

But let’s not put the ox before the cart.

As the extreme­ly per­son­able Dr. Finkel shows Matt Gray and Tom Scott of Matt and Tom’s Park Bench, above, cuneiform con­sists of three components—upright, hor­i­zon­tal and diagonal—made by press­ing the edge of a reed sty­lus, or pop­si­cle stick if you pre­fer, into a clay tablet.

The mechan­i­cal process seems fair­ly easy to get the hang of, but mas­ter­ing the old­est writ­ing sys­tem in the world will take you around six years of ded­i­cat­ed study. Like Japan’s kan­ji alpha­bet, the old­est writ­ing sys­tem in the world is syl­lab­ic. Prop­er­ly writ­ten out, these syl­la­bles join up into a flow­ing cal­lig­ra­phy that your aver­age, edu­cat­ed Baby­lon­ian would be able to read at a glance.

Even if you have no plans to rus­tle up a pop­si­cle stick and some Play-Doh, it’s worth stick­ing with the video to the end to hear Dr. Finkel tell how a chance encounter with some nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring cuneiform inspired him to write a hor­ror nov­el, which is now avail­able for pur­chase, fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful Kick­starter cam­paign.

Begin your cuneiform stud­ies with Irv­ing Finkel’s Cuneiform: Ancient Scripts.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

Hear What the Lan­guage Spo­ken by Our Ances­tors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sound­ed Like: A Recon­struc­tion of the Pro­to-Indo-Euro­pean Lan­guage

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.