The writing was a pictorial system like the Egyptian hieroglyphics. And so long as the Sumerian used it he clung to the pictorial origin even though obscured by the lineal style of drawing. On papyrus or parchment it is easy to make curved forms, and such were adopted in drawing the signs originally. But on clay, which was the all-available material in the Babylonian plain, impressing lines is far neater than scratching them up; and the handy tool for making impressions was a slip of wood with a square end. Hence all the curves tended to become four or five-sided outlines, and all the detail became built up of little lines tapering off to one end, or “digs” with the corner of the stylus. Yet down to the close of the Sumerian age the forms of the objects can still be discerned, and they are still pictures rather than mere immaterial symbols.
Mansell
THE FINEST EARLY BABYLONIAN ART: TRIUMPH OF KING NARAMSIN, 3750 B.C.
This work, found in Susa, is curiously free and pictorial; it is unrivalled by any early carvings, and most resembles the action and spirit of late Greek sculpture. It marks the great period of the fusion of the Sumerian and Semite.
LARGER IMAGE
The Semite, however, changed all this. He learned merely the sound values of certain forms, their meaning could not appeal to him, and he built up his words out of these sounds or syllables. He found it inconvenient to write in vertical columns, which was the constant Sumerian habit, and turned his tablet sideways to his hand, so as to make his signs along a horizontal line of writing. Hence these signs became familiar to him on their sides, and as they had to him no pictorial values, the position was indifferent. Lastly, he produced a syllabary of signs written with combinations of four forms of impress, a long line wider at one end, a short line, a tall triangle, and a small equilateral triangle, written in horizontal lines; and each sign was standing on what had originally been its side. The wedge-shaped form of these lines has given rise to the name of wedge-writing, or cuneiform writing for this system.
The Story of a Language
The knowledge of this writing survived Greek influence for some four centuries after Alexander, only becoming extinct at the close of the first century of our era. In its long history, double that of the Roman alphabet at present, it had been used for very diverse languages. The Sumerian inventor had handed it on to the Semitic intruder, and he had passed it to the Syrian, the Mitannian, the Hittite, and the Vannic peoples. Probably it had kept its hold in its first home in Elam, where it is found in historic times, and thence it became the writing of Persia, and even of the Parthian, before it became extinct. The variety of languages and the extent of country which it covered is much like the scope of the Roman alphabet in Europe to-day.
LAW AND RELIGION. In matters of law the Sumerian was well advanced. The needs of city life which he had developed necessarily required a full definition of rights and duties. The first law book was that of Ea, the god of civilisation, the Oannes of the later legends of Berosus. The decisions of judges were kept in abstract, and such case-made law served as a body of precedent to guide decisions. The position of women was on a level with that of men; in the Sumerian hymns the woman takes precedence, and one of the great Sumerian divinities was Ishhtar, who became Ashtaroth of Syria, Athtar of Arabia, and hence Hathor of Egypt. In the Semitic system the goddess is but a feeble companion of a god; but Ishtar was the great divinity of war, to whom the kings owed their triumphs, as well as the queen of love, who ruled the course of nature.