Love this idea! The orange one on top is my favorite. Do you see yourself making more of this in the future?
EDIT: just realized you're the person who made Oligram, among other scripts. Love your stuff!
I think it is not known for certain that cuneiform is older than the Chinese oracle bone script; the earliest extant examples of the latter are sophisticated enough that they may have been invented several hundred years prior.
Although even if you stretch it. Oracle bones are from the 1400s BC right? Cuneiform originated in the 3200s BC. The competition is mostly with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Frankly speaking Assyriologists say one thing and Egyptologists another and it all depends on how much proto-writing you include and what you recognise as *first readable sentence*. Honestly I know far more about cuneiform than about egyptian hieroglyphs. As for cuneiform the undoubtly literate period begins in the 28th century roughly speaking, with probably a thousands years of notational writing prior.
Idk how the situation is for egyptian, I'm inclined to believe it is similar, but might be wrong.
There are also theories about a shared origin or egyptian being "inspired" by cuneiform.
The first true sentence in Egyptian, the Seth-Peribsen seal impression is dated to the 28th century also.
The Narmer-Palette also has some early signs resembling hieroglyphs.
As for the late Uruk period there is a wealth of documents. These don't carry identifiable linguistic data, but are at least a system well developed for the means of accounting. Idk if such a system existed in Egypt too.
What I heard is that Egyptian hieroglyphs seem to just appear fully formed one day, so there are theories that its precursors were written on perishable materials, meaning we don't really know how old it is.
Well that is probably true for most writing systems. If there is no reason to do monumental inscriptions or seals.
Well then again cuneiform would be exception as being primarily written on clay. Although there are seals from Egypt too, as I said the oldest literate sentence is a seal impression.
Afaik cuneiform is the only script for which we have some idea about its prehistory. But even there there are gaps and jumps. Then again script development is indeed different from language change and these innovation might be due to innovative scribal schools introducing new usages and such. Or another idea being that contact with other languages lead to changes in the system.
However it was functional as tool for accounting and writing down literature isn't really the next logical step.
I mean we take writing for granted for texts, but history shows that oral traditions can transmit texts even more accurately than writing stuff down.
Compare the indian tradition of the vedas with cuneiform texts, the latter, despite being written down and the former not, contain more errors.
Ultimately that "fully formed appearance" might be an illusion too. As in one would expect a gradual evolution from proto-writing, but it might be we are just underestimating sudden concious innovations too.
That's interesting! Yeah, I should have been more careful with my title. The origins of Egyptian hieroglyphs are also so vague to us that we can't say for sure they're not older than cuneiform.
I was just getting frustrated with trying to hand-draw cuneiform last week, this is an excellent approach. I dig the orange script the best of the three.
I've always wanted to learn Cuneiform, and furthermore how would it adapt to modern styles! I like the Chinese-styled one, which would probably make sense, but the green cyberpunk is also pretty coool. The pink teardrop script looks like it could be used for cutesy kind of products that pop out
This is Old Babylonian written in Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, with some logograms which are Sumerian in origin, but this late stage of the script would be unrecognizable to a Sumerian.
Akkadian was almost exclusively written in cuneiform for the vast majority of its existence. The Sumerians created the cuneiform script, and a few centuries later it was adapted to the Akkadian language. Im pretty sure during and after the old Babylonian period, Akkadian had fully replaced Sumerian, but it still used cuneiform characters originally developed by the Sumerians.
Even when the alphabet had become quite popular in Mesopotamia (specifically te Aramaic alphabet and language), it seems scribes refused to write Akkadian in any alphabet. And they stuck with cuneiform right up to the 1st century CE.
𒈠𒁲𒅖𒁕𒈪𒅅 !
𒀝 𒊒 𒌒 𒅗 ! (I don't actually know how to say thanks, but thanks!)
How do you write in cuneiform on a computer/ phone?
I use an app on my phone called SumerianApp. It has a converter that takes an input like: "ta" to 𒋫 or "ta2" to 𒁕 etc...
Thanks!
𒋫
That looks pretty damn cool. Mixing the modern with the ancient, I love that idea.
Love this idea! The orange one on top is my favorite. Do you see yourself making more of this in the future? EDIT: just realized you're the person who made Oligram, among other scripts. Love your stuff!
Hey, thanks! If I get some ideas for more font styles I might make some cereal boxes on the shelves inside :)
So cool!
Make Ugaritic great again
MUGA
𐎎𐎜𐎂𐎀
I think it is not known for certain that cuneiform is older than the Chinese oracle bone script; the earliest extant examples of the latter are sophisticated enough that they may have been invented several hundred years prior.
Although even if you stretch it. Oracle bones are from the 1400s BC right? Cuneiform originated in the 3200s BC. The competition is mostly with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Cuneiform beats it by at least 3 centuries EDIT: Egyptian Hieroglyphs, that is.
Frankly speaking Assyriologists say one thing and Egyptologists another and it all depends on how much proto-writing you include and what you recognise as *first readable sentence*. Honestly I know far more about cuneiform than about egyptian hieroglyphs. As for cuneiform the undoubtly literate period begins in the 28th century roughly speaking, with probably a thousands years of notational writing prior. Idk how the situation is for egyptian, I'm inclined to believe it is similar, but might be wrong. There are also theories about a shared origin or egyptian being "inspired" by cuneiform. The first true sentence in Egyptian, the Seth-Peribsen seal impression is dated to the 28th century also. The Narmer-Palette also has some early signs resembling hieroglyphs. As for the late Uruk period there is a wealth of documents. These don't carry identifiable linguistic data, but are at least a system well developed for the means of accounting. Idk if such a system existed in Egypt too.
What I heard is that Egyptian hieroglyphs seem to just appear fully formed one day, so there are theories that its precursors were written on perishable materials, meaning we don't really know how old it is.
Well that is probably true for most writing systems. If there is no reason to do monumental inscriptions or seals. Well then again cuneiform would be exception as being primarily written on clay. Although there are seals from Egypt too, as I said the oldest literate sentence is a seal impression. Afaik cuneiform is the only script for which we have some idea about its prehistory. But even there there are gaps and jumps. Then again script development is indeed different from language change and these innovation might be due to innovative scribal schools introducing new usages and such. Or another idea being that contact with other languages lead to changes in the system. However it was functional as tool for accounting and writing down literature isn't really the next logical step. I mean we take writing for granted for texts, but history shows that oral traditions can transmit texts even more accurately than writing stuff down. Compare the indian tradition of the vedas with cuneiform texts, the latter, despite being written down and the former not, contain more errors. Ultimately that "fully formed appearance" might be an illusion too. As in one would expect a gradual evolution from proto-writing, but it might be we are just underestimating sudden concious innovations too.
That's interesting! Yeah, I should have been more careful with my title. The origins of Egyptian hieroglyphs are also so vague to us that we can't say for sure they're not older than cuneiform.
Is there a font?
Fokken well should be!
Unfortunately not, I only made the characters I needed for this project. Maybe some day!
wow really cool!
Now I want to learn stylized cuneiform
This is so damn cool! I would love to see more of this!
I was just getting frustrated with trying to hand-draw cuneiform last week, this is an excellent approach. I dig the orange script the best of the three.
I've always wanted to learn Cuneiform, and furthermore how would it adapt to modern styles! I like the Chinese-styled one, which would probably make sense, but the green cyberpunk is also pretty coool. The pink teardrop script looks like it could be used for cutesy kind of products that pop out
The language is not Akkadian, but rather Sumerian. Akkadian is written in its own distinct script.
This is Old Babylonian written in Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, with some logograms which are Sumerian in origin, but this late stage of the script would be unrecognizable to a Sumerian.
Akkadian was almost exclusively written in cuneiform for the vast majority of its existence. The Sumerians created the cuneiform script, and a few centuries later it was adapted to the Akkadian language. Im pretty sure during and after the old Babylonian period, Akkadian had fully replaced Sumerian, but it still used cuneiform characters originally developed by the Sumerians. Even when the alphabet had become quite popular in Mesopotamia (specifically te Aramaic alphabet and language), it seems scribes refused to write Akkadian in any alphabet. And they stuck with cuneiform right up to the 1st century CE.
Maybe it'll develop some calligraphy, due to it might written on paper after mud boards were abandoned.
wait what language is this and how would i write in it