"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" --John i. 14

I. Metaquestions for literate civilizations:

A. What determines to what uses a literate society
puts its texts?

1. Generally, two major functions: storage
(permitting communication across time &
space), & abstractive (shifts language from the
aural to the visual domain)
2. Historiography much more common in "open"
societies
3. Characteristic of bureaucratic organizations is
conduct of business on basis of written
documents

B. What effects does literacy have on society?

1. Written word adds an important dimension to
much social action, esp. in the politico-legal
domain
2. Potential for depersonalization of recruitment
to office; depersonalization of law & rule.
3. Freedom from limits of memory storage
enabled cumulation of knowledge & data;
criticism and orthodoxy; lists, formulas,
recipes, tables.

C. Who is literate?

1. pre-alphabetic systems are cumbersome &
difficult to learn

II. Origins of Writing in SW Asia

A. Simple clay tokens, 7000-8000 B.C.: mnemonic
devices used to organize & store economic data.
Eventually give rise to numerals.
B. Complex tokens, coincident with earliest urbani-
zation, after 3350 B.C., associated with temples,
represent finished products of urban workshops
(bread, oil, beer, textiles, etc.); give rise to cunei-
form.
C. Earliest pictographic script used for the simplest
administrative notations: writing consists of word
signs limited to expression of numerals, objects, &
personal names. Imperfect & rudimentary on the
level of meaning & incapable of reconstructing the
completeness of a concrete situation
D. Within about 100 years, phoneticism starts to be
added as a principal by suggesting homophonic
concepts. E.g., pictogram "->" (meaning "arrow" &
pronounced |ti|) added to name of God Enlil to
mean "life" (also pronounced |ti|).
E. About 100 years later yet becomes a convention-
alized, phonetic system of writing (with stylus):
cuneiform.
F. Overwhelmingly, third & second millenium B.C.
documents are deeds of sale & purchase, rental,
loan, adoption, marriage bonds, wills, ledgers,
& memoranda of shopkeepers, secretaries, bankers,
census, & tax returns, itemization of war booty,
payments to officials: in short, lists.
G. Decipherment originally based on trilingual in-
scriptions in Iran (Akkadian, Elamite, and Old
Persian, all in cuneiform script). All unknown to
scholars at beginning of 19th century. But sacred
texts (Zend-Avesta) preserved by small Zoro-
astrian communities like the Parsees allowed Old
Persian to be deciphered (mostly by Henry Cres-
wicke Rawlinson (1810-1895), which provided a
key to the other two. Akkadian later provided the
key to deciphering Sumerian.

III. The Mesopotamian City-State: General Characteristics.

A. Example of Mashkan-Shapir (but note that this was
>1,000 years after emergence of earliest city-states;
that it was in the post-Sumer period; and that it
was Semite (who were apparently given to more
privatization and less central control than the Sumerians)

IV. "The Royal Archives of Ebla"

A. Where is Ebla, when was it founded, and who
(probably) destroyed it?
B. What is the subject of most tablets?
C. The language spoken at Ebla belonged to what
family?
D. Using Ebla as a model, how would you charac-
terize the power of kings in 3rd-millenium-BC
Mesopotamia? How were they ratified?
E. Did the royal storehouses ever act as redistribution
centers?
F. What was used as a means of international ex-
change?
G. What means were used to protect and maintain
international trade?
H. Characterize the Mesopotamian pantheon from the
evidence at Ebla.
  

Syllabus