Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Can Anybody Here Read Cuneiform?

This is topic Can Anybody Here Read Cuneiform? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-10-2011, 10:44 AM:

My wife is in the middle of cleaning out her father's estate. Among all the strange things she came across in his collection, she found this small cuneiform token.

It is almost exactly 1 1/4 inches square and it's about 5/8 inch thick.

Apparently, the ancient Sumerians/Babylonians/Assyrians had a custom of using small tokens like this as inventory records. It is likely that this one of those tokens which was used to record how many baskets of grain was kept in a storage bin or how many sheep were in somebody's herd. I don't think this is anything that's especially significant. Probably just run-of-the-mill stuff.

However, I can't even figure out which way is up, let along which language it's written in. I'm guessing it's one of the Akkadian scripts. That rules out ancient Sumer but still leaves Babylonian or Assyrian as possibilities. (i.e. Ancient Mesopotamia.)

Anybody care to take a crack at deciphering it? [Smile]

Posted by Robert Harrison (Member # 3202) on 04-10-2011, 12:59 PM:

I'm not quite sure, but to me it reads as "EAT AT JOE'S."

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 04-10-2011, 01:26 PM:

It says No Smoking or Cell Phones Permitted In The Amphitheater. [Smile]

While those tables certainly could be real, more likely they are museum store reproductions that were quite common back in the 1960's and 70's.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-10-2011, 01:53 PM:

No, I don't think it's a reproduction. (Could be but I don't think so.)

First, this tablet was found with a collection of other things that are real:
A piece of lava from Mt. Vesuvius.
A miniature hand carved elephant made of real ivory.
A hand-strung strand of natural pearls.

All of these things were collected during WW-II and brought back to the US upon her father's return. So, pretty much, as long as we keep any of these objects or donate them to a museum, we're okay but it's probably illegal to sell them.

From the research that I have done, so far, I learned that the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians used to make little clay tokens like these and use them to tally up their agricultural stores. For instance, if you had so much grain stored in a silo (or whatever they used back then) you could present one of these tokens and take so much wheat or rice or whatever was written on the token. So, basically, they are like receipts for goods sold.

Whatever it is, it looks like gobbledygook to me.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 04-10-2011, 04:42 PM:

Cool. Sounds like you're describing "receipt currency." What our dollar used to be.