The "Write" Stuff Trivia Quiz

Answer: Varied local geography creates distinct micro-environments.

We often think of the Near East as a homogeneous desert, or swamp, or agricultural plain. In fact, this is one of the most geologically active and geographically varied parts of the world. There are mountainous areas, upland plateaus, fertile river valleys, swamps, and coastal areas. Different areas of Mesopotamia had different geographies, but, even on a local scale, a single small region could support several different micro-ecologies.

This geographical diversity is probably what prompted the specialization of labor and development of trade-- there were so many different food sources to exploit, that it became efficient to specialize in a certain environment, or a certain task, and trade with your neighbors for their products and services.

Answer: Early religion required building cities to atone for the sin of farming and the fall from a nomadic lifestyle.

By 7000 BCE, some completely agricultural villages existed in the Near East, all in regions with sufficient rainfall for year-round farming. In drier areas, such as Anatolia and the Levant, agricultural settlements expanded and contracted over time, presumably as the climate became more or less favorable to agriculture.

In the 6th millennium, there was a pattern of permanent settlements over the Near East. Well-defined cultures developed, which extended over large areas and imply the existence of long-distance contacts. Trade routes for obsidian extended from Chatal Huyuk in central Turkey throughout the Near East, and pottery produced in Southern Mesopotamia was found as far away as the Persian Gulf.

Answer: Temples

The largest and most dramatic structure of an early Near Eastern city would have been its temple. The importance of the temple in collecting agricultural produce is shown by a fourth millennium BCE work of art known as the Uruk vase. It depicts a procession of farm animals and men carrying agricultural produce to the temple, presided over by a ruler who offers the goods to the goddess of the temple.

The function of the temple in redistributing these agricultural products is hinted at by finds of massive numbers of mass-produced bowls of standard sizes, probably to distribute rations to dependent laborers. From later texts we can estimate the amount of land, goods, and the number of laborers that these temple complexes controlled.

Answer: All of these.

Seals are used to stamp and leave an impression in a malleable surface, such as wax or clay. The design incised in the seal and stamped on the sealing indicates the person involved in the process, whether it is stamping a plug of clay in the neck of a jar, stamping a wad of clay around the knot securing the entrance to a storeroom, or anything else. Seals can be stamps or cylinder seals, cylinders of stone, wood, or clay with a design incised around the middle of the cylinder. Roll the cylinder across the clay, and you can leave the repeating design an infinite number of times, which is useful for covering large areas of clay quickly. Clay tokens are small clay objects, sometimes incised with particular designs or with holes punched in them, which presumably indicated something about a transaction. One token represented one object involved in the transaction, and presumably the marking on the token told you something about the object.

In slightly later times, the tokens were enclosed in clay envelopes marked with sealings, so there was both a record of the objects and the person involved in the transaction. Of course, you had to break open the envelope to see the tokens, so the next step included impressing the tokens, or marks representing the tokens, onto the outside of the envelope.

Answer: The only signs inscribed were numerical signs. The stylus tip was blunt, rather than sharp.

Even though the tablets do not have signs which indicate commodities, the metrological system and shape of the numerals must have provided enough information for the intended reader to understand the tablet. At the site of Susiana, in western Iran, there are examples of "numero-ideographic" tablets which add an ideographic sign or two indicating what sort of commodity was involved.

Answer: Ideographic (Logographic)-- one sign represented one word or concept.

Your average proto-cuneiform tablet was divided into columns, and each column was divided up into sections. Each section contained a numerical entry followed by some lexical signs, which represented a single word or concept and presumably offered some context for the numerical entry.

There were roughly 900 different lexical signs. The shapes of some signs are clearly modeled after real-world objects, and new signs could be created by combining two other signs. For example, the sign for "person" in the shape of a head, plus the sign for "water" could indicate "to drink." However, some signs, like a circle with a cross through it for "sheep," bear no resemblance to the real-world objects they represent.

Answer: Perhaps Sumerian, or perhaps an unknown language-- we don't know.

Because the texts are ideographic, and the lexical parts of the texts are so brief, we have almost no information about the structure or the sound of the language. People have argued for Sumerian by pointing out a few signs might represent words with two different meanings, where those words are pronounced the same in Sumerian. An analogy for this kind of argument would be that if you saw a sign which appeared to mean both "hair" and "hare," the language the sign represents could be English, because the words with those two meanings are pronounced the same in English, but not in other languages.

Others have argued for an unknown language by noting that there are signs in Sumerian which go back to proto-cuneiform which do not appear to be Sumerian words, and which might go back to a foreign language in the earlier texts.

There's not a lot of information to go on, and we just don't know, despite what you may hear to the contrary.

Answer: False

85% of proto-cuneiform texts are accounting documents. However, there is another class of documents known as "lexical lists." These "lexical lists" are lists of words which are all related in some way, such as professions, cities, animals, plants, and manufactured goods.

The words are always listed in the same sequence. One of these lexical lists may be an example of the world's first literary text. It contains an introductory 2-line section in ideographic notation, followed by a series of entries with numerical notations and ideographic signs qualifying the numbers.

Then there is a four-line section entirely in ideographic notation, followed by a line-for-line repeat of the list. Is this a song or a poem with a refrain? It was copied extensively by later scribes, who gave it the name "Tribute List," but the later scribes don't seem to have understood what it meant!

Answer: All of these

In fact, there were at least thirteen different counting systems, all used for different commodities. The sexagesimal system was used to count most discrete objects, like animals, plants, humans, fish, wooden and stone implements, and containers. A derivative of the sexagesimal system was used to count dead animals from herds and jars of certain kinds of liquids.

The bisexagesimal system was used to count discrete grain products, cheese, and fresh fish. A derivative of the bisexagesimal system was used to count some quantity we still have not figured out.

Other counting systems included the GAN-2 system (area measurements), EN system (unclear), U-4 system (time and calendar units), SE system (grain), three derivatives of the SE system (other types of grain), and the DUG-b and DUG-c systems (volume measurements, usually dairy fat).

These counting systems may have originated as rationing systems, hence the different systems for different commodities, which would have been rationed differently.

The proto-cuneiform sexagesimal system is the ultimate source for our sexagesimal time system.

Answer: Cuneiform was used half a millennium longer than the Roman alphabet.

To put things in perspective, the Roman alphabet will only be able to rival proto-cuneiform in the length of time it was used in the 26th century CE. Of course, cuneiform is not completely extinct. The sexagesimal system used in Uruk some five thousand years ago forms the basis for our sexagesimal system of counting time. Cuneiform writing still fascinates us today for its beauty, and the scientific and literary knowledge it represents, and cuneiform exhibits in museums are popular the world over.

Bibliography:
Marc Van de Mieroop, 2007, "A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC." 2nd edition.
Robert K. Englund, 1998, "Texts from the Late Uruk Period" in Attinger and Waefler, eds, "Mesopotamien: Spaeturuk-Zeit und Fruehdynastische Zeit."
The date 100 CE for the end of cuneiform comes from the article "Cuneiform" on www.ancientscripts.com.