Written Communication

1. Written Communication • With your table discuss these questions: • How does written communication affect a society? (Does it make it better or worse? Does it make life easier or harder?) • What kind of things in society would change once writing was invented?

2. Cuneiform: The first written script • Developed by the Sumerians around 3000 BCE • Symbols pressed into wet clay tablets • Began to keep records of farming, trade, weather patterns, and offerings to the gods • Scribes had important role of tracking everything in society—required training • Cuneiform evolved over time from pictures to symbols made with stylus (sharp reed)

6. Once the stylus was invented, the symbols became lines with triangle ends where the stylus sunk into the clay

10. How was it deciphered? • On the trade route to Persia (modern day Iran)– Behistun Inscription • On Mt. Behistun • 15 meters high x 25 meters wide and 100 meters up a sheer limestone cliff

11. Behistun Inscription • Legends existed for thousands of years because no one knew what it said • 1598: an English diplomat travelling to Persia saw it. Went back to Europe so Western Scholars learned it existed • 1764 German/Danish explorer travelled the Middle East and found it again • He copied it in a sketch book (it made him blind!)

12. What did it look like? • Inscription was in 3 different ancient texts • Using the sketches from the earlier explorer, a German scholar deciphered the text in 1815. • 3 languages—Ancient Persian, Elam, Sumerian

14. What did it say? • Was written by a great Persian King Darius I • Written around 500 BCE • Autobiography of Darius and a history of his battle victories • Key word that helped in the decoding was “King”