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Author Topic: Can Anybody Here Read Cuneiform? Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 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?  |  IP: Logged Robert Harrison Expert Film Handler Posts: 239 From: Harwood Heights, Illinois, USA Registered: Jun 2005 posted 04-10-2011 12:59 PM                     I'm not quite sure, but to me it reads as "EAT AT JOE'S."  |  IP: Logged Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 04-10-2011 01:26 PM                     It says No Smoking or Cell Phones Permitted In The Amphitheater. 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.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 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.  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 04-10-2011 04:42 PM                    Cool. Sounds like you're describing "receipt currency." What our dollar used to be.  |  IP: Logged

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