Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WritEMe (WRITING AND ACCOUNTING IN EARLY MESOPOTAMIA: REASSESSING EVOLUTIONARY MODELS AND SOCIAL IMPACT OF LITERACY AT THE DAWN OF HISTORY (4TH-2ND MILLENNIA BCE))
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-09-01 al 2022-08-31
The “Writing and Accounting in Early Mesopotamia” (WritEMe) project was hosted at the “Centre national de la recherche scientifique” (CNRS), within the research unit UMR 7041 — Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité (ArScAn), and the team Histoire et Archéologie de l’Orient Cunéiforme (HAROC), based in Nanterre (France), Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Mondes.
The WritEMe project aimed at reconsidering the interplay between writing and accounting devices in antiquity, with special focus on early Mesopotamia (ca. 3330-2000 BCE). Mesopotamia offers in fact the best case study for the analysis of how humans first made language visible, as available sources cover in detail not only the developments of the writing technology, but also the long incubation period that pre-dates writing proper. There, prehistoric accountable devices – such as calculi and sealed clay envelops – provided fertile ground in the cultural milieu of the scribes to be, which freely borrowed and adapted ideas from well-established technologies for administration purposes. However, the research showed that writing in Mesopotamia did not replace prehistoric accountable systems, which continued to be used throughout millennia.
More in detail, the project was meant to achieve the following objectives:
1. To inquire what pre-literate accounting devices were used within the literate milieu of early Mesopotamia: how they emerged, interplayed, and affected the development of early urban cultures.
2. To evaluate the agency of such devices: their visibility and prestige within ancient society, as well as the social actors surrounding them.
3. To inquire their function(s), as well as the technologies involved in the transmission of knowledge in Mesopotamia.
4. To reassess literacy and education in antiquity, framing data in a broad historical narrative.
Needless to say, the invention of writing certainly marks a pivotal moment in the history of mankind, for it dramatically impacts on human cognition, fostering social complexity and cultural memory. In this regard, the project offers an important contribution in order to achieve a better understanding of how literacy came about, and how it spread, eventually reaching us.
As for the conclusions reached by the action, philological and palaeographical analysis produced substantial results, whereas analysis of cylinder seals proved to be inconclusive, as no clear identification of ancient scribal tools emerged. With this limitation in mind, it appears that the overall setting of the invention and dissemination of writing is more complex than acknowledged in modern literature.
Besides clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing, scribes had access to other media and bookkeeping tools, such as tokens, clay envelopes, cylinder seals, wooden boards, counting sticks, measuring devices, as well as dedicated containers for storing and retrieving information. In addition, the abundant lexicon attached to various types of scribes and accountant officials speak for an intellectually alive environment, within and outside of institutional scriptoria. Finally, textual analysis showed that perishable media might have played a key role in the transmission of knowledge in the earliest literate cultures of Mesopotamia.
The WritEMe project aimed at reconsidering the interplay between writing and accounting devices in antiquity, with special focus on early Mesopotamia (ca. 3330-2000 BCE). Mesopotamia offers in fact the best case study for the analysis of how humans first made language visible, as available sources cover in detail not only the developments of the writing technology, but also the long incubation period that pre-dates writing proper. There, prehistoric accountable devices – such as calculi and sealed clay envelops – provided fertile ground in the cultural milieu of the scribes to be, which freely borrowed and adapted ideas from well-established technologies for administration purposes. However, the research showed that writing in Mesopotamia did not replace prehistoric accountable systems, which continued to be used throughout millennia.
More in detail, the project was meant to achieve the following objectives:
1. To inquire what pre-literate accounting devices were used within the literate milieu of early Mesopotamia: how they emerged, interplayed, and affected the development of early urban cultures.
2. To evaluate the agency of such devices: their visibility and prestige within ancient society, as well as the social actors surrounding them.
3. To inquire their function(s), as well as the technologies involved in the transmission of knowledge in Mesopotamia.
4. To reassess literacy and education in antiquity, framing data in a broad historical narrative.
Needless to say, the invention of writing certainly marks a pivotal moment in the history of mankind, for it dramatically impacts on human cognition, fostering social complexity and cultural memory. In this regard, the project offers an important contribution in order to achieve a better understanding of how literacy came about, and how it spread, eventually reaching us.
As for the conclusions reached by the action, philological and palaeographical analysis produced substantial results, whereas analysis of cylinder seals proved to be inconclusive, as no clear identification of ancient scribal tools emerged. With this limitation in mind, it appears that the overall setting of the invention and dissemination of writing is more complex than acknowledged in modern literature.
Besides clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing, scribes had access to other media and bookkeeping tools, such as tokens, clay envelopes, cylinder seals, wooden boards, counting sticks, measuring devices, as well as dedicated containers for storing and retrieving information. In addition, the abundant lexicon attached to various types of scribes and accountant officials speak for an intellectually alive environment, within and outside of institutional scriptoria. Finally, textual analysis showed that perishable media might have played a key role in the transmission of knowledge in the earliest literate cultures of Mesopotamia.
The work has been structured in a series of packages, devoted to the following tasks: 1) implementation of ad-hoc open source digital tools (GNU GPLv3 licence); 2) collection of data relevant to the project: textual and iconographic data, as well as bibliographical data; 3) data analysis; 4) publication and dissemination of results.
1) A preliminary step consisted in the development of a dedicated set of open source digital tools for analysis of cuneiform texts. They consist in two databases, namely the WritEMe lexicon database, which is meant for data-mining of textual data, and the WritEMe palaeography database, which focuses on palaeographical variations within the archaic text corpus. Both databases rest on dedicated scripts for the processing of transliterations from on-line repositories. The scripts analyse input data, create the database structure and populate it (source code on Github).
2) Once the digital infrastructure has been completed, the work focused on extracting relevant data out of on-line open access repositories (including bibliographical references). Textual data have been enhanced and structured in a format suitable for subsequent analysis, and with possible exploitation by other projects in mind (all data are available for download in JSON format). The corpus of textual sources identified as relevant for the project is made of 536 texts.
3) With regards to textual data, research made good progress using both traditional philological approach and semi-supervised data-mining, as dictated by the large amount of information to be processed. Roughly a hundred ancient terms related to writing and accounting have been identified and filed, together with selected palaeographical variations attached to the most relevant data. The results have been contrasted with comparative material from the anthropological record, with special reference to anthropology of writing. As mentioned above, iconographic evidence remained elusive.
4) Preliminary results concerning the origin of writing in Mesopotamia have been presented to the international conference "Artifacts of Written Culture", organized in Nanterre as part of the project. The proceeding volume is presently in preparation. Further results specifically related to the historical development of accounting systems in the third millennium BCE have been presented to the 67 th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, held in Turin (July 2021). The proceeding volume shall appear soon. A third article concerned with the methodological approach toward the topic of writing in antiquity is presently in preparation. On-line lectures provided further occasions for communicating results to BA and MA/PhD students. Social media accounts, as well as a dedicated website, connected the project to the wide audience.
1) A preliminary step consisted in the development of a dedicated set of open source digital tools for analysis of cuneiform texts. They consist in two databases, namely the WritEMe lexicon database, which is meant for data-mining of textual data, and the WritEMe palaeography database, which focuses on palaeographical variations within the archaic text corpus. Both databases rest on dedicated scripts for the processing of transliterations from on-line repositories. The scripts analyse input data, create the database structure and populate it (source code on Github).
2) Once the digital infrastructure has been completed, the work focused on extracting relevant data out of on-line open access repositories (including bibliographical references). Textual data have been enhanced and structured in a format suitable for subsequent analysis, and with possible exploitation by other projects in mind (all data are available for download in JSON format). The corpus of textual sources identified as relevant for the project is made of 536 texts.
3) With regards to textual data, research made good progress using both traditional philological approach and semi-supervised data-mining, as dictated by the large amount of information to be processed. Roughly a hundred ancient terms related to writing and accounting have been identified and filed, together with selected palaeographical variations attached to the most relevant data. The results have been contrasted with comparative material from the anthropological record, with special reference to anthropology of writing. As mentioned above, iconographic evidence remained elusive.
4) Preliminary results concerning the origin of writing in Mesopotamia have been presented to the international conference "Artifacts of Written Culture", organized in Nanterre as part of the project. The proceeding volume is presently in preparation. Further results specifically related to the historical development of accounting systems in the third millennium BCE have been presented to the 67 th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, held in Turin (July 2021). The proceeding volume shall appear soon. A third article concerned with the methodological approach toward the topic of writing in antiquity is presently in preparation. On-line lectures provided further occasions for communicating results to BA and MA/PhD students. Social media accounts, as well as a dedicated website, connected the project to the wide audience.
Although the project was terminated earlier than planned, important progress has been made with regards of the topic of the origin of writing in Mesopotamia, in terms of both methodological approach and overall understanding of the problem. The application of innovative, ad-hoc Digital Humanities tools for the analysis of early cuneiform texts allowed for the exploration of primary sources without the limitations imposed by big data. It must be stressed that the software developed as part of the project may be easily exploited as to work with any domain of knowledge attested in early cuneiform sources.
The analysis of the ancient terminology associated with scribal activities in the early periods of Mesopotamia history reveals a rich and diverse scenario. The results impact on several fields within Mesopotamian studies: History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Assyriology, Sumerology. Within these fields, the project produced a new theoretical framework for the study of writing in Mesopotamia. In turn, the results impact on the study of social and intellectual history, with special reference to the topics of the origin of writing and to education in antiquity.
The analysis of the ancient terminology associated with scribal activities in the early periods of Mesopotamia history reveals a rich and diverse scenario. The results impact on several fields within Mesopotamian studies: History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Assyriology, Sumerology. Within these fields, the project produced a new theoretical framework for the study of writing in Mesopotamia. In turn, the results impact on the study of social and intellectual history, with special reference to the topics of the origin of writing and to education in antiquity.