cuneiform

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Sumerian cuneiform tablet

Hieroglyphic Luwian text

Persian cuneiform from the Xerxes inscription at Persepolis

Sumerian inscription from a temple at Nippur

The number 258,458 expressed in the sexagesimal (base 60) system of the Babylonians and in cuneiform.

Examples illustrating the evolution of cuneiform writing.

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Parsons Weems' Fable, oil on canvas by Grant Wood, 1939; in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Catalog entry: The historian Mason Locke Weems, commonly known by his clerical title, Parson Weems, pulls back a curtain to point at 6-year-old George Washington. Bearing an adult head and holding an axe, George gazes blankly up at his father, Augustine, who questions his son while holding a partially cut cherry tree. All of this takes place in front of a 20th-century brick building, which Wood modeled after his own home in Iowa. The scene illustrates the fable of Washington and the cherry tree, which Weems invented in 1806 for the first president's biography. Wood playfully suggests the artifice of the tale here, presenting the story in the manner of a costumed stage play rather than a real event. Amid the action, two Black figures pick cherries in the background, a reference to Washington' slaveholding past and a reminder of of what often gets left out in historical mythmaking.

Did George Washington Really Say, “I Can’t Tell a Lie”?

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pg 229Nazi parade features a banner proclaiming, "Death to Marxism."The possibility of a peaceful Germany after World War I was precluded entirely by the terms of the Versailles Treaty and theintransigent hostility of France and England. Stripped of indu

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Photos

Sumerian cuneiform tablet

Hieroglyphic Luwian text

Persian cuneiform from the Xerxes inscription at Persepolis

Sumerian inscription from a temple at Nippur

The number 258,458 expressed in the sexagesimal (base 60) system of the Babylonians and in cuneiform.

Examples illustrating the evolution of cuneiform writing.

See All Images →

Topics

Ugaritic alphabet Sumerian writing Old Akkadian cuneiform Old Assyrian cuneiform Akkadian writing Old Babylonian cuneiform Neo-Assyrian cuneiform cuneiform numeral writing system Moon type hieroglyphic writing cryptology punctuation phonetic transcription shorthand Braille Linear A and Linear B ogham writing Quoc-ngu

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Anatolian languages: Languages using cuneiform writing and hieroglyphs

Key People

Rawlinson, detail of an engraving by Samuel Cousins after a painting by Henry Wyndham Phillips, 1850

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson

British orientalist

André Parrot

French archaeologist

Grotefend, detail of a lithograph by C. Kiesel, c. 1830, after a portrait by J.F. Winkelmann

Georg Friedrich Grotefend

German scholar

Hrozný

Bedřich Hrozný

Czech archaeologist and linguist

Quiz

Books. Lord Alfred Tennyson. Lord Byron. Poetry. Reading. Literacy. Library. Antique. A stack of four antique leather bound books.

Ancient Libraries and Archives Quiz

November 3, 2015. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, after years of excavations the remains of, the Acra, used by the Greeks more than 2,000 years ago to control the Temple Mount. Jerusalem. Archeology.

Archaeology: Digging and Scraping Quiz