The 28,000 words were carved in stone in ancient Iraq beginning some four and a half thousand years ago and the breaks between the words have wedges, hence the form of writing is described as ‘cuneiform’ from the Latin cuneus (wedge).
Scholars who have worked on this ancient language were startled to realise that people then were saying and writing much the same kind of things as we do today. There might be a letter describing a new child in the family or about a loan given until harvest time. The letters express concerns for safety, food and shelter. Others talk of fear and anger or declare love and ask for love in return. There are letters of rulers saying how great they are and of ordinary folk saying the rulers are not so great. And there is one phrase that keeps recurring, ‘don’t worry about a thing!’
That part of the world, between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, saw virtually everything we take for granted today: cities, states, the invention of the wheel, a way to measure time and the invention of writing. If we want to understand our roots this is one place to start. (Guardian Weekly of 17 June.)
Great empires rise and fall. This Assyrian one suffered the same fate. But there is something constant in our human story: the daily concerns of people are much the same as they have always been. And the views of rulers about themselves haven’t changed much either, nor have the views of those ruled about those same rulers.
It is awesome that a scholar devotes his whole life to opening up the past for us. When we reach back into time, and realise how similar the ancients were to us, it helps us reach out in space to other cultures and people who are our contemporaries – even if they are different from us – and recognise our common story.
The more we understand about history the more we realise how ‘bonded’ – how related to each other – we are. We really are one people. The deeper this realisation goes the more senseless and futile wars and barriers seem to be.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis