Cuneiform

Cuneiform was possibly just one of a number of Word notation systems.

Cuneiform was a means by which ‘Spells’ were encoded. It is one of the many notation systems used to record the Word.  It may also have been a method of recording songlines.

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region located in Southern Iraq (Mesopotamia).  It lasted from about 6,000 BC  to 2,000 BC.  Cuneiform script has been traced back to Sumer around 3000 BC, with predecessors reaching into 4000 BC.  We know that cuneiform was used as a form of musical notation because it has been found in a cuneiform tablet that was created at Nippur in about 2000 B.C.  The tablet represents fragmentary instructions for performing music.  The music was composed in harmonies of thirds, was written using a diatonic scale and indicates it was for use with a lyre.

Cuneiform was thus used to express music, we also know it was used to symbolise the everyday ‘words’ humans needed to communicate, as tablets have been deciphered.  Was the same language, however, used for communication with the gods?  The answer appears to be possibly – a sort of maybe. 

The Sumerian religion was based on the use of divination and ‘magic’ mostly in the form of invocations.  In effect, the Sumerian priests and priestesses or ‘shamans’ definitely used ‘Spells’.  Thus we have a priest/priestess based religion using trance to communicate with the spiritual world.  Was the means of communication recorded using cuneiform?

Clearly we do not know, but cuneiform was used extensively in religious texts and on religious sites.  Thus the apparent evidence at least tentatively suggests it might have been.

Cuneiform documents were written on clay tablets, by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform ("wedge shaped," from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge").  The Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and it inspired the Ugaritic and Old Persian national alphabets.

Sumerian inscription in monumental
archaic style, ca. 2,600 BC,
source Wikipedia

 Cuneiform writing was gradually replaced by alphabetic writing in the Iron Age Neo-Assyrian Empire and was practically extinct by the beginning of the ‘Common Era’ [i.e. AD]. It was deciphered from scratch in the 19^th century and as such all record of what the symbols sounded like has been long lost and furthermore any of the symbols used for heavenly communication are undecipherable.

Observations

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• Engel, C - Ancient Egyptian music and healing
• Fabre d Olivet, Antoine - 01 La Langue Hébraique restituée
• Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo - Ogham and hieroglyphs
• Susa - Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil
• Various symbolic objects - Obelisk of Manishtushu