Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 69

In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians’ pictographs (beginning a bit earlier than the Egyptians’) evolved into symbols that represented words, syllables, and eventually even phonetic sounds. Cuneiform, the Mesopotamian way of writing with the sharpened end of a reed in wet mud, spread all over the Middle East.

Also like Egyptian hieroglyphics, cuneiform writing opened new vistas of early history in the 19th century AD, when European scholars figured out how to read cuneiform documents such as royal edicts, business letters, and even love songs.

Cuneiform writings include early codes of laws. Babylonian King Hammurabi enacted one of the best-known in the 18th century BC. Here’s a sample: “If the robber is not caught, the man who has been robbed shall make claim … and the town and its governor shall give back to him everything that he has lost.”