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Cuniform   Listen
adjective
Cuniform, Cuneiform  adj.  
1.
Wedge-shaped; as, a cuneiform bone; especially applied to the wedge-shaped or arrowheaded characters of ancient Persian and Assyrian inscriptions. See Arrowheaded.
2.
Pertaining to, or versed in, the ancient wedge-shaped characters, or the inscriptions in them. "A cuneiform scholar."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cuniform" Quotes from Famous Books



... cuneiform inscriptions represent crucifixion as the common punishment for rebellion and treason. The Jews may have imitated the Assyrians, as crucifixion may have been adopted long before that of Christ and the two thieves (Qy. robbers). The Mahomedans, who have copied the Jews in many practices and customs, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... blood of the Saviour (!); a silver column supporting a fragment of the pillar at which Christ was scourged; a cup of agate containing a portion of the skull of St. John; the sword of the Doge Morocini; cuneiform writings from Persepolis; an episcopal throne of the seventh century, said to have been St. Mark's; and many other things, the genuineness of which to try and believe was of course next to impossible; and one could only marvel at the credulity ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... looking to casual inspection like nothing so much as random flights of arrow-heads. The resemblance is so striking that this is sometimes called the arrow-head character, though it is more generally known as the wedge or cuneiform character. The inscriptions on the flanks of the lions are, however, only makeshift books. But the veritable books are no farther away than the next room beyond the hall of Asurnazirpal. They occupy part of a series of cases ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... looking steadily into her questioning eyes. "But if what Amena told me was true, it is something more than a unique gem. There is an inscription on it, some characters carved in the stone which are, as he said, the history of it, but to me they are as unintelligible as the Assyrian cuneiform would be. Possibly you may know something of them. If you do, here is a lens that will help ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... ascribed to peoples who dwelt in Babylonia before the supposed Semitic conquest, viz. the Accadians in the north and the Sumerians to the south, peoples not related to the Semites in blood or in language, but generally called Turanian, and thought to be perhaps akin to the Chinese. The cuneiform writing which remained in use for millenniums after the Semitic immigration as the sacred literary form, was supposed to have been the invention of these peoples, who had also made ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... born at Turin, son of the preceding; when consul at Mosul, in 1843, discovered the ruins of Nineveh; made further explorations, published in the "Memoire de l'Ecriture Cuneiform Assyrienne" and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... in his more recent work on Human Origins that he thus comes forward as an historian, in preparation for which he seems to have devoted himself to the study of cuneiform and hieroglyphs and mastered the subject thoroughly and exhaustively, before bursting forth from behind the clouds to flood the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... been studying them for two months. Emanuel Deutsch, one of the great authorities on cuneiform inscriptions, gives us the following ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... has also added materially to our knowledge of that country which is associated with the early history of the Chosen People. But the most valuable aid to Bible study came from the discovery of the Assyrian Royal Library, a series of clay tablets and cylinders covered with cuneiform inscriptions which were deciphered by Mr. George Smith of the British Museum. From these and from the records on the monuments of Egypt historical information has been derived of inestimable value in ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... he lived at Babylon in the time of King Moabdar; but the name of Moabdar does not appear in the list of Babylonian sovereigns brought to light by the patience and the industry of the decipherers of cuneiform inscriptions in these later years; nor indeed am I aware that there is any other authority for his existence than that of the biographer of Zadig, one Arouet de Voltaire, among whose more conspicuous merits strict ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of the Achaemenians, represented to us by the Persian texts of the Cuneiform inscriptions"—so I began this morning, determined to interpolate a paragraph which is wanting in your beautiful chapter, namely, the relationship of the language of the inscriptions to that of the Zend books, including the history of the deciphering with Grotefend ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... as lids to the chests. Some tablets also were inscribed with notes in hieratic, written in red ink. But in spite of these exceptions, it was at once recognised that all the documents were written in Babylonian cuneiform. The reading of the introductory lines on various tablets served to show that the find consisted of part of the Egyptian state archives in the times of the two kings Amenophis III. and IV. Thus the first of the many startling discoveries ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... calculation. Sennacherib does not lie in boasting of his victories. He and his shoals of soldiers are very real and potent. It does seem madness for one little kingdom to stand out, and all the more so because its king is cooped up in his city, as the cuneiform inscription proudly tells, 'like a bird in a cage,' and all the rest of his land is in the conqueror's grip. They who look only at the things seen cannot but think the men of faith mad. They who look at the things unseen cannot ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... head on one side with an air of abstraction so that he may seem not to deny himself, but to omit helping himself from inadvertence, or absence of mind. At such times he wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar manner, inscrutable at first as a cuneiform inscription, but as easily read after you once get the key. The sense of it is something like this: "I, X., know my place, a height of wisdom attained by few. Whatever you may think, I do not see that currant ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... approximate to the larger lateral diameter of the European female. The front to back diameter of the ape's pelvis is usually greater than the measurement from side to side. A similar condition affords the cuneiform, from which it may be inferred that the erect position in the Negro has not been maintained so long as in the Mongol, whose pelvis has assumed the quadrilateral shape owing to persistence of spinal axis ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... the background glory. Occasionally the common people had representations of their lives and their pursuits, but the main subject of all the valley art was the king and his doings. Sculpture and painting were largely illustrations accompanying a history written in the ever-present cuneiform characters. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... oldest authentic human records now decipherable are the cuneiform inscriptions from the archives of Assurbanipal, translated by the late George Smith, of the British Museum, and in them we find abundant reference to the dance, but must content ourselves ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... in 1843 and continued by M. Place, and those of Mr. (now Sir A. H.) Layard in 1845, combined with the successful attempts of Prof. Grotefend, Prof. Lassen, and Col. Rawlinson at deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions, have disclosed a new world to the architectural student, without which some of the developments of Greek architecture must have remained obscure. The authentic remains of buildings of the early Chaldaean period are too few and in too ruinous a condition to allow of a reproduction ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... Magicians The Peasant And The Workman The Shipwrecked Sailor The Adventures Of Sanehat The Tell Amarna Tablets The Hittite Invasion Of Damascus The Amorite Treachery The War In Phoenicia Northern Palestine Southern Palestine Royal Letters Cuneiform Inscriptions And Hieratic Papyri The Great Tablet Of Rameses II At Abu-Simbel Hymn To Osiris Travels Of An Egyptian In The Fourteenth Century B.C. Dirge Of Menephtah Hymn To The Nile The Solemn Festal Dirge Of The Egyptians Hymns To ...
— Egyptian Literature

... word 'moly,' which had been Greek for at least twelve hundred years. But Mr. Brown goes on to quote that one of the languages of which we know next to nothing, Hittite, was 'probably allied to Proto-Armenian, and perhaps Lykian, and was above all not Semitic.' In any case 'the cuneiform mode of writing was used in Cappadocia at an early period.' As even Professor Sayce declines to give more than a tentative reading of a Cappadocian cuneiform inscription, it seems highly rash to seek in this direction for an interpretation ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... gulf. There is, indeed, no direct evidence to show that this branch bore a name resembling Pison. Palgu is the Assyrian whence the Greek Pallakopas was derived. It is remarkable, however, that the word Pison closely resembles the cuneiform term "pisana," or "pisanu," which is used for a water-reservoir, a canal or a channel; and as this "Pallakopas" was the channel par excellence, it may very possibly have been called "pisana" or Pison, the (great) channel. The identification of the channel called "Pallakopas" will ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... Cypriote) Dedication to Demeter and Persephone from Curium Syrian Pottery. Syrian Weapons, &c. West Semitic Alphabets West Semitic Numerals Palestinian Pottery types Egyptian Pottery types Mesopotamian Pottery, Seals, &c. Cuneiform and other Scripts ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, in the ninth volume of Cuneiform Texts, gives a collection of the business documents of one firm, "Murashu Sons, of Nippur," in the reign of Artaxerxes I. Here we have to do with a family deed-chest, a collection of documents found together ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... prehistoric times we know practically nothing, and the same may be said of the Chaldean, Babylonian, and Assyrian nations who composed the 2nd sub-race—for the fragments of knowledge obtained from the recently deciphered hieroglyphs or cuneiform inscriptions on Egyptian tombs or Babylonian tablets can scarcely be said to constitute history. The Persians who belonged to the 3rd or Iranian sub-race have it is true, left a few more traces, but of the earlier civilizations of the Keltic or 4th sub-race ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... These, re-edited in cuneiform and kept conveniently on the second floor of his palace, fell with Nineveh, where, until recently recovered, for millennia they lay. Additionally, from shelves set up in the days of Khammurabi—the Amraphel of Genesis—Nippur ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies, I know the croaking chorus from the "Frogs" of Aristophanes, Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore, And whistle all the airs from that confounded nonsense "Pinafore." Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform, And tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform. In short in matters vegetable, animal and mineral, I am the very model of ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... of ballads and popular tales, can never be ascertained. The oldest known version may be found in the literature of Egypt or Chaldaea, but it is an obvious fallacy to argue that the place of origin must be the place where the tale was first written down in hieroglyph or cuneiform characters. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... arrow-head. By a combination of these wedges, letters and words were formed by the skilled and practised scribe, who would thus rapidly turn off a vast amount of "copy." All works of history, poetry, and law were thus written in the cuneiform or old Chaldean characters, and on a substance which could withstand the ravages of time, fire, or water. Hence we have authentic monuments of Assyrian literature in their original form, unglossed, unaltered, and ungarbled, and in this respect Chaldean records are actually ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... (Borsippa, near Babylon), and excavated relics of the Biblical Nebuchadrezzar. This notable archaeologist began his career in the East as an officer in the Bombay army. He distinguished himself as a political agent and diplomatist. While resident at Baghdad, he devoted his leisure time to cuneiform studies. One of his remarkable feats was the copying of the famous trilingual rock inscription of Darius the Great on a mountain cliff at Behistun, in Persian Kurdistan. This work was carried out at great personal risk, for the cliff is 1700 feet high and the sculptures and inscriptions are situated ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... delivered in the year 1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents, on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves, in some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He concluded his brief ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... 196: In the Middle Ages certain biblical names were without valid reason applied to noted places. No-Ammon mentioned in Scripture (Jer. xlvi. 25 and Nahum iii. 8), also in cuneiform inscriptions, was doubtless ancient Thebes. See Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. I, p. 542. Another notable example is the application of the name of Zoan to Cairo. Ancient Tanis (p. 78) was probably Zoan, and we are told (Num. xiii. 22) that Zoan was built seven years after Hebron. ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... cuneiform material see Delitzsch, Assyrisches Handwoerterbuch, and, for various etymologies proposed for the name, Barton, Semitic Origins, p. 102 ff.; Haupt, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, xxviii, 112 ff.; Barton, ibid., xxxi, 355 ff. The frequent expression ilani u ishtarati, 'gods ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... the fact that German anatomists have been reluctant to admit the existence of these cartilages; and she adds on page 61, "It was, therefore, a great satisfaction to me to find them described under the name of the cuneiform cartilages in Wilson's 'Human Anatomy.'" It must be confessed, however, that Wilson's description of them is totally different from Madame Seiler's. He says, "The cuneiform cartilages are two small cylinders of yellow fibro-cartilage, about seven lines in length and ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... and the "Philostratus" of Blount (who pillaged the "Areopagitica") of the other. And yet, again, how perverse is human nature! how more perverse is literary taste! There is a large class of men madly desirous to read cuneiform and runic inscriptions simply because of their unreadableness, adding to our compulsory stock of knowledge about the royal Smiths and Joneses of to-day much conjectural and conflicting information concerning their royal prototypes of an antiquity unknown, and, as we fondly hoped, unknowable. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... every subject except my chemistry entirely new. I was not familiar with one word of botany, zoology, physics, physiology, or comparative anatomy. About the universe which I inhabited I knew as little as I did about cuneiform writings. Except for my mathematics and a mere modicum of chemistry I had nothing on which to base my new work; and students coming from Government free schools, or almost anywhere, had a great advantage over ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... jagged, serrated; falciform^, falcated^; furcated^, forked, bifurcate, zigzag; furcular^; hooked; dovetailed; knock kneed, crinkled, akimbo, kimbo^, geniculated^; oblique &c 217. fusiform [Micro.], wedge-shaped, cuneiform; cuneate^, multangular^, oxygonal^; triangular, trigonal^, trilateral; quadrangular, quadrilateral; foursquare; rectangular, square, multilateral; polygonal &c n.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget



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