"Cuniform" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the time of Francois Champollion, Egyptian documents, being written in hieroglyphics, were, without metaphor, a dead-letter. It will be readily admitted that in order to deal with ancient Assyrian history it is necessary to have learnt to decipher cuneiform inscriptions. Similarly, whoever desires to do original work from the sources, in ancient or mediaeval history, will, if he is prudent, learn to decipher inscriptions and manuscripts. We thus see why Greek and Latin epigraphy and mediaeval ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform mark, I believe of contraction, and the small ^s for a zigzag mark of the same kind. The dots or periods are ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... of this version," says Lenormant, "which, interesting though it be, is, after all, second-hand, we are now able to place an original Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh, and now in the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chant of the great epic of the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... expenses, and bought it in myself. So I have it still. And if the censorious reader has detected here and there in these pages a tendency toward the Higher Criticism, or a leaning to State Socialism, or any passage that seemed to indicate a familiarity with cuneiform inscriptions, or with the history and habits of Pre-Adamite Man, he may be assured that, at the time of writing such passage, I had been smoking the mighty pipe— or rather, the mighty pipe had been smoking me—and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). Did the guest ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... lined with sculptured slabs, divided, like those of Khorsabad and Nimroud, by bands of inscription. He also found, at the foot of the mound, a monument about three feet high, and rounded at the top, containing a figure with a long cuneiform inscription, and above it various sacred emblems. When discovered it was supported by brickwork, and near it was a sarcophagus ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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
... said I. "You should talk to him of Heaven, or pigs, or Babylonic cuneiform—anything but Lola Brandt. You ought to go to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... 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
... becomes possible to write all the words of a language with a few hundred signs. The Japanese, who borrowed some of the Chinese symbols, used them to denote syllables, instead of entire words. The Babylonians possessed, in their cuneiform [9] characters, signs for about five hundred syllables. The prehistoric inhabitants of Crete appear to have been acquainted with ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the Veda, if it simply contained the names of kings, the description of battles, the dates of famines, it would still be, by its age alone, the most venerable of books. Do we ever find much beyond such matters in Egyptian hieroglyphics, or in Cuneiform inscriptions? In fact, what does the ancient history of the world before Cyrus, before 500 B.C., consist of, but meagre lists of Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian dynasties? What do the tablets of Karnak, the palaces of Nineveh, and the cylinders of Babylon tell us about ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... old Assyrian correspondence is here well preserved, as we may see by comparing those letters with the cuneiform inscriptions, etc., by S. Abden Smith (Pfeiffer, Leipsic, 1887). One of them begins thus, "The will of the King to Sintabni-Uzur. Salutation from me to thee. May it be well with thee. Regarding Sinsarra-utzur whom thou hast sent ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... "Kyros" of the first edition looked so strange and learned, as to be quite discouraging. Where however the German k has the same worth as the Roman c I have adopted it in preference. With respect to the Egyptian names and those with which we have become acquainted through the cuneiform inscriptions, I have chosen the forms most adapted to our German modes of speech, and in the present edition have placed those few explanations which seemed to me indispensable to the right understanding of the text, at the foot of the page, instead ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ham. Smith in 'Nat. Lib.' volume 10 page 79.) Dogs have properly five toes in front and four behind, but a fifth toe is often added; and F. Cuvier states that, when a fifth toe is present, a fourth cuneiform bone is developed; and, in this case, sometimes the great cuneiform bone is raised, and gives on its inner side a large articular surface to the astragalus; so that even the relative connection of the bones, the most constant of all characters, varies. These modifications, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... A cuneiform inscription discovered in the centre of Asia Minor at Ptorium proves that about 1400 B.C. certain tribes who had relations with the Hittite empire had for their deities Mitra, Indra, Varuna and the Nasatyas. The first two names are common to the Persian and Indian ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... have some specially important work to do. A very learned lady who is writing a historical book has commissioned me to collect all the literature relating to the Tell el Amarna letters—the cuneiform tablets, you know, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... myth? It is most probable that they obtained it through the mediation either of the Canaanites or of the North Arabians. Babylonian influence, as is now well known, was strongly felt for many centuries in Canaan, and even the cuneiform script was in common use among the high officials of the country. When the Israelites entered Canaan, they would learn myths partly of Babylonian origin. North Arabian influence must also have been strong among the Israelites, at least while they sojourned in North ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 |
