"Cuneiform" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cuneiform method of writing. They had no paper, but made their inscriptions on clay tablets and cylinders. These were set away in rooms called libraries. The discovery of the great library of Ashur-bani-pal, of Nineveh, revealed the highest ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... 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 ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... writing, indeed, upon the material employed is nowhere better shown than in the case of the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. The ordinary substitute for cream-laid note in the Euphrates valley in its palmy days was a clay or terra-cotta tablet, on which the words to be recorded—usually a deed of sale or something ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... reasons of the same kind for affirming that the Shemites or Semites occupied an important place in Chaldaea from the very beginning. Linguistic knowledge here comes to the aid of the biblical narrative and confirms its ethnographical data. The language in which most of our cuneiform inscriptions are written, the language, that is, that we call Assyrian, is closely allied to the Hebrew. Towards the period of the second Chaldee Empire, another dialect of the same family, the Aramaic, seems to have been in common use from one end of Mesopotamia to the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... 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 that were to follow ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... hands of the hangman. Milton's "Areopagitica" is an example of one method, 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... tell. The guess may be hazarded that cephalhematoma, hydrocephalus, meningocele, nevi, or an excessive amount of vernix caseosa were the conditions indicated, but a wider acquaintance with the meaning of the cuneiform characters is necessary before any certain identification is possible. The 'pieces of skin hanging from the head' (No. 51) may have been fragments of the membranes; but there is nothing in the accompanying ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the ordinary ancient character at all, and nicknamed it k'o-t'ou shu, "tadpole character," from some fancied resemblance in shape. The theory that these tadpole characters were not Chinese but a species of cuneiform script, in which the wedges might possibly suggest tadpoles, must be dismissed as too wildly improbable for serious consideration; but we may advert for a moment to a famous inscription in which the real tadpole characters of antiquity are said to appear. This is on a stone ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... pity," said I. "You should talk to him of Heaven, or pigs, or Babylonic cuneiform—anything but Lola Brandt. You ought to go to work on ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... cuneiform Achaemenian inscriptions found in Persia and in other places, deciphered and published by Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, Rawlinson, Norris, Spiegel, de Saulcy, Oppert, Menant, ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... others with an unequal number on the two sides.[66] 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, however, in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Persian 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 ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... of history, however, distribute the power of flight with less of prejudice. Egyptian sculpture gives the figure of winged men; the British Museum has made the winged Assyrian bulls familiar to many, and both the cuneiform records of Assyria and the hieroglyphs of Egypt record flights that in reality were never made. The desire fathered the story then, and until Clement Ader either hopped with his Avion, as is persisted by his critics, or flew, as is claimed by ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... he, "to his holiness the pharaoh, may he live through eternity! In the name of my lord I will put my seal on the treaty, if it be written on bricks in cuneiform letters, for I do not understand your writing. I will lie even all day on my belly before his holiness, and will sign the treaty. But how will ye carry it out, ha! ha! ha! that I know not," concluded he, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... a Greyhound and a Mastiff, the latter described in the tablets as "the chained-up, mouth-opening dog"; that is to say, it was used as a watch-dog; and several varieties are referred to in the cuneiform inscriptions preserved in the British Museum. The Egyptian monuments of about 3000 B.C. present many forms of the domestic dog, and there can be no doubt that among the ancient Egyptians it was as completely a companion of man, as much a favourite in the house, and a help in the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... occupancy of Babylonia, were of an unknown stock. They were the founders of Babylonian culture. Even by them the soil was skillfully cultivated with the help of dikes and canals. They were the inventors of the cuneiform writing. The cuneiform characters were originally pictures; but these were resolved into wedge-shaped characters of uniform appearance, the significance of which was determined by their position and local relation to one another. It is not known how long the Sumerian period ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... cuneiform alphabet, by which pictures have been reduced to phonetic signs, the attempt has been made to arrange or classify these gods according to their proper order in the Pantheon, but thus far much obscurity and doubt seem to ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... 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, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stage we have ample evidence afforded by the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria. Spells employed to the hurt of any worshipper of the gods are spells against which the worshipper may properly appeal to the gods for protection. A god is essentially the protector of his worshippers, and he protects ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... which one may easily read—who knows the character—treachery, lying, and deception, just as in the letter Beth was originally easily discerned the effigies of a house, may very easily pass unread by the multitude. The language, or rather the alphabet, is much less complicated than the cuneiform of the Medes and Persians, yet no one studies it, except women, most of whom are profoundly skilled in this lore, which makes them so fearfully and wonderfully wise. Thus it is easy for man to deceive his brother man, but not his sister woman. Again, most of us are glad to take everybody on his ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... true, but knew nothing of the science of vocal music; I did not know a word of Spanish, or Italian, or German, or English; even with the literature of France I was but little acquainted; but I could read the cuneiform characters of Babylon and Persepolis as readily as you read this page, while Sanscrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldaic, flowed from my tongue as freely as a nursery rhyme. As an instructress of young ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... studying them for two months. Emanuel Deutsch, one of the great authorities on cuneiform inscriptions, gives us the following information as ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... information; yet I have seen college graduates—even men sporting professional sheep- skins—who couldn't tell whether Gladstone's an English statesman or an Irish policeman. They knew all about Greek roots but couldn't tell a carrot from a parsnip. They could decipher a cuneiform inscription, perhaps, and state whether a pebble belonged to the paleozoic or some other period; but couldn't tell a subpoena from a search- warrant, a box of vermicelli from ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sheets, mummy bandages and garments, terracotta vases and vessels, alabaster jars, &c., special rooms are devoted. The antiquities which, although found in Egypt, are certainly not of Egyptian manufacture, e.g., Greek and Phornician glass, Greek statues, tablets inscribed in cuneiform from Tel el-Amarna, &c., are arranged in groups in rooms set apart for them; and the monuments of the Egyptian Christians or Copts are also classified and arranged in a separate room.—Athenum, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... the mysteries of Isis. The meaning of it, so long in dispute, has finally been practically determined through a new discovery in the cuneiform inscriptions. It is the symbol of two hands holding two closed eyes; and it ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... he could easily walk under my arm; his gait was something between a roll and a limp, although he stoutly disclaimed lameness; he laughed whenever I spoke to him, and answered in a voice which seemed the cuneiform character put into sound. First, there was an explosion of gutturals, and then came a loud trumpet-tone, something like the Honk! honk! of wild geese. Yet, when he placed his squat figure behind a tavern table, and looked at me quietly with his mouth shut, he was both handsome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... possesses some little features of accents and kerned sections, which render justification quite a fine art, accents on varying bodies needing to be utilised.... The firm does much Hindustani work, and possesses seven sizes of type in this language. Amongst the curiosities are the cuneiform types, the wedge-like series of faces in which old Persian, Median, and Assyrian inscriptions are written; and last, but by no means least in interest, the odd-looking hieroglyphic type faces, which are on bodies ranging from half nonpareil to three nonpareils, ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... that what appears in print must be true. We should rather hope that some beneficent influence may create among the erudite a like healthy suspicion of manuscripts and inscriptions, however ancient; for a bulletin may lie, even though it be written in cuneiform characters. Hotspur's starling, that was to be taught to speak nothing but "Mortimer" into the ears of King Henry the Fourth, might be a useful inmate of every historian's library, if "Fiction" were substituted for the ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... has. And where's the wonder? We live in a glorious age" (Raby smiled) "that has read the written mountains of the East, and the Abyssinian monuments: and he is a man of the age, and your mediaeval brasses are no more to him than cuneiform letters to Rawlinson. Let me read this resuscitated record. 'Edith Little, daughter of Robert Raby, by Leah Dence his wife:' why here's a hodge-podge! What! have the noble Rabys intermarried with the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... 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 a ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert |
