As all the people of the world descended from Noah and his sons, only one language should have been spoken, and so the author of Genesis tried to explain that the confusion of many languages was yet another punishment from God. Of those people who had migrated to Shinar, Genesis records: ‘they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and bake them thoroughly.” And they used brick instead of stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches to the heavens; and let us make a name for ourselves, so that we are not scattered over the face of the whole earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people speaking the same language. This is the beginning of what they will do and nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them all over the earth, and they left off building the city. That is why its name was Babel – because the LORD there confused the language of all the earth’.2 This story refers to the building of the fabled city of Babylon that grew up alongside the Euphrates, 55 miles south of the later city of Baghdad. Although supposedly one of the first cities after the Flood, archaeological excavation has shown that Babylon was not one of Mesopotamia’s oldest cities, but that it only developed around 1800 BC and that there are many older cities along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.
The main natural resources of ancient Mesopotamia were clay, silt and mud, as well as bitumen, which seeped to the surface in many areas. Buildings were constructed primarily of bricks manufactured by mixing together mud, straw and water and shaped in wooden moulds, after which they were left to dry hard in the sun, and only rarely baked in a kiln. Mortar was unknown, but mud bricks were bonded together with mud and also bitumen. Bricks were entirely coated with bitumen as a protection against damp when it was necessary to waterproof the foundations of buildings, because such bricks rapidly revert to mud when wet. Even with normal wear and tear, mud bricks gradually turn to dust, so that collapsed buildings would form a layer of soil over which new buildings were constructed. With the accumulation of rubbish and decomposed bricks, mounds (called tells) were formed and have become a distinctive feature of the Mesopotamian landscape.
The Genesis story relates that at Babylon a mud-brick tower – the Tower of Babel – was constructed with the intention of reaching heaven, which incurred the displeasure of God. The story may have been inspired by Babylon’s immense ziggurat known as Etemenanki (‘Foundation of Heaven and Earth’). Like other ziggurats, Etemenanki was a solid stepped pyramid with a monumental exterior staircase and a temple on top. The reason for God’s displeasure is not given in Genesis, but instead of sending another flood, the punishment this time was to disperse the inhabitants of Babylon far and wide and to ‘confuse their language’,3 so that they spoke different languages and could no longer communicate and cooperate. Because the similar-sounding Hebrew word balal means ‘confuse’ (and therefore a confusion of languages, or babble), the Genesis writer believed that this was why the city was called Babel, but it was actually due to the much earlier name of Babilu, which means ‘gate of the god’. Later on, the ancient Greeks called the city Babylon. The origin of the city’s name had nothing to do with why many languages are spoken throughout the world, but referred to the impressive gates of this fortified city.
The lack of stone and the abundance of mud not only determined building methods in Mesopotamia, but also its very writing system. With no other suitable material for writing, the ubiquitous mud was used to make rectangular, square or occasionally oval tablets. From a ball of damp clay, tablets were flattened into a shape that fitted in the hand, though some could be far larger, and they generally had one convex and one flat side. Writing on the tablet was done with a special implement (stylus) when the clay was still damp, first on the flat side, then the convex side. Styli have not survived as they were made from perishable materials, primarily reeds that grew abundantly in the marshlands: the Babylonian word for a stylus was qan tuppi, ‘tablet-reed’. Writing was not normally done by incising or scoring lines with the stylus, but by making impressions in the damp clay of the tablet, and so it was easier to make straight rather than curved lines. Because one end of the reed stylus was cut at an angle, signs were made up of lines or strokes that had one end wider than the other, displaying a characteristic wedge or tapering shape. The system of writing is known today by the clumsy word ‘cuneiform’, which is literally ‘of wedge-shaped form’, from the Latin word cuneus, meaning wedge. Mistakes were erased by smoothing the clay surface with the stylus; after writing, tablets were left to dry hard in the sun, or occasionally fired in a kiln.
Cuneiform was not a language, but a script or writing system that was used to convey several different spoken languages. In Egypt, hieroglyphic writing was used only to write down the ancient Egyptian language, so hieroglyphs tend to be considered as both a writing system and the ancient language, but cuneiform is more like the later Roman script, which was first used at Rome to write down the Latin language. With modifications, this Roman script has continued to be a writing system for over two thousand years and is used today to write down numerous languages worldwide, such as English, German and Spanish.
Cuneiform is similar to the Roman script in that it too was used for a long period to write down different languages, evolving to suit each language and also evolving over time. For around three thousand years it was the writing system that recorded the many languages spoken across an extensive area, from Iraq to Syria, central Turkey, Palestine and south-west Iran. These languages included Sumerian, Akkadian, Urartian, Elamite and Old Persian. The last known use of cuneiform was in AD 75, on a clay tablet about astronomy found at Babylon. Because the system of cuneiform varied from language to language and changed over time, decipherers had a twofold problem: working out the particular writing system and translating the language in question. With the resulting tangle of multiple languages and varying versions of cuneiform script, decipherment could never be a single landmark achievement. The prize was not the knowledge of a single ancient civilization, but the knowledge of many ancient cultures, and the challenge was too much work for one person – too much for a single lifetime. Those attempting the decipherment of cuneiform had no concept of the enormous task ahead.
The very first writing evolved in Mesopotamia from the need of accountants and bureaucrats to keep a visual check of goods entering and leaving temples and palaces. Small clay tokens dating from 8000 BC appear to have been an early tally system and a precursor of writing. They have various geometric shapes, such as spheres, cones and discs, perhaps representing different commodities. In the mid-fourth millennium BC, tokens were sometimes placed inside hollow clay balls or envelopes and were sealed with cylinder seals.
Used in Mesopotamia for over three thousand years, cylinder seals were invented around 3600 BC as an aid to bureaucracy in the vast city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. These seals are small cylinders, usually made of imported stone and carved with intricate designs, especially scenes of everyday life. When rolled across damp clay, they left a continuous impression, and both seals and clay sealings have been found. As well as on clay balls, seals were used on clay tablets and on lumps of clay attached to cords