For Real?

Hey everyone,

My brother found a couple of possible cuneiform tablets and was wondering if anyone could tell us whether or not they are be real. There's not a lot of information for them, a few question marks, but that's about it.



You guys rock!

Thanks,

Erin

 

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Where's the translation note from?
Might want to see if you can get ahold of the guy who wrote it.

 

Cool artefact, Erin, But all I know about them is that they have that distinctive 'wedge-shaped' script and are from Mesopotamia. Hope they are real.

 

You could have fooled me, Erin. I thought the second one is a warranty certificate for a General Motors chariot.

Thanks for posting them.

Chris

 

I havent handled any of these for many years, so I really cant say, but they look fine to me from the photos. I suggest you track down Frank Kovaks. His wife is an expert and has translated the Epic of Gilgamesh from the original tablets (and published it afterwards). I dont have his e-mail, but maybe you can look.

 

Very cool! Where did he find them?

 

Thanks for the responses everybody!

These are currently for sale on eBay, so my brother hasn't bit the bullet yet. He's been interested in cuneiform tablets for a while. He's just afraid of buying something that isn't real.

Erin

 

I think Doug learned to read those in elementary school.

 

HELLO,

They look quite good, best is to make them a little bit wet / moist on a sport and smell if they are coming from a old cave if there is no smell, then they are not old, terracotta is a difficult business.
SO I see you do not have them..yet...so can not test it...

 

spot I mean

 

I know there is a lot of people who wholeheartedly believe in the smell or taste test. It is kind of like religion. Either you believe or you dont. But, I dont subscribe to the taste or smell test. Very few in the world do (but those who do hold to that idea to their dying breath), but with the internet an idea can take hold and become what many see as 'fact'. After all, there are aliens, bigfoot, the illuminati, right????

 

The last two look fine to me. I've seen a couple in real life.

 

Here's mine. There are tons of reproductions out there, I would be extremely cautious buying these off eBay. For me, even 1% doubt robs me of the joy of owning a piece like this. I had a scholar translate it for me as recorded below.

Cuneiform Students Exercise Tablet 112mm x 100mm 583 gram

"The tablet is certainly a student’s exercise text that was part of his school work to teach him to read and write Sumerian around the year 1800BC, long after Sumerian had died out as a spoken language. In particular, this exercise was to teach all the Sumerian vocabulary dealing with food items. When complete, the list probably had over 500 entries. As part of their training, students had to memorize long lexical lists containing everything from plants and animals to metal objects, textiles, types of professions, body parts etc. These lists of vocabulary words were fairly standardized throughout Southern Babylonia at this time, so that you find many tablets containing the same entries, not always in the same order, but usually pretty close. Of course, some students were better than others, so some tablets contain more mistakes and some are written in messier script. Your tablet seems to have been written by a fairly good student, although there are a number of deviants from the standard version of the food items list.

The obverse of your tablet is the side with 3 columns and wide rows. The obverse represents a new part of the word list that the student is learning. In this case, each column repeats the same section of the list, so the student had a chance to practice it over and over. Unfortunately, not much is preserved on the obverse - just several different types of barley including “white barley” and “black barley.”

The reverse contains a much larger section of the list that the student had already memorized, and is just practicing here. This side is divided into 4 columns, the first column is almost entirely broken. The second column contains a list of different types of beer including “beer mixed with water,” “market beer,” “beer that foams like soap”, and “sweet beer.” Column three contains types of soup, most of which are not known from other versions of this list and will take more work to decipher, and types of fragrant plants, most of which are plants that we cannot identify."

 

Awesome tablet, Nemo! That's great that you were able to get it translated.

Thanks for all the responses, everyone. They are very much appreciated!

I think my brother is going to skip on these just because he has no experience with cuneiform and wants to be absolutely sure that what he gets will be authentic.

Have a great night, all!

Erin