Goes to show indeed. Thanks for the addition and the kind words.

Thought you’d be interested to know (if you even come this far back, and see these old comments) that the word for ’sun,’ in Hebrew, is an even closer ’shemesh.’ Those are soft e’s, as in bed. Goes to show…

It took over a decade to become a scribe in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It’s still incredibly difficult (or so I’ve heard) to learn Chinese writing (which still has thousands of characters). Whereas it only took me a week to learn and recognize the shapes and sounds of the Spanish, Runic and Greek alphabetic writing systems. (Of course, learning all their vocabulary is a different matter.) And anyone can learn another phonetic writing system, and even a workable vocabulary, in about a year of concerted effort.

Thus, the writing of the Mesopotamians and Egyptians was only available to a select few, while the writing of the Jews and Greek was available to most everyone. Pictures can be subjective if you haven’t memorized them all, but an alpha just says “ah” and that’s it.

For another example, my students are adept at writing their notes in class in such a way that I can’t decipher them using a complicated system of pictographs, symbols and some phonetic writing that would have made the Egyptians weep with frustration and Chinese green with envy. The specific purpose of writing in such a way is to keep me out of the loop.

Kesters last blog post..Excerpts from "Rebellion" from "The Brother’s Karamazov" by Dostoevsky

Why do you say that phonetic writing systems promote greater democracy? Wouldn’t they be less accessible?

Thanks. Regarding “worshiping on the heights,” I actually don’t disagree. Many of my favorite OT figures and Christians weren’t necessarily tied to temple worship. David danced naked before the ark. many of the monastic, at least the eremetic, saints lived in the middle of nowhere out in nature. St. Francis was effulgent about his pan-en-theism. And the so-called “Celtic Christians” gained a reputation for worshiping in nature. One of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, says in one poem: “The earth is charged with the grandeur of God …”.

That said, in almost all religions it seems that the official worship happened inside and was well-regulated. The top level of the ziggurat was only accessible by the priests and that was where the god lived. It seems that “worship on the heights” has always, and in all places, been the place that the layman spoke to God/the gods.

I am an armchair philologist. I love the history of words and, of all the far-distant roots, the PIE culture and language is the most interesting to me. As for cuneiform, I like to immerse my students in the culture we’re studying as long as we’re studying it. So, we make our own pictographic writing system and, eventually, turn it into an alphabetic one. While learning about Mesopotamia, they (try to) memorize the prologue to the Enuma Elish in ancient Sumerian (assuming my pronunciation is correct) and write letters to each other in cuneiform. Stuff like that. Anyway, I learn some stuff while researching for lessons.

What I find endlessly interesting is the juxtaposition of pictographic and phonetic writing systems. I find the pictographic ones more interesting, although the phonetic ones seem to promote greater democracy. And how would one translate pictographs when, say, the cuneiform sign for “dingir” can be star, sun, heaven, god, or Anu? It does kind of support your theory that man becomes the ultimate arbiter of the meaning when translation is so contextual. Perhaps that is why the Hebrews preferred phonetic systems, so that the word mean the word and only the word (not that they didn’t end up putting their own spin on things as well.)

I think about stupid stuff, too. Like, the phonograph is not a great technological advancement. Really, it would have been easily made using the technology of the Sumerians. What if, instead of a writing system, they had recorded everything? How would that have changed the culture?

Finally, regarding Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, although those aren’t my favorite parts either, I expect they were the favorite parts of the Mesopotamians. And they’re ALWAYS the parts they include in juvenile literature or social studies books.