How To Write in Cuneiform

hi I'm Steve Turner and I'm gonna be teaching you how to write in Kanaya form according to the style of these Sumerians and the Acadians the Babylonians and the Assyrians and multiple other cultures throughout the ancient world we're gonna be making clay tablets just like Abraham used to make and so to do this exercise we're first of all need to use our stylist and and if you haven't yet already seen it then you need to watch the video where I show you how to make one of these for a very little amount of money so the first thing you need to do is you need to know the parts of this thing and so the first thing you need to do is find out where the writing tip is and so how to write with it basically or where to write it with it from so the first thing you need to know is this side here that is sharp is called the blade and for obvious reasons it's like a knife blade or something but we've build it down a little bit so it doesn't sharp and cut anybody then this top part here is called the poorest edge or the poorest end and finally you have on this side the glossed side and you can see it's a little bit shinier it's actually the outside of the bamboo whereas this side right here is called the fibrous side and that's because it's got the fibers from the inside and then finally this is called a spine or the spinal side and then the edge between the spinal side and the glossy side is called the spine just like a book spine or your back spine at the very tip of the spine is the writing edge now to find out where that is what you need to do is you need to take it and you want to hold it so the blade is facing to your right alright so if you're holding it up like this the blade is gonna be facing this way to your right not on the camera here but to your right and then the spinal side is going to be facing to your left the glossy side is going to be facing away from you towards the camera here alright and the fibers side is gonna be facing you so blade to the right glossy side out alright you're gonna hold it your right hand I know there's a lot of left-handed people out there I'm left-handed myself but the thing is you can't write in kanae form and left-handed and that's okay you're gonna find it's not hard to do even right and even if you are left-handed no big deal you could still do it alright so you're gonna hold it your right hand blade to the right glossy side out and then that means that this edge right here on the glossy side that's what you're going to write with so you want to choke up a little bit so that your thumb is right behind the glossy side and that's what we're gonna write with all right so for this activity you're going to need first of all some modeling clay and this is the type of modeling clay that I use this is white I think white clay you can use any color really doesn't make any difference I like the white I really like the great best of all just because it's not as messy as the brown is the brown is really messy and it I don't know it stains your hands or something it doesn't the stain doesn't last long though and then the big thing though is that the brown clay is a little bit tougher - it's not as malleable as the the gray and the white clay so either one of those twos the best you see it comes in a bag like this and clay is gonna cost you anywhere from 8 to 20 bucks so Saeng right here is like 20-some bucks at Joanne's craft store you can get a medic craft store or anywhere you want to pretty much I'm not even sure but Walmart might even sell them at this point who knows so another thing that you're going to need is you're going to need your stylus like we've already seen I want to use a bowl of water or a glass of water then the next thing you're going to do is use some paper towels because you're gonna need to wipe your hands off from time to time this is clay you're gonna get muddy and then also there's a sheet that is available on my website that has the Ugaritic alphabet okay so you're just gonna need your clay like dough and just what you're doing there is you're getting rid of any kind of air pockets that are inside now as you're doing this you're going to see that it's gonna start to dry out you get these nice little cracks there if that starts to happen then you just take your fingers take two or three fingers and just dip the tip of them into the water just very shallowly you don't want a whole lot of water on there you don't want these to get too slimy and then just start kneading it again again you don't want it to get too wet you don't want to become slimy or anything like that because it doesn't write very well now if you do get it too wet then just keep on kneading it for a while and it will end up drying out on you again a little bit until you get to the right consistency that you want all right so clay is dried out really bad [Applause] okay so once you're done kneading it then you want to start to shape it now clay tablets in ancient times were rectangular in shape and they weren't perfectly flat they weren't flat like this table is flat they were curved around the flat ends and so they were had a bit of a curvature of them now to achieve that and what you do is you see the palm of your hand is kind of curved in that same way so you take your dough your clay rather you put it in the palm of your hand right in the middle there right where the impression is take your other palm and put it in the same spot and then you just mash it together and you see you get a flat surface but it's not too flat you get that curvature see that and you also don't want it to be too thin you don't want to be paper thin or anything like that because then it'll snap in half really see this kind of size this kind of thickness will give you a good shape and I'll give you good strength as well and again they were rectangles kind of circular you can you can do any kind of shape you want to you can be circular if you do triangle you can do whatever you want they did several different shapes the most common type was rectangular so we're gonna do that today so to do that you just take your two fingers and just kind of shape it into a rectangle very very easy to do okay and then you can mash it down again what you did before and just keep doing that until you get the shape that you want okay once you have the shape that you want and this might take some time the shaping and the the kneading is probably the most difficult part of this entire exercise for the kids so I'll let them take their time with it and they may need to take some time and that's alright so once you get the shape that you need though then you see all these cracks here you're gonna go in and get rid of every one of those cracks all the way around on every side every edge everywhere because if you don't then once it dries it will split apart expand and especially if you put in the oven or in a kiln it'll explode on you in the Sun it'll just cause your problem that'll just pop and crack and that sort of thing you don't want that kind of thing so to do that you just take two fingers you dip them into the clay or into the water rather just again like you did before just the tip of your fingers not much at all and then you just start rubbing over top of the surface you use your fingers is kind of an eraser to erase all those cracks okay so as you can see I've gotten rid of all the cracks in my clay and we are ready to start writing on it thank you know every single edge there is no cracks all right so once you're started ready to start writing on it then there's one thing that you can do if you want to have a blank like this you just want to write the letters on there that's just fine if you want to create lines that you want to keep inside of you can take the the blade of your stylus and just use it to create those lines it's kind of I wouldn't get them too deep make sure but that will give you a nice straight edge that you can write your characters on it now this is something that the ancients commonly did not always but commonly and it helped them keep their character straight in their writing straight okay so the next thing you need to do is learn how to write so first thing again how to hold the stylus we saw this before remember the blade goes to your right and the glossy side is out and you're gonna write with just this tip right here now there are three types of wedges that you can make with kanna form the first one you're going to make just a triangle and it looks like this just like that and that's all that it is just a nice little triangle to do that you just take this edge here and the writing edge and you're just going to press it down into the clay and that's it you just make a little tick just like that and there you have your wedge simple isn't it all right the second one is going to be the same thing you're going to make a triangle with a tail on the end so to do that you're gonna do the same thing it's going to look like this actually it's what it's going to look like alright see how it's a little triangle with a tail on the end it's much longer so to do that you're just going to take your stylus you're going to just take your stylus just the tip there and just like with the chime you're going to push it in only this time you're going to lower the back like that okay so you push it in and lower and that's all you do so you have your tail now the final one is called a hook and what it looks like is this right here that last one right there alright so to make the hook instead of using the tip you're going to use the glossy side and you're gonna hold your stylus instead of holding it like this horizontal you're going to diagonally hold it just like this and you're just going to push the glossy side in at an angle so it makes it a little thing and that's it and those are the three types of wedges that you're going to make and with those three types of wedges you can make just about any kind of character that you want within Kanaya form that's it so you have your triangle you have your tail and you have your hook and that's all there is to it alright so the last thing that you can do is writing and this is a going to be the actual to activity once you teach the kids how to make the wedges and the different wedge types then you just start writing and what you do is you give them the sheet that's on my website that has the Ugaritic alphabet or you can also use a sheet that has different Acadian characters alright but in any case you're going to be using this with Tenaya form and what would i usually have them do is write their name or some kind of secret message in Kanaya form now the problem with the Ugaritic alphabet is that there are no vowels if you look at that sheet there are no vowels and it just like in Hebrew in fact Hebrew is based on Ugaritic alphabet or vice versa we're not really sure which one so what you can do is if you have any vowels the sheet that I gave you I added in a few vowels AE hi I think and you and I don't remember exactly how many but if there is a vowel in there and it's not on the sheet then just tell them to skip that vowel or they can make a vowel up or something like that the characters that I have that have vowels are not actually vowels they are simply like glottal stops and things like that which is something we don't have in English so I substituted and a vowel with them so they can put any vowel they want to pretty much in those and still be just fine so my name is Steve and I'm going to write my name in there so first character we have is s which is that right there s and the next one is T which is just a simple horizontal wedge with a tail and then finally V or I'm going to use the letter B here and then finally in now the great thing is is if you make a mistake like I just did with the end and all you need to do is take just the edge of your finger there just get it just a little bit wet and you can rub it right out you can erase it with your finger how cool is that all right and there we have Steven and then finally turn our tea I have a you there so I'm gonna use that Oh and then our there we go Stephen Turner that's pretty cool all right that's all there is to it and once you're done with your tablet then you can take it and you can either dry it in the Sun I usually leave it out for a few hours sometimes even a whole day or at least till nighttime anyway or if you're kind of impatient like I am you can take your oven if you're you know wife or husband will let you and you can heat it up to about 500 degrees and cook it in there for about 20 minutes and if you hear no popping sounds then you're doing good then it kept together all right so that's everything I have for you today and thank you and God bless you

Channel: Steven Turner

Views: 19,058

Rating: 4.9146667 out of 5

Keywords: cuneiform, clay, tablet, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Asssyrian, Ugaritic, Alphabet, writing, write, stylus

Id: NUC63rwtyJc

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018