Printing Cuneiform

Frige · Nov 13, 2013

In and around Mesopotamia people used cylinder seals to impress a mark and also wrote on cylinders, the most famous example afaik is the Cyrus Cylinder.

When I saw cylinders with texts written on them recently, I kind of assumed that these would be used to impress copies of texts in the same way that you roll a cylinder seal

and I don't know if this was actually done, like ever.

Is this a technology with any potential?

Carl Schwamberger · Nov 13, 2013

In theory. A lot of technical details, which mostly revolve around need. Having printing at any time depends on perceived need, not just for printing itself but for the associated technologies, like the media the printing is made on. I really dont know how all that plays out 5,000 years BP, but the devil is in the details.

katchen · Nov 13, 2013

And that detail is paper to print on. At the time cuneiform is being produced, the Chinese don't even have paper yet, but are writing on oracle bones and impressing what they wrote on molten bronze. The Mesopotamians frankly don't have enough enough bulrushes to make a lot of papyrus. Not much point printing if a cow or a sheep or a human being must sacrifice it's skin to create the medium for the printed word.

carlton_bach · Nov 14, 2013

It could (and most intuitively would) be printed on clay, I suppose. The question is, what is the situation where you need the ability to quickly mass-produce clay tablets with a specific text? The technology is practically already there, all you need is someone to scale it up.

Magnum · Nov 14, 2013

carlton_bach said:
It could (and most intuitively would) be printed on clay, I suppose. The question is, what is the situation where you need the ability to quickly mass-produce clay tablets with a specific text? The technology is practically already there, all you need is someone to scale it up.

Maybe the state is in dire straits and invaded by a hostile power. The King ventures forth with his army and achieves an unlikely victory. He needs however to send word back home, as revolt is already brewing. However, he doesn't really trust his messengers, and so has his words quickly printed on the clay tablets for all to read ?

carlton_bach · Nov 14, 2013

Magnum said:
Maybe the state is in dire straits and invaded by a hostile power. The King ventures forth with his army and achieves an unlikely victory. He needs however to send word back home, as revolt is already brewing. However, he doesn't really trust his messengers, and so has his words quickly printed on the clay tablets for all to read ?

I doubt that building the printing equipment would be quicker than having it written down manually. Cuneiform is a very quick writing system once you know it (it takes forever to learn, though).

Maybe a liturgical function? Certaion specific texts needed to carry out specific rites? I don't know enough about the details of Mesopotamian society to figure out what could create that kind of demand.

chornedsnorkack · Nov 14, 2013

Why has OTL printing never used clay plates?

People are making prints from engraved wood plates (woodcut), engraved or etched stone tablets (lithography), engraved or etched copper and steel plates... Why not ceramics?

carlton_bach · Nov 14, 2013

chornedsnorkack said:
Why has OTL printing never used clay plates?

People are making prints from engraved wood plates (woodcut), engraved or etched stone tablets (lithography), engraved or etched copper and steel plates... Why not ceramics?

Pressure. Ceramics don't react well to pressure. You can use wet clay as a printing medium if you don't hasve anything better, but hard ceramic is spectacularly poorly suited to being used as type.

chornedsnorkack · Nov 14, 2013

Handwriting by cuneiform still has the same liability to scribal errors on copying as any handwriting. It does have the advantage that unlike paper, handwriting on soft clay can be erased and overwritten; but it still takes effort of doublechecking and cross-checking to ensure that copies do not differ. As expected, cuneiform documents do contain scribal errors.

Prints do not even need to be mass produced to be useful. How about making just 1 print - namely, write 1 copy of a contract on clay, and then make 1 print on papyrus? Because the print is a print, it is authomatically proven that the copy will not contain a copying error making it different from the original - any scribal error in the original will have been faithfully printed, and the contracting parties can rest assured that the text of their respective copies (clay original and papyrus print) is the same, warts and all.

January First-of-May · Nov 14, 2013

chornedsnorkack said:
Handwriting by cuneiform still has the same liability to scribal errors on copying as any handwriting. It does have the advantage that unlike paper, handwriting on soft clay can be erased and overwritten; but it still takes effort of doublechecking and cross-checking to ensure that copies do not differ. As expected, cuneiform documents do contain scribal errors.

Prints do not even need to be mass produced to be useful. How about making just 1 print - namely, write 1 copy of a contract on clay, and then make 1 print on papyrus? Because the print is a print, it is authomatically proven that the copy will not contain a copying error making it different from the original - any scribal error in the original will have been faithfully printed, and the contracting parties can rest assured that the text of their respective copies (clay original and papyrus print) is the same, warts and all.

How about making a copy on a cylinder "seal", and printing both copies on clay?
And by that, I mean "I'd be surprised if it hadn't been done IOTL". The use of cylinder seals that made imprints on clay was well-established already when cuneiform was invented; and this isn't exactly on-topic, but IIRC Indus Valley "inscriptions" were also often made in multiple copies (supposedly there's even one inscription that is known in like 40 copies, which significantly skewed a good amount of statistics on Indus Valley script).

Simreeve · Nov 14, 2013

carlton_bach said:
The question is, what is the situation where you need the ability to quickly mass-produce clay tablets with a specific text?

Taxation forms?

chornedsnorkack said:
Prints do not even need to be mass produced to be useful. How about making just 1 print - namely, write 1 copy of a contract on clay, and then make 1 print on papyrus? Because the print is a print, it is authomatically proven that the copy will not contain a copying error making it different from the original - any scribal error in the original will have been faithfully printed, and the contracting parties can rest assured that the text of their respective copies (clay original and papyrus print) is the same, warts and all.

1 copy on papyrus for each signatory to the contract to take away, with the original on clay filed at a temple or law-court in case of dispute?

carlton_bach · Nov 14, 2013

Simreeve said:
Taxation forms?

It worked for medieval Europe, but I don't think they had those in ancient Mesopotamia. I'm also not sure that the concept of 'form' (as in 'fill in the....') works for clay. You'd have to re-moisten the dotted lines.

1 copy on papyrus for each signatory to the contract to take away, with the original on clay filed at a temple or law-court in case of dispute?

It's a good idea, though I wonder how it would work in practice. Do you set type for each contract? Or would you have a type 'form' that you added the pertinent phrases (parties, object, sums, date) by hand? In the latter case, I think papyrus would be unnecessary (and costly). You could just give both parties a clay tablet and fire the reference copy before archiving it. I'm not sure that people did this,m but if they did, it makes a good starting point.

chornedsnorkack · Nov 14, 2013

January First-of-May said:
How about making a copy on a cylinder "seal", and printing both copies on clay?
And by that, I mean "I'd be surprised if it hadn't been done IOTL". The use of cylinder seals that made imprints on clay was well-established already when cuneiform was invented;

Cylinder seals tended to be engraved in hard stones. Making cylinder seals was laborious, expensive and time consuming work. This was not a problem when the seal was used over long time to authenticate many clay tablets with different content by the same author; but producing a seal with a new text and image quickly and cheaply would be a problem.

Falecius · Nov 14, 2013

chornedsnorkack said:
Cylinder seals tended to be engraved in hard stones. Making cylinder seals was laborious, expensive and time consuming work. This was not a problem when the seal was used over long time to authenticate many clay tablets with different content by the same author; but producing a seal with a new text and image quickly and cheaply would be a problem.

Would bronze seals work?

Somes J · Nov 14, 2013

If you're thinking of ancient printing in clay, that actually happened. See the Phaistos Disk.

It didn't really go anywhere because of a combination of technological and social reasons; there wasn't really a big advantage to the technique in the context of that kind of society. Jared Diamond talked about it in Guns, Germs, and Steel.