Getting to Grips with Ancient Scripts

Having thoroughly enjoyed Mr Owen’s talk on the nature and decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Young and Champollion, this week our Third Year Scholars turned their hands to another ancient writing system, that of cuneiform. After listening to an introduction on the Behistun Reliefs and their importance to decoding the writing system used by the Babylonians and Sumerians, our scholars created their own clay tablets on which they inscribed the names of Assyrian kings, such as Ashurbanipal, using a reed stylus. This is ahead of their trip to the British Museum in December, where they’ll come face to face with the Rosetta Stone and many artefacts showing the cuneiform script, including the Cyrus Cylinder. This week also sees the Fifth Year Scholars heading to the British Museum to see these artefacts!