EBOOK BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andy Schmitt and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN LITERATURE
COMPRISING THE EPIC OF IZDUBAR, HYMNS, TABLETS, AND CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS
WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY EPIPHANIUS WILSON, A.M.
REVISED EDITION
1901
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION
The great nation which dwelt in the seventh century before our era on the
banks of Tigris and Euphrates flourished in literature as well as in the
plastic arts, and had an alphabet of its own. The Assyrians sometimes
wrote with a sharp reed, for a pen, upon skins, wooden tablets, or papyrus
brought from Egypt. In this case they used cursive letters of a Phoenician
character. But when they wished to preserve their written documents, they
employed clay tablets, and a stylus whose bevelled point made an
impression like a narrow elongated wedge, or arrow-head. By a combination
of these wedges, letters and words were formed by the skilled and
practised scribe, who would thus rapidly turn off a vast amount of "copy."
All works of history, poetry, and law were thus written in the cuneiform
or old Chaldean characters, and on a substance which could withstand the
ravages of time, fire, or water.
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