13 Facts About Assyrian cuneiform

Akkadian Assyrian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC.

The other languages with significant Assyrian cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian.

Early Assyrian cuneiform inscription were made by using a pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear Assyrian cuneiform".

Archaic Assyrian cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from the 23rd century BC .

Elamite Assyrian cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian Assyrian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Iran.

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The earliest known Elamite Assyrian cuneiform text is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BC.

Old Persian Assyrian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple Assyrian cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BC.

In 1700 Thomas Hyde first called the inscriptions "Assyrian cuneiform", but deemed that they were no more than decorative friezes.

Proper attempts at deciphering Old Persian Assyrian cuneiform started with faithful copies of Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, which first became available in 1711 when duplicates of Darius's inscriptions were published by Jean Chardin.

The set of characters that would later be known as Old Persian Assyrian cuneiform, was perceived as being the simplest of the three types of Assyrian cuneiform scripts that had been encountered, and because of this was understood as a prime candidate for decipherment .

The Egyptian inscription on the vase was in the name of King Xerxes I, and the orientalist Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin, who accompanied Champollion, was able to confirm that the corresponding words in the Assyrian cuneiform script were indeed the words which Grotefend had identified as meaning "king" and "Xerxes" through guesswork.

Besides the well known clay tablets and stone inscriptions Assyrian cuneiform was written on wax boards, which one example from the 8th century BC was found at Nimrud.

Studies by Assyriologists like Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin suggest that Assyrian cuneiform literacy was not reserved solely for the elite but was common for average citizens.