No, it really is coincidence that this and the last-bar one post here are both about cuneiform!

A year ago, I was in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, about which I wrote:

[There was] a surprisingly small number of explanatory labels. Actually, that's not entirely true: There was a lot of explanatory text on the artefacts; unfortunately it was all in Akkadian. I'm beginning to think I ought to teach myself cuneiform in the same way as I taught myself the Arabian alphabet, to look for Hebrew cognates (quite a few of which I was able to spot in transliterated names).

aviva_m then delighted me by getting me a copy of Assyrian Primer, an Inductive Method of Learning the Cuneiform Characters, by John Dyneley Prince, for my birthday. I duly set out to learn cuneiform, but didn't get very far, as it's very complicated. ( Read more... )