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As often happened in early 20th century archaeology, Wooley's crew was a bit sloppy handling the tablets they found: they boxed them up and took them home to tr
by OliverJones 5y ago
As often happened in early 20th century archaeology, Wooley's crew was a bit sloppy handling the tablets they found: they boxed them up and took them home to try to figure them out, corrupting their order. Kind of like, I suppose, reading a hard drive sector-by-sector without understanding the file system layout.
(Source: the ancient near eastern librarian at Penn State, Chuck Jones, who happens to be my brother.)
It's great that Dr. Killgrove and her team were able to find an actual story to tell from that trove. And an interesting story, too.
- pjmlp 5y ago> Kind of like, I suppose, reading a hard drive sector-by-sector without understanding the file system layout. More like dropping a stack of compiled cards for early computers.
- dredmorbius 5y agoMaking me realise the physical similarities of cuneiform and punch cards: standard media formats ("lentils" vs. cards), both marked via an impression tool (reed vs. punch). In columns, as it happens. The reeds were more expressive for individual marks, but the major concepts are highly similar. https://youtube.com/watch?v=XL0f3Kq1He4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=XL0f3Kq1He4 (Am now contemplating a Lentil Tabulating Company creating automated readers for an early Babylonian census, and resulting in an early Intertribal Babylonian Machines information monopoly.)
- pjmlp 5y agoQuite interesting, I wasn't aware of it, thanks for sharing. I bet copying and writing such tablets was a business back then.
- dredmorbius 5y agoGreat work if you could hack it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribe The equivalent of today's front-end engineers.