Customer Reviews

The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I put this book at the top of my wish list, hoping to find in it a history of the development of writing in Sumer and a description of how the writing system operates. Instead I found a long-winded, repetitive discussion in the French philosophical tradition of the nature of reality and whether writing is a "different language" than speaking. More than half the book is spent deriding other French authors. The main thesis of the book, delivered with great rhetorical finesse and little or no evidence, is that writing did not develop gradually but was "invented" suddenly as a full-blown system.

The title of the book should be "Writing in Sumer before the invention of cuneiform". The author's erudition shows everywhere in this book, however, the text is much too chatty and I found it extremely tedious (and I am very interested in the topic). At half its length it would have been too long. Trivialities are being treated in epic detail. Many statements are obscure and unsupported by evidence. Because of my deep interest I read the whole book, but it was a waste of time. It seems that I had to give it one star, but I would have preferred to rate it with no stars.

Jean-Jacques Glassner, a French Assyriologist, titled this book "The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer." Although this book was written by him in French, the translated title is an exact translation of the French. Unfortunately, this book barely discusses the stated topic at all.

Let me start out by saying that the translators, both Assyriologists at Columbia University, did a superb job in translating this book into English. They both performed admirably at translating Glassner's often obtuse, hyper-literary style of French. There were only a few times in the book that I could "feel" that the sentence was translated.

However, other than the translation, I must agree with the other reviewers that this book is not going to prove useful or interesting to most, unless you are a French Assyriologist. The book's title would clearly lead one to believe that this book is going to be about the development of writing in Sumer. That is not what this book focuses on. The first indication of this is in the translators' preface, where they write "It is perhaps better to call Glassner's work a genealogy of writing, rather than a history, seeking writing's antecedents, rather than its origins." Sadly, there is more in here about philosophy than about Sumerian cuneiform.

Glassner seems to write only for an audience of his fellow French Assyriologists. Indeed, his style is very similar to that of his colleague Jean Bottero. While the book should be about Mesopotamian writing and its origins, he spends more time discussing linguistic theory and philosophy than anything else. If you are not familiar with de Saussure, Derrida, and Foucault, as well as a general background in linguistics and particularly French linguistic philosophy, do not bother reading this book. Glassner also assumes that you are familiar with the classics and French literature. I often had the impression that the author wanted to impress us by showing us just how much he knows, regardless of how relevant a statement is to the topic.

To label the different cuneiform syllables that represent the same phoneme Assyriologists use super and subscripts, as well as lower and upper case letters. However, Glassner bizarrely does not discuss this at all. He routinely makes a statement, and then fails to follow it with any discussion or justification.

There appears to have been no serious editing of the book, nor any attempt to make this book more accessible to an audience of those who aren't Assyriologists with training in French linguistic philosophy.

The book appears to have had no serious editing or other work done on it to make it more readable or accessible to non-specialists. Unfortunately, there is little available for the non-specialist in Assyriology. While there are many books for non-specialists on, for example, Greco-Roman studies, Mesoamerican studies, and Egyptology, sadly there is little for the lay audience in Assyriology.

I strongly recommend that you do not spend your time or money on this book.