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7.3: Assignment

  • Page ID
    46488
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    Assignment:

    1. According to the article excerpt, what types of information were recorded in cuneiform inscription on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia?
    2. According to the article excerpt, what were the manufacturing methods by which the written clays were dried and preserved in ancient Mesopotamia?
    3. The culture of Mesopotamia were critically dependent on the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. What were the relation between these two rivers? That is, were they two branches of a same river with the same headwater? Were the two rivers with two separate headwaters but share the same floodplain? Were they two separate rivers with two separate headwaters and two separate floodplains?
    4. In the text "They Wrote in Clay", the author Edward Chiera describes the evolution of writing language from pictograph to ideograph and states that "the practice of efficiency" in inscribing the clay with the stylus play the dominant role in the evolution of the written language. Over time, how did the written language change in terms of shape and resemblance to objects?
    5. The article states that "[a]ll the clay cones contain various amounts of diopside. This suggests a differentiation of manufacture according to the purpose of the clay cones, which confirms the description in Chiera (1938)." From the text of Chiera (Chapter 2), identify the statements that verify this accordance of differentiation of manufacture.
    6. According to the article excerpt, "the identification of high contents of diopside is suggested to indicate thermal treatment rather than the use of a materials from a source other than Tigris and Euphrates sediments." Explain why high contents of diopside suggest thermal treatment of the clay artefact.

    This page titled 7.3: Assignment is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Likwan Cheng.