"And that was the business of punching... pickaxe one to the other. And when three cubits remained to be pierced, the voice of one was heard shouting to another... on the day of the breaking, the stonemasons cut one against the other, pickaxe against pickaxe, and the water went from the entrance to the pond to 1200 cubits and 100 cubits was the height of the rock above the head of the stonemasons..."

(Siloam Tunnel near Jerusalem, 8th century BC)

Many of the ideas that came to Igor Mikhailovich Diakonov's attention and were developed by his students gained significance, became better and more interesting than the original idea. The scale of his personality carried him beyond mere observation. This was also the case with my last work, in which his participation was supposed to be longer than it turned out. A connoisseur of Oriental scripts, a polyglot and a born historian, Igor Mikhailovich was interested in everything that pushed the boundaries of established constructions. The desire to get rid of the stencils of writing history using the "reverse perspective" technique led to unexpected results for both of us. They require detailed analysis, and in the summary that is offered here, they should only draw attention to the key issues.

The manuscript of this small book was created in the last half-year of the life of Igor Mikhailovich Diakonov, the only expert on cuneiform cultures who received training as a semitologist not only from A. P. Riftin, but also from the Arabist N. V. Yushmanov, a brilliant systematizer of Latin scripts of the world, a linguist of the widest range of knowledge.

In our detailed development of the materials of the Mesopotamian exhibition of the State Hermitage Museum, all texts illustrating the history of Middle Eastern writing are considered in reverse order compared to the chronological sequence adopted for the excursion display. We start with the later customs tariff of Palmyra (Tadmor) with its bilingual text and move further "into the depths of the centuries". This technique of "reverse perspective" allows us to capture the essential elements of fixing oral speech consistently, as they were established in scribal practice and later mastered by multilingual scribal schools of the Middle East, not only in cuneiform, but also in other graphics. First, a description of the methods of articulation of oral speech is given, then it is established where they came from (1).

The basis of the interrelation of scribal schools in their difficult, step-by-step progress towards an increasingly adequate transmission of a living language is only discernible when considering the features of writing without breaking away from the eventful canvas, which dictates the choice of means of fixing the language from the systems already known to scribes with the adaptation of their principles to the transmission of their own special colloquial speech. This fact was revealed with particular conviction when processing the archive of the Turkmen Nisa. In its materials, an Aramaic "blank" was found, which contains Iranian words and phrases. The inclusion of foreign-language lines in the Aramaic "blank" is exactly the same as the development of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, a writing system, by the Hurrian scribes of Zagros

1. The use of "blank" is inherent in extremely economical cuneiform texts in their constructions, the formula of which was formed in the Sumerian sample.

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significantly more complex than the Aramaic graphics adopted by the Iranian-speaking Parthians.

The penetration of Indo-Iranian onomastics into the foothills of Zagros (Hurrian Arrap-ha) and the Taurus Mountains, as well as into the repertoire of the names of the royal dynasty of the military-administrative center of the Hurrian state of Mitanni, is documented. The experience of mastering cuneiform writing by Hurrians precedes the experience of the scribal school of Aramaic graphics, which adopted the methods of encoding colloquial speech from the Hurrian scribal school that preceded it. The latter, in turn, relied on the techniques of mastering the Sumerian script to transmit spoken Akkadian, a script structurally completely unsuitable for Semitic languages due to the lack of emphatic and guttural consonants.

In the Assyrian empire, the Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform script functioned in parallel with the Aramaic script, whose popularity outside the elite structures of the empire is known and is explained by the simplicity of Aramaic graphics compared to the brilliantly developed, but very complex cuneiform system for fixing the mountain languages of Zagros and Taurus, which are foreign to the Two Rivers.

Documented contacts between multilingual cultures in the Middle East do not begin with attempts at administrative unification, but rather with circumventing the blocking of international relations. With the emergence of the Early Sumer dynasties, i.e. from about the XXVII century BC, there is an active revival of the Aegeida in the western direction - a significant shift in the history of the ancient world, marked by the inclusion of the Cyclades in a single system of interconnected ancient civilizations. The rise of the villages of the Iranian plateau in the east of the Ecumene, Transcaucasia in the north, and the oases of Arabia in the south is recorded by archaeology long before the early dynastic era of Sumer. Contacts between these regions, which were formed in the deepest antiquity, continued to exist in the future, not due to forced associations, but bypassing and starting from them.

The earliest forms of writing noted by archaeologists-accounting chips made of clay-were found in all the foothills bordering the Fertile Crescent, and date back to the Mesolithic era (IX-VIII thousand BC). The nodal points of the accumulation of chips correspond to the centers of development of special written traditions. Many millennia later, each of these centers will receive its own accounting documentation in its own language, accompanying the formation of the distribution systems of separate states.

All the monuments of the Mesopotamian exposition, not only in the Hermitage, but also in other museums around the world, represent the history of writing in the Middle East of the ancient era entirely in stone and ceramics - two of the most durable materials. However, these two materials do not exhaust what was used for composing texts in the Middle East in ancient times, especially for everyday correspondence, memoirs and religious and poetic works. It is possible to find traces of other materials due to the preservation of terminology related to scribal writing in ethnography outside the ancient era.

Information about these other materials is discussed in a recent article by M. Marakten (2). The article allows us to compare our observations on the peculiarities of Semitic epigraphy with the author's proposed clarifications regarding the terminology of written genres in connection with the use of various materials for writing. Maracten's classification opens the way to understanding the mysterious phenomena noted in the literature on the history of writing and which have not yet found an explanation. Comparisons that are far in time are acceptable both because of the stable natural features of the territory and the ethnic roots of its inhabitants, who still preserve the languages of the same Semitic-Hamitic (Afrasian) language community.

Mention among the accepted terms of scribal writing in Arabia and such as:

2. Maraqten М. Writing Materials in Pre-Islamic Arabia//JSS. 1998. 43. 2. P. 287-310.

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They are known from cuneiform texts of the third and second millennia BC, which allows us to use the finds of Marakten for further development of our plot. Among these terms for various types of texts, Marakten, referring to dictionaries and works of semitologists (without specifying the chronological framework for the use of terms - the latter was added by us), names three of the most important terms for us: 1) le'u -Akkadian term for a legal document (Arabic: lawk); 2) sepum - Akkadian term for a document in the form of a book page or scroll (Arabic: sahifah); 3) tuppum-Sumero-Akkadian term for a votive table (Southern Arav. tf).

The list includes both soft materials, the earliest of which are Sumerian leather scrolls KU?. GID. DA, noted during the reign of the Amorite dynasty, and hard materials, including bone, stone and metals. It seems to us that clay (ceramics) was a popular substitute for leather, bone, stone and metal in the territories of settled peoples, and palm leaf cuttings (sahtfah I sepum) were used in the territories associated with the oases of nomadic tribes. This last point needs to be clarified.

The graphics of archaic accounting notes preserved in the form of clay chips and tags throughout the foothills bordering the Fertile Crescent suggest that a completely different material was originally used for these earliest examples of writing (VIII millennium BC). The fact is that clay does not tolerate rounded lines that leave burrs, so wedge-shaped signs (pressure and straight line) were established on clay tablets.

The archaic hand-drawn signs of Proto-Sumerian records from the end of the fourth millennium BC date back in part to the mentioned signs on clay chips and tags. We assume that in the south, the tags were originally made from palm branches without a leaf. On such a fresh billet for a tag, as Marakten writes, you can scratch a sign of any shape.

The hybrid Sumerian-Arabic isogloss gisimmaru (giS + tmr) stands for date palm. The corresponding sign reproduces the main features of the plant with the utmost realism: not only fruit bundles are shown, but also the teeth of branches without a leaf. This drawing of the sign on a tablet from the archive of pre-dynastic Uruk is repeated in a schematic rendering of its cuneiform variants for the periods of Old Babylonian, Middle Babylonian, New Babylonian and New Assyrian, with constant emphasis on the meaning of not only fruits, but also the denticles of branches without a leaf, shown by many slanting strokes, especially emphasized in archaic Sumer and in the Old Babylonian period, from which the terms for scrolls as business documentation material that uses this other, throwaway, note-taking material.

Unlike clay, palm tags made from trunk appendages are a light material and are still used by Yemeni and Hijaz Arabs to make notes about everyday affairs. When the stem of a palm leaf dries, it is written on it in ink, as on papyrus or parchment. Among the texts found during the excavations of Tell el-Amarna, there is a cuneiform clay tablet with a letter sent from Cyprus (ancient Alashia), on the back of which there is an indication of the Egyptian scribe from where the letter was received, in the form of lines written in black ink in cursive hieratics, known since the XIX century BC. This is not the only cuneiform sign with ink registration.

The Arabic designation of hihr ink allows us to use the Akkadian term (fc??)to explain the organization of scribal writing in Assyria hiburni, which can be interpreted as a "scriptorium" at the treasury of the city of Ashur, where Aramaic scribes worked. The presence of such a scribe when accounting for tribute is shown in the Assyrian relief from Til Borsip (opposite Karkemish - the Euphrates tribe)given in all books on scribal affairs: a scribe with a scroll stands next to another scribe who holds a cuneiform tablet.

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These light materials-leather, bone and palm leaf cuttings-explain, we think, the peculiarity of South Arabian graphics. According to the general recognition of writing historians, in their special forms of signs, the graphics of South Arabian texts are not reducible to the borrowing from Egypt assumed in science for the Semitic writing system as a whole. Moreover, the invention of writing, which is linked in its oldest examples to the accounting documentation of international exchange (D. Schmandt-Besserat), is connected, as it seems to us, not with agricultural centers, but with pastoral ones. They probably wrote on the skin of goats, sheep, cows, bulls, donkeys (Sumer, kus uz / udu, kus ablgu(d), kus ansu) and on the shoulder blades of these animals. Under the Seleucids, the shape of the clay tablet becomes flat, reproducing the scapula as the most popular writing material. However, the bone is preserved only in arid regions. Thus, the ivory lining of the palace chambers of Nimrud dropped into a 20-meter well turned into jelly, from which very little was extracted and restored.

Excavated in Northern Mesopotamia on the edge of the steppe, the settlement of Umm Dabagiya (VI millennium BC), which flourished for about five centuries, specialized in catching onagers and processing their skins. The development of this craft, therefore, is rooted in deep antiquity, incomparably earlier than the samples of classical writing available to science.

The ink could be obtained from the same types of paint as for painted and black-flattened ceramics (metallurgists ' soot). The highest rise of the Pre-Asian painted ceramics occurred in the 5th millennium BC.

The written record of speech, which has been studied through discoveries in Sumer and Egypt, represents a very advanced stage in the development of writing, which must have had a very long prehistory.

Cuneiform archives, crucial for reconstructing the earliest history of Mesopotamian writing, have been opened in Uruk, the center of the Southern Two Rivers ' cattle-driving industry. Samples of documents presented at the Mesopotamian exhibition for all eras, starting with the oldest stone tablet and ending with the Seleucid text of a prayer addressed to the Great night gods, originate from Uruk. The profile of cuneiform tables, whether stone or clay, retains the convexity of the turnover inherent in flat-convex bricks-a sign of the sacredness of the document. (Plano-convex bricks have come down to us from excavations in the foothills of Zagros; such bricks are laid obliquely, row by row "herringbone" - this protects the building from earthquakes, which are frequent in mountainous regions).

Stone and baked clay are eternal materials, which is why the term for the table, tuppum-South Arabic r/has been preserved as a designation for a votive table addressed to eternity. Initially, and in parallel with these materials, we think that bone and leather were used. The fate of the letter of the Prophet Mohammad to a certain Arabian tribe, commented on by Marakten, is remarkable: the text was washed away, and the skin was used to make cups. Leather is a valuable material that could be reused; bone and palm tags burn well, unlike clay tablets that have come down to us in such large quantities, because their material is eternal and of no value.

Parchment is known for Egypt in the Ancient Kingdom, when Memphis (HikuPtah) was considered the center of the pastoral Delta - the city that gave the whole country its name. Just like it was with Ashur, the treasury center for international trade in the Two Rivers. In the entire Middle East, parchment was the most popular writing material along with leather. The transition to italics of Egyptian scribes in the 19th century BC is associated, from our point of view, with the increasing role of diplomatic letters in international business correspondence. They cannot be lapidary, like an accounting document or a business order.

The transition to italics took place, as we think, not only due to the peculiarities of papyrus, but also in connection with the development of much more common material.

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for writing parchment. The graphics on parchment are technically the same as those on papyrus.

The Semitic term for parchment rqq means "thin". The meaning of the root emphasizes the essence of the difference between parchment and leather, which allows you to repeatedly wash off the text and use this material for any daily needs. On the parchment, the washed-out text can be read. This material is not suitable for anything other than writing. The term for parchment takes into account the technology of obtaining exactly thin skin. Parchment production was famous in Yemen and the Hejaz. The best parchment was made from the skin of a gazelle.

White gummed silk, which was used for writing in India, reproduces, as it seems to us, the parchment of Arab oases. From here, from Southern Arabia, in our days the purest glue - gum arabic-was sent to the international exchange.

For sealing parchments served as seals-stamps. It is this form of printing that distinguishes the glyptics of the entire mountain environment of the Fertile Crescent, especially the Hittite and Urartian territories. On leather or parchment, perhaps, they wrote in hieroglyphs known among the Hittites and Urartians from samples that have survived for science in carving on seals and in bronze stamps.

Among the huge number of independent scripts of the second millennium BC, which multiplied "like mushrooms", according to I. E. Gelb, the Ugaritic letter occupies a special place.

In Ugarit, a Syrian city connected by trade relations with Crete, the most systematic of Semitic syllabaries was invented in the middle of the second millennium BC. e., adapted for the Hurrian language-the second most important in the cultural realities of this seaside center. A sample business document was mastered by the Ugarites in the Akkadian language and in the traditional cuneiform material, on clay. Therefore, the same material was used for duplicating the Akkadian model of accounting and legal acts drawn up in one of the West Semitic languages, dictating the wedge-shaped form of signs.

The simplest combinations of the four basic elements of cuneiform writing: vertical, horizontal, oblique, and angled wedge are extremely important. The possibility of manipulating simple elements is available to cuneiform, which broke away from the drawing very early, and is not available not only to hand-drawn Egyptian hieroglyphics, but also to cursive hieratics derived from it: a moment essential for the history of scribal schools, which, according to the tradition established before the discovery of Ugaritic archives, is not taken into account when reconstructing the history of the alphabet.

To restore the most important link in the history of writing, the most significant feature of the Ugaritic alphabet is in the transmission of vocalizations: in addition to the aleph, which opens all alphabets without exception, the Ugarites added two more signs with hamza, "i" and "i", at the end of the list of signs, in addition to "mater lectionis" - semi-vowels "w" and "j"! In the Akkadian list of signs, there were already special signs for the aspirated "h", "hamza" and "w", but with any vocalization, only the Ugarites fixed almost all three main vowels, taking the last step towards inventing the alphabet itself. (For the vowels "o" and "e", pharyngals were used in their footsteps in Akkadian cuneiform, which did not have special signs for pharyngals, but noted their presence in colloquial speech precisely by changing the vocalization.) The vowel present in the syllabic reading of the sign was discarded, while the vocalization was transmitted by a separate special sign, which preserved in pronunciation a slight laryngeal attack, without which Semitic languages could not do without (just as Caucasian languages could not do without expiratory pressure learned from Hurrian articulation).

The formation of written language as a living voice of culture at all the stages of development we have shown was based on a well-known model, using the techniques of dividing oral speech that are characteristic of it.

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"OASIS TADMOR" ON THE PROBLEM OF RESEARCH ON THE HISRORY OF WRITING

N.B. Jankovskaya

"Oasis Tadmor" (after the Palmira (Tadmor) customs tariff in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum) is a project of research on the history of writing, that began under the guidance and advice of Igor M. Diakonoff. The development of various systems of writing in the Near East is studied in the reverse chronological order, beginning from the Tadmor tariff, and as far as the most ancient Mesolithic counters. The present paper is a short outline of the above-mentioned research. It shows the realia of the writing systems' development, particularly the usage of different materials in the Semitic writing.

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