Tablets, cuneiform

Opium use and abuse probably originated in the Mediterranean region, where it appears to have been cultivated in Neolithic villages at least 6,000 years ago. Its medicinal properties were described in medical texts written on cuneiform tablets. 

Long term burial of artifacts recovered in archaeological excavations often leads to friability, salt encrustation, physical damage, and severe corrosion. Field conservation is limited to such measures as are required to preserve the artifact until it may receive the attention of specialists in the museum laboratory. Typical conservation treatments for textiles, waterlogged wood, bone and ivory, cuneiform tablets, and cast and wrought marine iron are reviewed with particular emphasis on the effects such treatments may have on the subsequent technical examination of the artifact. 

In the following discussion a number of conservation methods commonly used to treat archaeological artifacts are examined for their eflFects on subsequent technical examination. The preservation of archaeological textiles, waterlogged wood, archaeological bone and ivory, cuneiform tablets, and marine iron are among the problems considered. 

Artifacts of unbaked clay recovered in archaeological excavations present a singular series of problems. If washed, they may turn to mud if left unfired, they may be damaged in transit. One particular class of material, cuneiform tablets, has received particularly severe treatment. Dowman describes accurately the general attitude (38). 

Organ, R. M., The Conservation of Cuneiform Tablets, British Museum... 

In antiquity, natural toxins were exploited to make poison weapons to wage the earliest forms of biological and chemical warfare. A wide range of substances, from toxic plants and venomous insects and reptiles to infectious agents and noxious chemicals, were weaponized in ancient Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, China, and in the Americas. Evidence for the concept and practice of toxic warfare can be traced back thousands of years. Eor example, cuneiform tablets from about 1200 bc record that the Hittites of Asia Minor deliberately drove plague victims into enemy territory. 

The Scythian population also migrated to Scandinavia and ultimately to Ireland. This began with the Assyrian captivity of the ten northern tribes of Israel in 741BCE to 721BCE. The Assyrians took twenty seven thousand people to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, which borders on Northern Iran. Cuneiform tablets of Sargon discovered at the ancient Assyria capital of Khorsabad, north of Nineveh record ... 

Through several papyrus discoveries in the lower Nile valley, and a cuneiform tablet with instructions for dyeing wool with Tyrian purple, found in Sip-par on the east bank ofthe Euphrates river and dated back to the neo-babylonian period (600-500 BC), as well as the writings of Vitruvius and Phny the Elder, we now know very well how Tyrian purple was manufactured and used in ancient times for dyeing - and how it was eked out and was the object of forgeries (Fig. 2.14). [36]... 

A cuneiform tablet with instructions for dyeing wool with Tyrian purple. 

The situation at Tell Brak, ancient Nagar, should provide sufficient warning about the limitations of this approach (see also Ristvet 2008). The discovery of cuneiform tablets from the site of Tell Beydar, ancient Nabada, revealed that site to be a subsidiary settlement of the polity of ancient Nagar, for which Nabada seems to have been regional coordinator of agricultural and pastoral production from a number of smaller sites. 

Materials from Distant Areas. Attempts were made to obtain ceramic materials from major areas where trade to Hesi could have originated. Much of the material for this purpose was borrowed from museum collections. From the Mesopotamian area 39 samples were analyzed. The material was mostly sherds, but there were also two bricks and six cuneiform clay tablets. The material ranged from third millenium B.C. to Islamic. From Iran, nine samples were obtained from sherds from several different areas. The sampling from Syria and Turkey was limited to 12 sherds from the Mersin-Tarsus area and 15 from Syria from the two regions of Aleppo and Hama. 

The first records, written on clay tablets in cuneiform, were from Mesopotamia and date from about 2600 BCE, while Egyptian medicine dates from about 2900 BCE, with the best known Egyptian pharmaceutical record being the Ebers Papyrus (1500 BCE). The Chinese Materia Medica has been extensively documented... 

The existence of bioactive compounds in plants and other natural sources has been known for millennia, with history recording the use of such poisons as hemlock, used by Socrates in his court-ordered suicide and the infusion of yew used by a Gallic chieftain to avoid capture by Julius Caesar. The medicinal use of natural products, particularly those from plants, is also very ancient. The first known records, written in cuneiform on hundreds of clay tablets, are from Mesopotamia and date from about 2600 BC. Amongst the approximately 1000 plant-derived substances that were used are some that are still in use today for the treatment of ailments, ranging from coughs and colds to parasitic infections and inflammation. Many codifications or what may well be called Pharmacopoeias were compiled in the next 4000 years, culminating in the publication in... 

The Elba Tablets of Tell Mardikh in north-western Syria, excavated in 1964, contain early Hebrew-Canaanite language in Sumerian cuneiform Exodus 21 24-25... 

Throughout human history, natural products, compounds that are derived from natural sources such as plants, animals, or microorganisms, have played a very important role in health care and prevention of diseases. For example, some of the first records on the use of natural products in medicine were written in cuneiform in Mesopotamia on clay tablets and date to approximately 2600 BC Chinese herb guides document the use of herbaceous plants as far back in time as 2000 BC Egyptians have been found to have documented the uses of various herbs in 1500 BC. 

The physician also used vegetable oils and animal fats as extractants and salves. Unfortunately knowledge of whatever curative value the herbal remedies may have had is lost because our physician— perhaps constrained by tablet size or the cumbersome nature of the cuneiform script— failed to record what diseases they were used to treat. Some of the therapeutic effects, however, may be surmised. For example, in the twelfth prescription, the physician advises ... 

One of the earliest-known examples of writing is a stone tablet with cuneiform symbols written by a Sumerian pharmacist (or the ancient equivalent) several thousand years ago. The prescription described the treatment for a hangover. 

What was different now were the three interrelated concerns of dispersal, order, and change brought into being by the Uruk expansion. The shift from tokens to tablets and the subsequent development of cuneiform is related to a greater degree of absence in economic and social relations than ever before. It may be understood as a strategy of integration in response to the absence... 

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