Contemporary Cuneiform Script
Toine Klaassen
Untitled, 2005
This work consists of rusty nails put on the ceiling composing the names of different global corporations like Shell, Pentax, Texaco, BMW….
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The 196th Law (“an eye for an eye..”) of Hammurabi, King of Babylonia, using graphics, in three different modes of cuneiform script, illustrating the evolution of signs over time. The first is the original Old Babylonian version (around 1750 BC), the second is in Neo-Assyrian signs (around 1000 BC), and the third is in the classic Sumerian signs used about 400 years before Hammurabi’s reign. Below that follow a transliteration into Akkadian and a translation into English.
Original Old-Babylonian
Neo-Assyrian
Classic Sumerian
Transliteration
šumma awīlum īn mār awīlim uḫtappid īn šu uḫappadû
English
If a man the eye of a son of man destroys eye his they will destroy.