Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

, the Sumero-Akkadian

Cuneiform script Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-s ...

is covered in three blocks in the

Supplementary Multilingual Plane In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...

(SMP): * U+12000–U+123FF

Cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...

* U+12400–U+1247F Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation * U+12480–U+1254F

Early Dynastic Cuneiform Early Dynastic Cuneiform is the name of a Unicode block of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), at U+12480–U+1254F, introduced in version 8.0 (June 2015). It is a supplement to the earlier encoding of the cuneiform script in the t ...

The sample glyphs in the chart file published by the Unicode Consortium show the characters in their Classical Sumerian form ( Early Dynastic period, mid 3rd millennium BCE). The characters as written during the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, the era during which the vast majority of cuneiform texts were written, are considered font variants of the same characters.

Organization

The final proposal for Unicode encoding of the script was submitted by two cuneiform scholars working with an experienced Unicode proposal writer in June 2004. The base character inventory is derived from the list of

Ur III The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century BC ( middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians consider t ...

signs compiled by the

Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) is an international digital library project aimed at putting text and images of an estimated 500,000 recovered cuneiform tablets created from between roughly 3350 BC and the end of the pre-Christian er ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

based on the inventories of Miguel Civil, Rykle Borger (2003), and Robert Englund. Rather than opting for a direct ordering by glyph shape and complexity, according to the numbering of an existing catalogue, the Unicode order of glyphs was based on the Latin alphabetic order of their 'main' Sumerian transliteration as a practical approximation.

Block

Signs

:''See also list of cuneiform signs.'' The following table allows matching of Borger's 1981 and 2003 numbering with Unicode characters (after Anderson'
sign list
) The "primary" transliteration column has the glyphs' Sumerian values as given by the official glyph name, slightly modified here for legibility by including traditional assyriological symbols such as "x" rather than "TIMES". The exact Unicode names can be unambiguously recovered by prefixing, "CUNEIFORM UMERICSIGN", replacing "TIMES" for "x", "PLUS" for "+" and "OVER" for "/", "ASTERISK" for "*", "H" for "Ḫ", "SH" for "Š", and switching to uppercase.

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation block:

References

*Rylke Borger, ''Assyrisch-Babylonische Zeichenliste'', 2nd ed., Neukirchen-Vluyn (1981) *Rylke Borger
''Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon''
Münster (2003). *

Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. H ...

, Karljürgen Feuerherm, Steve Tinney
"Final proposal to encode the Cuneiform script in the SMP of the UCS"
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2786 (2004).

External links

cuneiformsigns.org
by Lloyd Anderson
Cuneiform Unicode.org chart (PDF)

Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation Unicode.org chart (PDF)

Font packages

Akkadian
(reproduces the Sumerian (3rd millennium BC) glyphs given in the Unicode
reference chart
, b
George Douros

(branched off

FreeSerif GNU FreeFont (also known as Free UCS Outline Fonts) is a family of free OpenType, TrueType and WOFF vector fonts, implementing as much of the Universal Character Set (UCS) as possible, aside from the very large CJK Asian character set. The p ...

), encodes some 390 Old Assyrian (2nd millennium BC) glyphs used in Hittite cuneiform. {{Unicode navigation Cuneiform