Cuneiform Writing

     Today for Social Studies I learned about Mesopotamia, which means between rivers, and the first Sumerian Emperor, Sargon. As an art project to go with it I thought it would be cool to write everyone in the immediate family's name in cuneiform. The picture above is of me writing in cuneiform. You may think it's so cool that I get to write in cuneiform during the school day, but, trust me, it's a lot more work than you may think. First we had to make the clay tablets. My mom did that. When she was done, I took the clay tablet to the computer and translated a person's name into cuneiform. Then I carved it into the wet clay. Trust me, it was really hard to erase when I made a mistake, and I kept running out of space on the clay tablet and my mom had to add more clay to the end. Once I was finished with all of them, my mom and I were both exhausted, and I'm still pooped.

     Now I'll tell you a little something about Sargon. Mesopotamia used to be divided into a bunch of different city states. They always fought between each other. There was one person, named Sargon, who wanted them all to live in peace. There is a bunch of stories about Sargon, but the one I'm going to tell you is about where he grew up and how he became emperor. Some people say that Sargon had no parents and that one day he floated down the Euphrates river in a basket when he was an infant. He got stuck in the reeds near the city of Kish. One of the servants of the King was down at the river getting water. He heard a sound, and the servant saw a basket stuck in the reeds. The servant looked down inside the basket and saw a little baby crying. The baby was Sargon. The servant took the baby up to the king and the king said that he could raise him. The boy grew up in the palace, and served the king wine everyday. The king trusted Sargon, but he shouldn't have. The king didn't know that he had the army on his side. One day Sargon ordered the army to kill the king. Once they killed the king, Sargon became king. He didn't want to be king of just one city. He wanted to be king of all of the cities. He fought the other cities to gain power. He fought 50 wars and finally he was in control of all of Mesopotamia. Some people didn't like Sargon being king. They wanted to have their own rules and their own laws like they had before. When Sargon heard about this, he ordered the army to start a military dictatorship, and some of the army lived in every city to make sure they followed Sargon's laws.