The clay tablets found here turned out to be a thousand years older than the Sumerian
In 1961, the scientific world spread the news of an archaeological sensation. No, the thunder of a great discovery did not come from Egypt or Mesopotamia. An unexpected find was discovered in Transylvania, in the small Romanian village of Terteria.
What amazed the scientists? Perhaps they stumbled upon a richest burial like the tomb of Tutankhamun? Or was it a masterpiece of ancient art before them? Nothing like this. But first things first.
Approximately 20 km. from Terteria is the Turdash hill. An ancient settlement of farmers of the Neolithic period is buried in its depths. The hill has been excavated since the end of the 19th century, but has not been completely excavated. Even then, the attention of archaeologists was attracted by pictographic signs drawn on the fragments of vessels.
The same marks on the shards were found in the neolithic settlement of Vinca in Yugoslavia, which is related to Turdash. Then scientists considered the marks as simple hallmarks of the owners of the vessels. Then the Turdash hill was not lucky: the stream, having changed its course, almost washed it away. In 1961, archaeologists appeared on the Terteria hill.
The work of scientists was nearing completion … And suddenly, under the lowest layer of the hill, a pit filled with ash was discovered. At the bottom there are figurines of ancient gods, a bracelet made of sea shells and … three small clay tablets covered with pictographic signs. Dismembered and charred bones of an adult were found nearby.
When the excitement subsided, the scientists carefully examined the small tablets. Two were rectangular, the third round. The round and large rectangular tablets had a round through hole in the center. Careful research has shown that the tablets were made from local clay. Signs were applied only on one side.
The writing technique of the ancient Terterians turned out to be very simple: drawing signs were scratched with a sharp object on wet clay, then the tablet was burned. Everyone was excited by these tablets.
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For they were dotted with mysterious drawing signs, strikingly reminiscent (as the author of the outstanding discovery himself, the Romanian archaeologist N. Vlass himself noted) the Sumerian pictographic writing of the late 4th millennium BC.
Come across such tablets in the distant Mesopotamia, no one would be surprised. But the Sumerian tablets in Transylvania! It was amazing.
But another surprise awaited the archaeologists. The found tablets turned out to be a thousand years older than the Sumerian ones! It remained only to guess: how almost seven thousand years ago, far beyond the glorified ancient Eastern civilizations, where it was not expected at all, the most ancient (to this day) letter in the history of mankind came to be?
In 1965, the German Sumerologist Adam Falkenstein suggested that writing arose in Terteria under the influence of Sumer. M. S. objected to him. Hood, proving that the Terteria tablets have nothing to do with writing at all.
He argued that the Sumerian merchants once visited Transylvania, it was their tablets that were copied by the natives. Of course, the meaning of the tablets was not clear to the Terterians, however, this did not prevent them from using them in religious rituals.
There is no dispute, the ideas of Hood and Falkenstein are original, but there are also weaknesses in them. How to explain the gap of a whole millennium between the appearance of the Terterian and Sumerian tablets? And how can you copy something that doesn't exist yet? Other experts associated the Terterian writing with Crete, but here the gap in time reaches two millennia.
And what about the signs? The first - rectangular - has a symbolic image of two goats. An ear is placed between them. Perhaps the image of a goat and an ear was a symbol of the well-being of the community, which was based on farming and cattle breeding? Or maybe this is a hunting scene, according to N. Vlassa? It is curious that a similar plot is found on the Sumerian tablets.
The second plate is divided by vertical and horizontal lines into small sections. Various symbolic images are scratched on each of them. Are these totems?
By the way, the circle of Sumerian totems is known. And if we compare the drawings on the Transylvanian tablet with the images on the ritual vessel found during excavations in Jemdet-Nasr, an amazing coincidence will again strike the eye.
The first sign on the Sumerian tablet is the head of an animal, most likely a goat, the second depicts a scorpion, the third, apparently, the head of a person or a deity, the fourth symbolizes a fish, the fifth sign is some kind of structure, the sixth is a bird.
Thus, it can be assumed that the tablet depicts totems: "goat", "scorpion", "demon", "fish", "depth-death", "bird".
The totems of the Terterian tablet not only coincide with the Sumerian ones, but are also located in the same sequence. What is this, another striking accident? Most probably not. Graphic coincidence of signs could be accidental, science knows such coincidences.
Strikingly similar, for example, are individual characters of the mysterious writing of the proto-Indian civilization of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa with the characters of the kohau-rongo-rongo writing of the distant Easter Island.
But the coincidence of totems and their sequence is hardly accidental. It suggests the origin of the religious beliefs of the inhabitants of both Terteria and Jemdet-Nasr from one common root.
It seems that the researchers hold a kind of key to deciphering the writing of Terteria: not knowing what is written, they already knew in what sequence they should read. Therefore, the inscription can be deciphered by reading it counterclockwise around the hole in the plate.
Of course, we will never know how the language of the inhabitants of Terteria sounded, but we can establish the meaning of their figurative signs based on the Sumerian equivalents.
The Russian expert-Sumerologist A. Kifishin, having analyzed the accumulated material, came to the following conclusions: The Terteria tablets are a fragment of a widespread local writing system; the text of one tablet lists six ancient totems that coincide with a "list" from the Sumerian city of Jemdet-Nasr, as well as a seal from a burial site belonging to the Hungarian culture of Keresh; the signs on this plate should be read in a circle counterclockwise; the content of the inscription (if it is read in Sumerian) is confirmed by the discovery of the dismembered corpse of a man in the same Terteria; the name of the local god Shaue is identical to the Sumerian god Usm. This tablet was translated as follows: “In the fortieth reign, for the lips of the god Shaue, the elder was burned by ritual. This is the tenth."
Written characters are inscribed on a round tablet, separated by lines. Their number in each square is small. This means that the writing of the Terteria tablets, like the archaic Sumerian writing, was ideographic, syllable signs and grammatical indicators did not yet exist. If we apply the Kifishin method, then the translation of the inscription reads as follows: "The four rulers of the face of the god Shaue, the elder of the deep mind burned one."
What is the meaning of the inscription? Again, a comparison with the above-mentioned document from Jemdet-Nasr suggests itself. It contains a list of the chief priestess sisters who led the four tribal groups. Perhaps the same priestess-rulers were in Terteria?
But there is another coincidence. In the inscription from Terteria, the god Shaue is mentioned, and the name of the god is depicted in the same way as among the Sumerians. Yes, apparently, the Terterian tablet contained brief information about the ritual of burning a priest who had served a certain period of his reign.
So who were the ancient inhabitants of Terteria, who wrote "in Sumerian" in the 5th millennium BC, when there was no trace of Sumer himself ?! Ancestors of the Sumerians? Some scholars believe that the Pra-Sumerians broke away from the Pro-Kartvelians in the 15th-12th millennia BC, leaving Georgia for Kurdistan. How could they have passed on their writing to the peoples of South-Eastern Europe? This is an important question. And there is no answer yet.
When the excitement associated with the tablets subsided a little, they also remembered the forgotten signs on the Turdash-Vinci shards. They compared them with the Terterian ones: the similarity was obvious.
And that says a lot. The writing of Terteria did not arise from scratch, but was an integral part of the widespread in the middle of the 6th - beginning of the 5th millennium BC. pictographic writing of the Balkan culture of Vinci.
Of particular interest is a large ritual jug dating back to the early period of the Wingcha culture. On it we see a drawing, probably of the appearance of the sanctuary, and this image, again, is very reminiscent of the sanctuary of the ancient Sumerians. Another coincidence? But the two sanctuaries are separated from each other for almost twenty centuries!
It turned out that the ancient inhabitants of the Balkans had a significant impact on the culture of Asia Minor. The connection of the Turdash-Vinci culture with it is especially well traced by pictographic signs on ceramics.
Signs, sometimes completely identical to the Vinchan ones, were found in the legendary Troy (early 3rd millennium BC). Then they appear in other regions of Asia Minor. Distant echoes of Vinci's writing are contained in the pictographic writing of ancient Crete.
One cannot but agree with the proposal of the archaeologist V. Titov that the primitive writing in the Aegean countries has its roots in the Balkans of the 4th millennium BC, and did not at all arise under the influence of the distant Mesopotamia, as some researchers previously believed.
In addition, it is known: the creators of the Balkan culture Vinci in the 5th millennium BC. broke through Asia Minor to Kurdistan and Khuzistan, where the Pra-Sumerians settled at that time. And soon in this area a pictographic proto-Elamite writing appeared, equally close to both Sumerian and Terterian.
So what, the inventors of the Sumerian writing are not the Sumerians? Indeed, how else can one explain that the oldest writing in Sumer, dating from the end of the 4th millennium BC, appeared quite suddenly and already in a fully developed form? All Sumerian scholars have paid attention to this paradox.
A study of the laws of internal development of Sumerian pictography shows that by the end of the 4th millennium BC. pictographic writing as a system was in a state of decay rather than becoming.
Of the entire Sumerian writing system (numbering about 38 thousand signs and variations), a little more than 5 thousand were used, and all of them came from 72 ancient symbolic nests. The process of polyphonization (that is, the difference in sound of the same sign) of the nests of the Sumerian system began long before that.
Polyphonization gradually eroded the outer shell of a complex sign in whole nests, then destroyed the inner design of the sign in half-decayed nests, and, finally, completely destroyed the nest itself.
The symbol nests broke up into polyphonic beams long before the arrival of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. It is curious that a similar phenomenon is observed in the proto-Elamite writing, which existed simultaneously with the Sumerian one on the coast of the Persian Gulf.
The conclusion suggests itself unequivocally: the Sumerians (like the Babylonians) were only good students, adopting the pictographic writing from the Balkan peoples and further developing it into cuneiform.
But what do the Terterian tablets still conceal? There is no direct answer yet. But it is clear: only the study of the entire complex of cultural monuments of Turdash-Vinci, to which Terteria also belong, can bring us closer to solving the mystery of the three clay tablets.
Based on the article by B. Perlov "Living Words of Terteria" and the journal "News of Archeology"