Irving Finkel

So they could have had signs that started out, because if you decided you had, we have 26, let's say they had 50 signs that would create the sound.

They could write anything without any further trouble.

So I find it very bewildering that they started off with the least flexible and the least adaptable system of pictographs, and then they moved on to the sound.

I don't know why they bothered with it.

And my hunch is...

that the archaeological evidence that we have on this score is ultimately misleading.

Because I think this, that probably for a very, very long time before the Sumerians, people in the world, the world of what we call the Middle East, were in contact, they traded, they probably even had wars, and they had messages between them.

And I think there was a long-running system of communication between people who didn't share a language.

for whom pictures would suffice.

So if merchants come and they have three sheep to sell, so they draw three little sheep, you know how much it is and what they are and so forth.

And so I think that what happened with the Sumerians, with their pictographic signs, is that those signs are right at the end of a very, very, very long period of time when somebody thought,

What we can do is take these stupid, inhibited, no smoking signs and write language.

That is what I think happened.

That's what I think happened.

Highly controversial.

Many Assyriologists would leave the room.

Yeah.

But I'm not scared of controversy because it's natural.

I mean, if you think about it, it's natural because you don't have to have an alphabet to divide your word into sounds.

See, for example, in Sumerian...