3. Selecting Clay

Any non-rubbery clay can be used for writing (i.e., do not use Playdough or clay made of flour and salt).

For beginners all you need is plasticine clay (i.e., nondrying oil based clay, as made by Crayola, etc.). All-purpose craft stores have neutral and natural colored plasticine clays.  

For more advanced work, one can use clays that dry. For permanent projects I use regular potter's or modeling clay that is fireable. This can also be bought at craft stores. 

You'll find that this type of clay is more susceptible to nuances in stylus pressure. Because this clay dries, you can also let it dry out a bit to write smaller cuneiform signs (dryer clay allows for writing shallower and hence smaller signs). This type of clay also shrinks when it dries and thus creates artful contours in the signs (see the image here as well as here). You can also experiment with big projects in this type of clay. This type of clay allows you to preserve your work.  

While potter's clay is fireable, it is not necessary to fire any of the tablets that you make using it. It air dries hard enough to last, and is durable enough if the tablets don't get knocked around excessively (and if your dog doesn't eat them--really, this happened to me; the dog did eat my homework). In antiquity, the majority of everyday tablets were not fired. 

Further reading:

On the modern firing of cuneiform clay tablets for preservation, see:

Thicket, David; Marianne Odlyha; and Denise Ling. "An Improved Firing Treatment for Cuneiform Tablets." Studies in Conservation 47/1 (2002): 1-11.

1. Introduction

The instructions given in the posts on this blog reflect my own technique of writing cuneiform, learned mainly from my teacher, Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, at the University of California, Berkeley, but modified by my experience. The technique (i.e., the stylus used and the order of writing the signs) may not reflect exactly how cuneiform was written at every point in antiquity. Over the three millennia of writing cuneiform techniques evolved, so it is difficult to specify one correct technique. But this provides a good starting place on which you can build.

These instructions allow modern students to employ another mode of learning to help cement the learning of cuneiform signs. You'll sense that you are using a different part of your brain and advantageously so.   

Writing out two-dimensional cuneiform signs on paper with pen or pencil can be a time consuming process. The three-dimensional production of cuneiform in clay actually takes much less time once the basic techniques are learned. A student might find writing cuneiform in clay rather therapeutic. It allows disengagement from modern technology to ply natural material in the act of writing.

Writing in clay not only helps one learn the signs, but also allows a student to become attuned to the limitations of the medium and the types of mistake scribes might make and thus be able to better judge the nature of irregularities on ancient tablets.

The focus in this blog will be on Akkadian Neo-Assyrian signs, but the technique can be used for all periods of Akkadian as well as other cuneiform languages, including Sumerian, Ugaritic, and Hittite. One might find it easier to start writing characters from the Ugaritic alphabet and from there graduate to the logo- and syllabographic cuneiform of the other cuneiform languages. 

Unfortunately this technique requires writing with the right hand. A left handed technique may be possible, but I am not sure how this would be done. It may be possible to write with a left hand by rotating the tablet 90 degrees clockwise so that one writes a line from the top to bottom, like the direction of lines and signs in the bands ("columns") of Hammurabi's law stele. All the instructions in this blog would have to be adapted accordingly.