See Also: Humboldt River(encyclopedia)
Humboldt Pie Cafe(tourism)
Humboldt Capital(finance)
Humboldt (as used in expressions)(encyclopedia)
Humboldt County Memorial Hospital(health)
Alejandro de Humboldt National Park(tourism)
Humboldt, (Karl) Wilhelm, baron von(encyclopedia)
Humboldt, (Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich) Alexander, Freiherr (baron) von(encyclopedia)
cuneiform(dictionary)
cuneiform(dictionary)

cuneiform writing (sh) and Humboldt River (sh)


cuneiform writing (sh)




System of Writing employed in ancient times to write a number of Languages of the Middle East.

The original and primary Writing material for cuneiform texts was a damp clay tablet, into which the scribe would press a wedge-shaped stroke with a reed stylus. A configuration of such impressions constituted a character, or sign. Proto-cuneiform signs Dating from งใ 3200-3000 BC were drawn rather than impressed and were largely pictographic (see pictography), though these features were lost as the script evolved. A single cuneiform sign could be a logogram (an arbitrary representation of a word) or a syllabogram (a representation of the sound of a syllable). The first language to be written in cuneiform was Sumerian (see Sumer). Akkadian began to be written in cuneiform งใ 2350 BC. Later the script was adapted to Other South Asian Languages. Cuneiform was slowly displaced in the first millennium BC by the rise of Aramaic, written in an alphabet script of Phoenician origin. Knowledge of the value of cuneiform signs was lost until the mid-19th century, when European scholars deciphered the script.


Humboldt River (sh)




River, northern Nevada, U.S. Rising in Elko county, it flows west and southwest for 290 mi (467 km) to Humboldt Lake (also called Humboldt Sink).

Named by John C. Fremont for Alexander von Humboldt, it was an important route for emigrants going from Salt Lake City to the goldfields in central California.