Language, Translation, and Commentary in Cuneiform Scribal Practice

Cuneiform scholarly practices systematized an exploration of mean- ing potential. In cuneiform scholarship, knowledge making emerged from multiple scribal practices, most notably list-making, analogical reasoning, and translation. The present paper demonstrates how multilingualism stands at the core of cuneiform scholarly inquiry, enabling hermeneutical exploration of possibility and potential. Cuneiform scholarly practices of translation and analogical hermeneutics coupled with an understanding of the cuneiform writing system constituted a system analogous to the medieval artes grammaticae