楔形文字片：肝脏预兆的碎片 - 美国大都会艺术博物馆展品查阅

品名（中）	楔形文字片：肝脏预兆的碎片
品名（英）	Cuneiform tablet: fragment of a liver omen
入馆年号	1886年，86.11.378b
策展部门	古代近东艺术（Ancient Near Eastern Art）
创作者
创作年份	公元前 500 - 公元前 1
创作地区
分类
尺寸	2.5 x 2.25 x 1 英寸 (6.35 x 5.72 x 2.54 厘米)
介绍（中）	大约在公元前3300年，文字的发明是行政技术的许多发展之一，包括使用几何代币进行计数和使用圆柱印章来保证交易，这些发展伴随着美索不达米亚南部第一批城市和州的发展。原始楔形文字是最早的书写形式的名称——在泥板上绘制的象形文字。渐渐地，象形文字被抽象成楔形文字（拉丁语，"楔形"）标志，这些标志是印象而非绘画的。从叙利亚地中海沿岸到伊朗西部，从赫梯-安纳托利亚到美索不达米亚南部，楔形文字的使用范围最广。它被改编成至少15种不同的语言。最后一个确定日期的楔形文字的日期对应于公元75年，尽管该文字可能在接下来的两个世纪里继续使用这块泥板碎片记录了对祭祀绵羊肝脏状况的观察得出的预言——这是一种促进神圣世界和人类世界之间交流的占卜方法。正文从左到右，描述了肝脏的不同特征，以及它们对军队在战斗中取得成功的意义。Extispicy（肝占卜）是古代近东的一种著名做法，虽然泥板上记录的预兆最初可能是基于对事件和肝特征的综合观察，但许多占卜文本中包含了自然界中不太可能观察到的事件，这表明预兆列表代表了一种抽象的哲学思维。
介绍（英）	The invention of writing in approximately 3300 B.C. was one of many developments in administrative technology--including the use of geometric tokens for counting and cylinder seals to guarantee transactions--that accompanied the growth of the first cities and states in southern Mesopotamia. Proto-cuneiform is the name given to the earliest form of writing--pictograms that were drawn on clay tablets. Gradually, the pictograms became abstracted into cuneiform (Latin, "wedge-shaped") signs that were impressed rather than drawn. At its greatest extent, cuneiform writing was used from the Mediterranean coast of Syria to western Iran and from Hittite Anatolia to southern Mesopotamia. It was adapted to write at least fifteen different languages. The last dated cuneiform text has a date corresponding to A.D. 75, although the script probably continued in use over the next two centuries. This fragment of a clay tablet records prognostications derived from observations of the conditions of the liver of sacrificial sheep – a method of divination that facilitated communication between the divine and human worlds. The text, which reads from left to right, describes different features of the liver and what they mean for the success of an army in battle. Extispicy (liver divination) is a well-known practice in the ancient Near East, and while omens recorded on clay tablets may originally be based upon the combined observation of events and liver features, many divination texts include occurrences that were unlikely to have been observed in nature, indicating that omen lists represent a type of abstract philosophical thinking.