To quarters four hallo - 4000 year old hello world
The text below is “hello world” translated into Akkadian written in cuneiform script. Cuneiform is one of the earliest known forms of written expression, created on clay tablets using a blunt reed to create wedge shaped marks.
Q
4
H
I while ago Brain Suda did a great little post called “Welcome, the entire land” well worth a read. He was fascinated that Mike Stenhouse (London based UX designer) had a brief stint studying Egyptology. What better use for this cross-over skillset than to create a t-shirt that said, “hello world” in hieroglyphics. Ancient Egyptian does not quite have the vocabulary for “hello world” so after consulting the Egypt Exploration Society they came up with the translation “Welcome, the entire land”.
This project really made me smile and straight away I thought of a friend, Mark Weedon, who is an expert in Hittitology and Assyriology. This is the study of the archaeology and linguistics of ancient Mesopotamia.
The Akkadian translation he has provided me with is “to quarters four hallo”
| to | quarter | four | hallo | |
| Phonetic | a-na | kib-ra-tim | ar-ba-im | šul-mu-um |
The grammar of Akkadian is not the same as modern English so it may seem reserved. The literal understanding “four quarters” is “river banks”, being the expression for the whole world, frequently used by kings summarising the extent of their conquests. The word “hallo” is a basic form of greeting, connected with health and hail. So it can be read as “to the world, hello”.
Mark did offer up a translation in a later form of cuneiform script “Greetings to the Universe/Totality” according to Mark this translation is from a later time when the old superlatives had to be surpassed, and kings would call themselves “king of the universe”! We went with the earlier form although I do like the king of the universe.
So in the spirit of Brains project I am just about to order myself a t-shirt. I have put the artwork and web fonts under a creative commons license, so anyone can download and use them. If you do make any interesting use of the artwork, please let me know. Maybe you also know an ancient language expert who could add another hello world translation.
I would like to thank Mark (Dr Mark Weedon, British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at SOAS) for the translation and his time hand drawing the letters forms for me.