Friday, June 9, 2023

Service will convert your tweet into cuneiform, and inscribe it onto a clay tablet

Dumb Cuneiform:

It's simple: You send us your most ephemeral and worthless communications, and we'll carefully transcribe them into the most long-lasting medium known to man - a clay tablet. 

...

Are you for real?

Oh yes. We've made hundreds of these, and we'll make more. You'll really get it in the mail.


How do you make them?

By hand! We take real ceramicist-grade clay and create palm-sized tablets. We carefully translate your message, inscribe the cuneiform characters, and wait for them to dry. Then we heat the tablets to make the clay harden, and last longer.


How long does it take?

A couple of weeks. It takes a few days to wait for the tablets to dry, and then we heat, package, and ship them.


How long can my message be?

140 characters or less, like an old-school tweet.


Does it have to be a dumb tweet?

Any short message is fine, actually. A surprising number of our tablets are love notes!


Can I send it as a gift?

Sure. Just include their address as the mailing address - we'll send it directly to them.


So it's like what, Babylonian?

Old Persian, actually - used around 500BC. Cuneiform was used for thousands of years, but we like the visual appeal of Old Persian. We take the letters from your message and transliterate by syllable, as nearly as we can, into cuneiform.


Is this a translation? Or transliteration?

Good catch, smarties! Cuneiform is a writing system, not a language (like roman letters). We're transliterating - converting the syllables of your message to the cuneiform script - rather than translating.