Forums » Epic Week 2023 » Ancient Symbol (SOLVED)

This topic is for discussing clues and potential answers to the Ancient Symbol in Epic Week 2023. Please stay on topic. Remember, these riddles are designed to be challenging and require a group of people brainstorming together; don't feel intimidated if you don't know the answer right away. Every little idea can help. Research is not cheating; it is expected!

Click here to visit the location of the Ancient Symbol

Cuneiform is wedge script!

The British stole it and put graffiti on the blank face...

Oh, it was a fork all along. LOL
I don't know what it could be. Asked my friendly coder friend and they suggested zero.

Hm hmmm. The Achaemenid royal inscriptions are sort of like a cuneiform version of the Rosetta Stone; they held cuneiform transcriptions of three different languages, and were one of the first things that were code-broken and translated into modern English.

The Achaemenid inscriptions is definitely a very solid guess.
Wedge script definitely refering to cuneiform. 'Where old and new meet' could absolutely be refering to the translation of Babylonian and Elamite into English. Only problem is that the inscriptions are in plural, which means there are several different ones, which could make it quite difficult to extract a solid answer.
I was thinking "first location in code" might refer either to the place or origin, or potentially the first location that's mentioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu

hmmm??? knowing that code can mean coda, or bit of communication

(i would also guess hammurabi, but as mentioned above there are so many things that are 'first' codas, and hamham i think was for judiciary / merchant regulation??)

i read wedge script as like... scripting ahahaha. not ancient though. WEDGE, from python? bueller? bueller? (has nothing to do with firsts either i don't think, but then mathematics ARE pretty dang ancient)

The Rosetta Stone is damaged and the text looks like a triangle, or wedge - Wedge Script.

Where old and new unite could talk about the way that it has several ancient languages carved into it as well as Modern English on a 4th side.

The place it is named after Rosetta, aka Rashid, Rosetta stone is also a program to help people learn languages, a program is coded?

I haven't tried ANY of these ideas because of monsters!

Yeeeah, we're gonna be stuck on this one for a bit while there's that big hulking lizard in the way.

Maybe the first location in code refers to line 1.

According to the Wikipedia article on the Achaemenid inscriptions, when multiple languages appear together, the privileged position is usually occupied by the Old Persian inscription, at the top when arranged vertically. That could correspond to line 1 in code, so maybe the answer is Old Persian?

I think one of the cuneiform inscriptions are definitely our best bet for the answer. The Rosetta Stone is a good candidate, but I find it very unlikely that "wedge script" is not referring to cuneiform, since that is a name for that very system. It's most likely some kind of ancient inscription, due to both the name and the symbol.
"First location in code" might either refer to the place [the inscription we are looking for] was found, a location mentioned in the text, or the first sentence in the inscription.
I think we mostly agree that "where old and new meet" refers to the translation of one ancient language to English, right?

So for whoever is awake when the Big Bad Lizard goes down, I think our current guess list is:
- Rosetta
- Rashid
- Old Persian
- Hammurabi
- Code of Ur-Nammu
- Hamadan
- Achaemenid
Or anything related to those.

Actually, "first location in code" *might* mean that we're looking for an answer in an entirely different (wedge) script, so if you've got plenty of time, feel free to try:
- 𐎠𐎼𐎡𐎹 (Ariya - Old Persian name for their own language)
- 𐏃𐎥𐎶𐎫𐎠𐎴 (Hangmatāna, where the first Achaemenid inscription was found)
- همدان(Hamadan, --||--)
- 𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶 (Xšaçam, Old Persian for the Achaemenid Empire)

I have actually come up with similar results as Ildben and tried a few of these already. Though Ur-Nammu (Ur-Namma) has an alternate spelling and I did not apply "Code of" in my guess.

This was one I had been studying off and on for the better part of a few days. I don't have access to my laptop and unfortunately there's work and on top of that I got heckin' sick right at the beginning of Epic Week, so my participation has been spotty.😭

I found something the other day though that I was researching right as I was about to hit the hay that I wanted to look more into. It's the whole "where old and new unite" that got me thinking that it was possibly something to do with linguistics. I mean, symbols can have meanings in multiple ways -- that in itself sounds convoluted, but in my head I kinda, sorta know what I mean. Because what are letters but symbols, right? 😅

Either way, I've had fun with this one. It's right up my alley. We'll keep hackin' away at it though!

I like the idea that this may refer to the Code of Ur-Nammu or the Code of Hammurabi. In regards to the "first location" clue: the first copy of the Code of Ur-Nammu was fount at Nippur in what is now Iraq. The stele on which the Code of Hammurabi is inscribed was found at Susa in present-day Iran. So I would recommend these guesses as possibilities:

- Nippur
- Susa
- Ur
- Uruk
- Akkad
- Babylon
- Babylonia
- Mesopotamia
- Iraq
- Iran

Code of Hammurabi or Code of Ur-Nammu is a much better suggestion than "the answer needs to be in cuneiform" haha. Although I'm not entirely sure where the "where old meets new" fits into those.

The first location mentioned in Ur-Nammu is Ur. The first location mentioned in Hammurabi is technically Heaven followed by Earth, but the first proper place is Babylon, so those might be the most likely guesses.

I tried all the suggestions from my previous post, and none worked. I also tried Sumer, Sumeria, Tigris, and Euphrates (but not "Tigris and Euphrates"; maybe I should try that).

The first location in code makes me think of "index" 🤷‍♂️

Okay, so the answer is not in cuneiform, because the website coding itself just breaks if you submit it haha
It's also seemingly none of the answers in the previous couple of posts

Could this have something to do with the way the writing is positioned, rather than how it is shaped? Maybe there's a triangular object with writing all around it in a physical triangle?