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Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form.
The original Mesopotamian writing system was derived from this method of keeping accounts, and by the end of the 4th millennium BC, it had evolved into using a triangular-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus, called cuneiform. Also in that period, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers, and this script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, Akkadian, and from there to others such as Hurrian, and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.
The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions are the Narmer Palette, dating to c.3200 BC, and several recent discoveries that may be slightly older, though the glyphs were based on a much older artistic tradition. The hieroglyphic script was logographic with phonetic adjuncts that included an effective alphabet. The world's oldest known alphabet was developed in central Egypt around 2000 BC from a hieroglyphic prototype, and over the next 500 years spread to Canaan and eventually to the rest of the world.
The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto-Caananite script in around the 11th century BC, which in turn borrowed ideas from Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was a writing system in which only consonants are represented. This script was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs to represent their vowels. The Cumae alphabet, a variant of the early Greek alphabet gave rise to the Etruscan alphabet, and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet and Runes. Other descendants from the Greek alphabet include the Cyrillic alphabet, used to write Russian, among others. The Phoenician system was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew and Arabic scripts are descended.
Definition
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form.The original Mesopotamian writing system was derived from this method of keeping accounts, and by the end of the 4th millennium BC, it had evolved into using a triangular-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus, called cuneiform. Also in that period, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers, and this script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, Akkadian, and from there to others such as Hurrian, and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.
The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions are the Narmer Palette, dating to c.3200 BC, and several recent discoveries that may be slightly older, though the glyphs were based on a much older artistic tradition. The hieroglyphic script was logographic with phonetic adjuncts that included an effective alphabet. The world's oldest known alphabet was developed in central Egypt around 2000 BC from a hieroglyphic prototype, and over the next 500 years spread to Canaan and eventually to the rest of the world.
The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto-Caananite script in around the 11th century BC, which in turn borrowed ideas from Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was a writing system in which only consonants are represented. This script was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs to represent their vowels. The Cumae alphabet, a variant of the early Greek alphabet gave rise to the Etruscan alphabet, and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet and Runes. Other descendants from the Greek alphabet include the Cyrillic alphabet, used to write Russian, among others. The Phoenician system was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew and Arabic scripts are descended.
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Articles
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This paper proposes an analysis of writing as a system for communication, since its origins, in terms of its uses and socio-cultural context. We shall also look to review and comment on the way in which it has evolved in time and space and its primordial domains for expression. Likewise, we shall look...
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Once the largest library in the ancient world, and containing works by the greatest thinkers and writers of antiquity, including Homer, Plato, Socrates and many more, the Library of Alexandria, northern Egypt, is popularly believed to have been destroyed in a huge fire around 2000 years ago...
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The cuneiform script proper emerges out of pictographic proto-writing in the later 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first documents unequivocally written in the Sumerian language date to the 31st century, found at Jemdet Nasr.The Sumerians...
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Writing is undeniably one of humanity's most important inventions. The earliest forms of storing information on objects were numerical inscriptions on clay tablets, used for administration, accounting and trade. The first writing system dates back to around 3000 BC, when the Sumerians developed the first...
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Links
- La naissance de l'écriture: Sumer et le début de l’histoire
http://archeologie.suite101.fr/article.cfm/la-naissance-de-lecriture - Les hiéroglyphes hittites: Une deuxième écriture pour un même peuple
http://archeologie.suite101.fr/article.cfm/les-hieroglyphes-hittites
Recommend Book
Writing Books
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W. W. Norton & Company (11 July 2005)Price: $17.82 -
Penguin Classics (30 November 2004)Price: $11.16 -
www.gordopolis.com/writing (18 March 2011)Currently unavailable -
Penguin Classics (25 June 2002)Price: $10.88 -
Hendrickson Pub (01 September 1980)Price: $10.07
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Timeline
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3200 BC
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2285 BC - 2250 BCLife of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad, and world's first author known by name.
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c. 1900 BC - c. 1600 BCComposition of The Descent of Inanna.
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c. 1640 BC - c. 1700 BCWritten form of the Atrahasis Myth of the Great Flood.
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1100 BC
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c. 1000 BCDeath of Ahiram (or Ahirom) of Byblos, whose sarcophagus bears the oldest inscription of the Phoenician alphabet.
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c. 647 BC - c. 627 BCExtensive collection of clay tablets acquired known as Ashubanipal's Library at Nineveh.
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