the birth of the alphabet- writing system of language
TRANSCRIPT
Why did civilizations develop a system of writing?
to deal with the complex demands of a large population, such as tax collection, trade, civil/criminal laws, religion, technology, medicine, warfare, storytelling, and education.
Writing and Civilization
Writing and History
Writing is so important that historians consider the invention of writing to be the beginning of history. The period before writing is called, “pre-history.”
Think about all of the ways you encounter writing on a particular day……. How would life be different if our civilization didn’t have writing?
The Invention of Writing While modern spoken
language is believed to be over 40,000 years old, the first writing was invented in Mesopotamia about 5000 years ago, most likely to record financial transactions.
Later, Egypt (3100 BC), the Indus Valley civilization (2500 BC), Crete (1900 BC), and the Chinese (1200 BC) created their own written languages.
Sumerian cuneiform tablet
Mesopotamia Sumerian writing is
called Cuneiform, which means “wedge-shaped.”
The scribe used a stylus made of a sharpened reed with a wedge-shaped point to press symbols into clay, which was then baked in the sun to harden
English army officer, Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson deciphered cuneiform in 1847
Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson
Writing is used in art Writing shows a mathematical system
based on 60 Writing is used for medicine, seals, and
records Writing announces exploits of leaders Writing is used to announce laws, like
Hammurabi’s Code Writing is used to tell stories, such as
Gilgamesh, flood myths, creation stories (the Enuma Elish) and others.
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Hammurabi’s Code Epic of Gilgamesh
Creation Story, Enuma Elish
Gilgamesh and Enkidu cylinder seal impression with cuneiform
Egypt About 3100 BC, Egyptian
hieroglyphics appeared virtually full developed. Where did they come from?
Egyptians wrote on papyrus, a kind of paper made from a reed.
Writing adorned burial chambers, jewelry, furniture, temples, and practically any surface.
It was used to write literary classics like the Egyptian Book of the Dead
Papyrus scroll from the Egyptian Book from the Dead
Rosetta Stone Nobody knows exactly what
Ancient Egyptian sounded like, but the meaning of hieroglyphics was deciphered using the Rosetta Stone which was found in 1799.
The Rosetta Stone is a slab of stone weighing 1500 pounds and measuring 3’9” x 2’4” x 11”.
The Stone proved invaluable because it contained identical text written in Greek, Eqyptian hieroglyphs, and a 3rd language
In 1823, Jean Francois Champollion announced that he deciphered the text
Rosetta Stone
Jean Francois Champollion
Egyptian Hieroglyphs Egyptian writing is written in
any direction, right to left, left to right, up-down, down-up.
Hieroglyphs use semantic symbols, ie, symbols that stand for words and ideas. For example, some words are recognizable pictures of objects like a bird or a snake.
Hieroglyphs can also represent sounds and serve as a kind of alphabet. Thus, the meaning comes from the sounds. For example, in English the letters C-A-T only have meaning when the sounds are pronounced together to form a word.
The Life of a Scribe In ancient Egypt, probably
less than 1% of the population could read and write. The profession of the scribe was a high status profession.
Thoth was the god of wisdom, inventor of writing, patron of scribes and the divine mediator.
He is pictured as a man with the head of an ibis holding a scribe's palette and stylus. Often, he wears a lunar crescent on his head.
It is he who questions the souls of the dead about their deeds in life before their heart is weighed against the feather. He writes down the results.
Thoth
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1500 BC: Cave Drawings as Pictograms4000 BC: Sumerian Cuneiform3000 BC: Hieroglyphics1500 BC: West Semitic Syllabary of the Phonecians1000 BC: Ancient Greeks Borrow the Phoenician
Consonantal Alphabet750 BC: Etruscans Borrow the Greek Alphabet500 BC: Romans Adapt the Etruscan/Greco Alphabet to
Latin(Fromkin, Rodman &Hyams [2011] 553)
Later Cyrus and Methodius invented the Cyrillic Alphabet taking some symbols from the Greek Alphabet, some from the Roman Alphabet and inventing some of the own.
HISTORY OF WRITING SYSTEMS
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A Pictographic writing system has the advantage of looking like what it represents, but it requires a different picture for every different concept, and some concepts are so abstract that pictures are problematic.
RECYCLING OF SYMBOLS
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PICTOGRAMS
Invent a pictogram for each of the following words:
eye boy librarytree forest warhonesty ugly runScotch tape smoke
(Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2011] 545-546)