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The birth of the alphabet- writing system of
language
Written language is
more conservative
than spoken
language!
(Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2007] 521)
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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.
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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?
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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
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Sumerian writing is
called Cuneiform,
which means “wedgeshaped.”
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
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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.
Hammurabi’s Code
Creation Story, Enuma Elish
Epic of Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh and Enkidu cylinder seal
impression with cuneiform
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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
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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
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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.
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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
1500 BC: Cave Drawings as Pictograms
4000 BC: Sumerian Cuneiform
3000 BC: Hieroglyphics
1500 BC: West Semitic Syllabary of the Phonecians
1000 BC: Ancient Greeks Borrow the Phoenician Consonantal
Alphabet
750 BC: Etruscans Borrow the Greek Alphabet
500 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.
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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.
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Invent a pictogram for each of the following
words:
eye
boy
tree
forest
honesty
ugly
Scotch tape
smoke
(Fromkin Rodman Hyams
library
war
run
[2011] 545-546)
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