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Download V Gordon Childe`s Urban Revolution list Cities Writing Wheel Plough
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V Gordon Childe’s Urban Revolution list Cities Writing Wheel Plough Metals Standard units Sailing boats Surplus production Specialized craftsmen Irrigation Mathematics Writing • • • • • Introduction Sumerian Writing Egyptian Writing First Alphabet Deciphering ancient scripts Writing was invented independently only a few times • Sumerian, before 3000 BC (definitely original) • Mesoamerica, 600 BC (definitely original) • Egypt, 3000 BC (inspired by Sumerian?) • China, 1300 BC (inspired by Sumerian?) First writing Three strategies for writing – Alphabet: one sign = one sound – Syllabry: one sign = syllable – Logogram: one sign = one word Writing systems Difficult invention • Speech is a continuous flow of sound – How to break it up into units? – How to take into account different • Pronunciation • Dialect • Pitch – How to devise appropriate symbols? Sumerian tokens Earliest Sumerian writing – No grammar, no verbs • Gradually signs became more abstract – Combined signs made verbs » Head + water=drink – These were Non-phonetic logograms • 4 or %, which can be read in different languages Cuneiform Limitation: abstract concepts • Similar sound • Sign for arrow pronounced “ti” • “ti” sound also means life; arrow can come to symbolize life as well. • Rebus principle: combine signs • “Belief” = sign of a bee and a leaf. Egytpian hieroglyphs First Alphabet • Semitic speakers in Levant 1700 BC • Took 24 Egyptian consonants to create a more purely alphabetic system • To make it easier to remember the 24 consonants and their associated sign • Put them into a fixed sequence • Gave each sign a name – First letter, sound A, called Aleph, meaning Ox – Second letter, sound B, called Beth, meaning house Early Semitic alphabet Semitic alphabet led • Via early Arabic to Ethiopian • Via Aramaic to Indian and SE Asian scripts • Via Phoenician to Greek – Where a=alpha, b=beta Spread of alphabets Eight century BC Greeks • Added vowels to the 24 consonants • Passed system on to the Etruscans – Who passed it onto the Romans • Whose Latin script you are using right now Jean-Francois Champollion Rosetta Stone Bilingual inscription in Egyptian and Greek Found by Napoleon’s Army The most visited object in British Museum Decoding Sumerian • Sumerian is neither a Semitic nor an IndoEuropean language. • unrelated to any known language living or dead • Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD • Like Latin after the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Decoding Cuneiform • The key to reading cuneiform came from the Behistun inscription, a trilingual inscription written in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian. • In 1838 Henry Rawlinson was able to decipher the Old Persian section of the Behistun inscriptions, using his knowledge of modern Persian. Why write? Why Write? • Different reasons in different places – Sumerians were writing for trade and taxes, accounting – Egyptians for propaganda and legitimizing rulers right to rule – Mayans for keeping track of events, history – Chinese divination Claude Levi-Strauss Ancient writing’s main function was to facilitate the enslavement of others Inca had no writing system, but had the Quipu as an accounting device
