10/10/08- From Accounting to Writing

HIST 105 Fall 2008
FROM PREHISTORY TO HISTORY

From Accounting to Writing: Early Scripts and Ancient Languages

Vocabulary:

• Script-language
• Cuneiform (nickname)
• Pictogram/pictographic
• Ideogram/ideographic
• Logogram/logographic
• Phonetic/phonetization
• Syllable/syllabic script
• to decipher a script
• Epigraphy (Inscriptions)
• Palaeography (manuscripts)
• Sumerian
• Early Semitic languages:Akkadian, Eblaite, Assyrian, Babylonian
• Hieroglyphic Script (Egyptian, Luwian)
• Alphabetic Script
• Papyrus, Parchment

Why was writing invented?:

• When was writing invented?
• Was it a single act?
• What is the need that triggered developments that lead in the end to writing?
• Intellectual needs? Spiritual needs? Other?

Urban scale of organization:

• Collection, storage and redistribution of surplus on a very large scale
• Requires control mechanism to prevent unauthorized access and declare ownership
• Requires accounting techniques to ‘remember’ amounts and material

Earliest written signs around 3000 B.C.:

• Pictograms/Ideograms/Logograms: pictures of objects from economic transactions= sheep, grain, fish, cattle, jars of oil
• One sign(picture) per object, numeric signs as well

Mesopotamia invents writing on clay tablets:

• Why?
• How do you write on clay?

What happens next?:

• Early writing has no language
• Early writing is ideographic, often mnemonic (shopping list)
• How do you write about ideas, feelings anything you cannot draw a picture of?
• How do you write verbs, grammar, language?

REBUS Principle:

• Example that works in English / Belief= bee + leaf
• The sound value of a sign is recognized
• This step is the phonetization of writing: you begin to use the sound of words each sign now conveys a syllable
• Writing invented by Sumerians, Sumerian many mono syllable words, meaning changed by adding suffixes

Result: Cuneiform writing:

• Cuneiform: nickname given to Mesopotamian script= wedge shaped
• No connection between visual sign and the meaning of the sound that it represents
• Combination of syllabic writing with some ideograms
• Problematic part: leads to a lot of signs!!!

Development of signs through time from pictograph to cuneiform:

• Step one: incised picture
• Step two: rotate sideways to allow faster drawing
• Step three: not drawn but impressed outline for even faster recording

Egyptian Hieroglyph writing:

• Hieroglyph: ancient Greek designation for ancient egyptian script, ‘ta hieroglyphica’ means ‘the sacred carved (letters)’
• In principle similar to cuneiform system= syllabic way of writing
• Remains confined to Egypt and Egyptian
• Mostly preserved inscribed on stone/wood/faience
• Writing on papyrus invented in Egypt, writing used hieratic, an adaptation of hieroglyphic script to cursive and fast reproduction

Alphabetic writing:

• Next development in systems of writing: one sign per one sound (consonant or vowel)
• Decreases the number of signs significantly to ca. 30
• Seems to have been stimulated by egyptian hieroglyphic writing
• Earliest signs encountered already in Sinai(Searbit al Khadim, cared by miners at the turquoise mines