History of writing

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Writing systems
History
Grapheme
List of writing systems
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Featural alphabet
Alphabet
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Syllabary
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Ideogram

The history of writing follows the art of expressing thought by letters or other marks.[1] In the history of how systems of representation of language through graphic means have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbol. Language expresses thought, preserves thought, and also suggests or creates thought. It has been considered obvious that, so long as language is unwritten, it can accomplish these ends only in a very imperfect measure. Hence it may well be supposed that, at a very early stage of man's history, attempts were made to present in some way to the eye the thought which spoken language conveyed to the ear, and thus give it visible form and permanence.[1] However, this understanding does not necessarily go unquestioned. True writing, or phonetic writing, records were developed independently in two different civilizations in the world, namely Sumeria and Mesoamerica.

Contents

[edit] Writing systems

Main article: Writing system

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. By contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps, and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken language. Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate and defining condition of mankind (see Origin of language). However the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication has been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems on the whole change more slowly than their spoken counterparts, and often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. The great benefit of writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of formulation.

[edit] Recorded history

Main articles: Recorded history and early literature
Human history and prehistory
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The various kinds of writing which have been in use in different ages and in different parts of the world may be classified in two great divisions, according as the object of their inventors was to present the ideas to which they wished to give visible expression directly and immediately to the mind, or indirectly, through the medium of spoken language.[1] Scholars make reasonable definition between prehistory and history with writing.[2] Scholars have disagreed concerning when prehistory becomes history and when proto-writing became "true writing"; the definition is largely subjective.[3] Writing, in its most general terms, is just a drawn device to indicate a message and is composed of glyphs.[4]

The various methods — the ideographic and the phonographic or phonetic — has its attendant advantages and disadvantages; but the advantages of the latter method greatly preponderate. The principal recommendation of the former method, in which the depicted idea is caught up immediately by the mind, is that it addresses itself to a much wider circle than the latter, being intelligible by all classes and in all countries; whereas the latter, in which the sound is depicted, not the idea, is of course intelligible only to those who are acquainted with the language to which the depicted word belongs. On the other hand, the very serious drawbacks attendant upon the direct method are:[1]

  1. that it is capable of giving distinct expression only to a very limited range of ideas, viz. the ideas of sensible objects and qualities, and if it attempts to go beyond that range at once becomes arbitrary and obscure; and
  2. that in its representation even of the limited class of ideas to which it is capable of giving distinct expression, it is cumbrous and altogether unfitted for general use.

The emergence of writing in a given area is usually followed by several centuries of fragmentary inscriptions. With the presence of coherent texts (such that is from the various writing systems and the system's associated literature), historians mark the "historicity" of that culture.[2] The sacred writing of the Egyptians may be regarded as forming a stage of transition between the ideographic and the phonetic sorts of writing described.[1] Regarding the ancient Mexican writing and the ancient Chinese writing, see the articles of Mesoamerican writing systems and written Chinese respectively. Till the 20th century, the received opinion was that the ancient Egyptian was an exclusively ideographic writing, and to this conclusion the testimonies of those ancient writers who have given any account of it seemed to point. But the labors of various scholars,[5] during the end of the 19th-century, threw light on those ancient characters; and, though very possibly a picture writing originally, the hieroglyphic, in the form in which it appears on the most ancient monuments, and which it retains unchanged down to the early centuries after Christ, bears a composite character, being in part ideographic, in part phonetic. Accordingly, the characters are used in three different ways:[1]

  1. Pictorial use, in which the character is designed to convey to the mind the idea of the object it represents, and nothing more. This pictorial representation sometimes stands instead of a phonetic name for the object, but the most common use of it is to make the phonetic group of characters more intelligible by being subjoined to them. Thus, to the names of individuals the figure of a man is subjoined.[6]
  2. Hieroglyphical writing is the symbolical, in which the object delineated is not meant to convey to the mind the idea of itself, but of something associated with it and suggested by it.
  3. Phonetic writing, is really by far the most extensive. The greater part of the characters are as truly letters as if the language were English or Greek; syllable characters are the exception, not the rule.

In the ancient Egyptian inscription of any length it is found these three modes of writing in use together, but with a great predominance of phonetic. For more, see Egyptian hieroglyphs.

[edit] Literature and writing

Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous. The very first writings from ancient Sumer by any reasonable definition do not constitute literature — the same is true of some of the early Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese regimes. The history of literature begins with the history of writing and the notion of "literature" has different meanings depending on who is using it. Scholars have disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like "literature" than anything else and is largely subjective. It could be applied broadly to mean any symbolic record, encompassing everything from images and sculptures to letters. The oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. In the early literate societies, as much as 600 years passed from the first inscriptions to the first coherent textual sources (ca. 3200 to 2600 BC).

[edit] Materials of writing

Main article: Writing material

There is no very definite statement as to the material which was in most common use for the purposes of writing at start of the early writing systems.[1] In all ages it has been customary to engrave on stone or metal, or other durable material, with the view of securing the permanency of the record; and accordingly, in the very commencement of the national history of Israel, it is read of the two tables of the law written in stone, and of a subsequent writing of the law on stone. In the latter case there is this peculiarity, that plaster (sic, lime or gypsum) was used along with stone, a combination of materials which is illustrated by comparison of the practice of the Egyptian engravers, who, having first carefully smoothed the stone, filled up the faulty places with gypsum or cement, in order to obtain a perfectly uniform surface on which to execute their engravings.[1] Metals, such as stamped coins, are mentioned as a material of writing; they include lead,[7] brass, and gold. To the engraving of gems there is reference also, such as with seals or signets.[1]

The common materials of writing were the tablet and the roll, the former probably having a Chaldean origin, the latter an Egyptian. The tablets of the Chaldeans are among the most remarkable of their remains There are small pieces of clay, somewhat rudely shaped into a furm resembling a pillow, and thickly inscribed with cuneiform characters.[8] Similar use has been seen in hollow cylinders, or prisms of six or eight sides, formed of fine terra cotta, sometimes glazed, on which the characters were traced with a small stylus, in some specimens so minutely as to be capable of decipherment only with the aid of a magnifying-glass.[1]

In Egypt the principal writing material was quite of a different sort. Wooden tablets are indeed found pictured on the monuments; but the material which was in common use, even from very ancient times, was the papyrus. This reed, found chiefly in Lower Egypt, had various economic means for writing, the pith was taken out, and divided by a pointed instrument into the thin pieces of which it is composed; it was then fattened by pressure, and the strips glued together, other strips being placed at right angles to them, so that a roll of any length might be manufactured. Writing seems to have become more widespread with the invention of papyrus in Egypt. That this material was in use in Egypt from a very early period is evidenced by still existing papyrus of the earliest Theban dynasties. As the papyrus, being in great demand, and exported to all parts of the world, became very costly, other materials were often used instead of it, among which is mentioned leather, a few leather mills of an early period having been found in the tombs.[1] Parchment, using sheepskins left after the wool was removed for cloth, was sometimes cheaper than papyrus, which had to be imported outside Egypt. With the invention of wood-pulp paper, the cost of writing material began a steady decline.

[edit] See also

Main
Phonetics, Palaeography, logograms, logographic, Vinča signs, Asemic writing
General
Alphabet, Palaeography, Inscriptions, Book, Manuscript, Shorthand, Latin alphabet, writing system, ogham, Indus script, Mixtec, uncials, hanja, Zapotec, kanji, Aurignacian, Chinese characters, Ugarit, katakana, Acheulean, Ethnoarchaeology, Hoabinhian, Gravettian, Oldowan, Uruk, Etruscan, Cretan hieroglyphs, Hadza, Nabataean, Luwian, Olmec, Busra
Other
Oral literature, History of developmental dyslexia
Systems
History of writing ·History of the alphabet ·Graphemes

[edit] Further reading

21st century sources
recent 20th century sources
earlier 20th century sources
  • Smith, William Anton. The Reading Process. New York: The Macmillan company, 1922.
  • Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopedia Britannica; A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. Cambridge, Eng: University Press, 1911. "Writing".
  • Clodd, Edward. The Story of the Alphabet. Library of useful stories. New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1910.
  • Rawlings, Gertrude Burford. The Story of Books. London: Newnes, 1901.

[edit] References

Footnotes
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k McClintock, J., & Strong, J. (1885). Cyclopedia of Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature: Supplement. New York: Harper. Pages 990 - 997.
  2. ^ a b Shotwell, James Thomson. An Introduction to the History of History. Records of civilization, sources and studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1922.
  3. ^ Smail, Daniel Lord. On Deep History and the Brain. An Ahmanson foundation book in the humanities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
  4. ^ Bricker, Victoria Reifler, and Patricia A. Andrews. Epigraphy. Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, v. 5. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
  5. ^ such as Young, Champollion, Wilkinson, Lepsius, and others.
  6. ^ Such characters Champollion calls "determinatives".
  7. ^ though whether to writing on lead, or filling up the hollow of the letters with lead, is not certain.
  8. ^ These documents have been in general enveloped, after they were baked, in a cover of moist clay, upon which their contents have been again inscribed, so as to present externally a duplicate of the writing within; and the tablet in its cover has then been baked afresh. The same material was largely used by the Assyrians, and many of their clay tablets still remain. They are of various sizes, ranging from nine inches long by six and a half wide, to an inch and a half by an inch wide, and even less. Some thousands of these have been recovered; many are historical, some linguistic, some geographical, some astronomical.

[edit] External links

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