Today we will be learning:

The birth of the alphabet- writing system of language

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Written language is more conservative than spoken language!

(Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2007] 521)

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

The Book of the Dead

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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)

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EGYPTIAN CHARACTERS (Hughes 715)

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GREEK & ROMAN CHARACTERS (Hughes 718)

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PHOENICIAN, HEBREW & ARABIC CHARACTERS (Hughes 713)!

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CYRILLIC CHARACTERS (NOTE ROMAN & GREEK INFLUENCE) (Hughes 720)!!

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