Invention of Writing Midterm 1 Study Guide

Aristotle's Definition of Writing

Things —> Thoughts (affections of the soul) —> Spoken word —> Written word

Coulmas's Definition of Writing

Writing isn't linear, but more of a loop; the relationship between writing and speech is complicated. He also introduced the ideas of concrete word, sentences, and morphology

Writing and Materiality

Writing is "a system of human intercommunication by means of conventional visible marks." But writing was also developed to express linguistic elements with physical marks. The most evolved writing expresses the sounds we make most perfectly.

Proto Writing

A graphic communication (i.e. specific warning signs that use images); serves as a memory device for pre-historic societies, can be incredibly sophisticated with many symbols and images, and can only communicate the ideas if you have context

Lascaux Caves

Caves in SW France where paintings from the Paleolithic Period (Ice Age) were found (bulls, horses, other prey doing activities) as well as abstract marking like dots, tallies, lines, etc. Some of the marks could refer to the lunar calendar when these animals mate and migrate

Quipu (Proto Writing)

A record keeping system of strings and knots used in South America, primarily by Incans, that used colored codes. It recorded taxes, censuses, and military organizations that officials would interpret. Only 1400 are left because of colonization

Vowel

An open mouth sound where air flows freely

Consonant

Sound made by blocking air

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound in a language

Phonetic

Related to speech sounds

Semantic

Related to meaning and words

Grapheme

Smallest functional unit of a writing system. For the English alphabet, this is a letter

Orthographic

Having to do with correct rules of spelling and writing

Pictogram

A graphic symbol or picture that conveys meaning through a visual resemblance to a physical object

Tokens

Around 3000 BCE, the use of tokens for a variety of things began to rise. Tokens developed as Uruk developed. Tokens could be stored in bullae

Bullae

(Round) Clay envelope with tokens inside; sometimes the numbers of tokens inside match the tallies on the outside

Proto Cuneiform Tablets

Typically made out of clay, used throughout Uruk IV and Uruk III periods (3350 to 3000 BCE). It's the beginning evidence for phonetic writing and did not use verbs or prepositions, only nouns, numbers, and names; examples of logograms

Logograms

Word picture; i.e. & in English

Lexical Lists

Cuneiform word and signs complication inscribed on clay tablets that served as the earliest known dictionaries, school texts, and repositories of scholarly knowledge

Rebus Principle

Taking a pictographic symbol (picture) and using it for its phonetic (sound) value to create new meaning

I.e. Bee + leaf = belief

Sumerian Language

The first language recorded in writing. It possesses a lot of homonyms and uses agglutinative language (grammatical functions of words are indicated by morphemes that are attached to words). It's also a language isolate

Cuneiform Writing

Wedge writing; used determinatives, logograms, and syllabograms. There are multiple ways to write things, so spelling isn't always consistent

Determinatives

Determine the meaning of a sign through context or adding more signs to clarify. They have no phonetic value and are just visual markers; kind of like modern emojis

Syllabogram

A written symbol or grapheme that represents a whole syllable rather than a single phoneme or letter

Cuneiform Writing Materials

Typically used clay and reeds cut into wedge-shaped styluses

Uruk

Where writing was invented; city located in Mesopotamia in ancient Sumer, which is now modern day Iraq and Iran

Enmerkar and the Lord of Arrata

Sumerian poem that describes how writing was invented. Two kings fought over who was a goddess's favorite, and Enmerkar invented various things (lined nets, a scepter made of wax, and a colored blanket for a dog) after being issued challenges, culminating in his creation of writing. Writing then went on to foster trade between the two kingdoms

Enheduanna

Author of the oldest surviving evidence of literary text and priestess of the goddess Inanna in Ur; wrote the Exaltation of Inanna, the Temple Hymns, and Hymn to Inanna

Nisaba

Old Babylonian goddess of writing and grain; "lady wisdom"

Authorship

In the modern world, authorship might depend on where you published your work, ghost writers, AI, and translations. In the ancient world, authorship could be given to anyone who knew how to write an read

Ashurbanipal

Neo-Assyrian king (669—631 BCE); during his reign, he collected texts from his kingdom (Assur) and also kingdom to the south (Babylon)

Ashurbanipal's library

Ashurbanipal's collection of texts, some of which were also stored in Ninevah. Combination of divination, magical, medical, literary, lexical, and admin texts, and they were often high quality. The library was burned down in 612 BCE, and the remains were discovered in 1850 by Austen Henry Layard and they discovered over 30,000 tablets

House F of Nippur

Believed to have been a school; tablets dated somewhere between 2002 — 1720 BCE were found there (1425+, most pedagogical)

EDUBBA

EDUBBA means "house of tablets," which is what schools were called

Schooldays EDUBBA A

A poem about the day in the life of a student

Cuneiform Curriculum

Begins with practicing holding a tablet and making wedges. Moves onto the elementary stage where students learn the alphabet, names, nouns, advanced lists, and numerical lists. Then goes to a literary stage where students copy sentences and ideas and literary texts (like Hammurabi's Code).

Syllabaries

A set of written characters or symbols where each individual sign represents a distinct spoken syllable, rather than a single basic sound like an alphabet

Proverbs

Short, memorable saying that express a basic truth or practical life advice

Logosyllabic Writing System

A writing system where characters represent both whole words or meaningful units of meaning (logograms) and sounds of syllables (syllograms)

Akkadian Language

It's a semitic language. Words have a root of three consonants with different meanings created by adding/changing vowels, prefixes, and suffixes. When scribes switched from writing in Sumerian to Akkadian, they had to write a lot of material out syllabically. New values are given to Sumerian signs, and Akkadian scribes continue to use logograms and some Sumerian readings.

Hammurabi's Code

Written in 1750s BCE; it's the most complete law code of the time period and created the "eye for an eye" mentality

Ea-Nasir Complaint Tablets

A copper merchant named Ea-Nasir received lots of complaints from customers for his works

Amarna Tablets

An archive of cuneiform tablets that feature correspondence between Egyptian pharaohs and Near Eastern rulers

Linguae Franca

A shared language used for communication between people who do not speak the same native language

Old Persian

An old Iranian language (600 — 300 BCE) that used wedges and clay so it is still cuneiform in medium, but doesn't use a logo syllabic system. It has 36 syllabic signs, 3 vowel signs, some signs that signify a consonant alone, 7 logograms that are unique to it, word dividers, and numerals

Other Cuneiform Writing

Elamite, Ebalite, Hurrian, Hittite, Palaic, Luwian, Uraratian, Ugaritic, Old Persian

Loss of Cuneiform

Stage 1: During Neo-Assyrian (911-609 BCE) and Neo-Babylonian Empires (626-586 BCE), cuneiform is not used to control the lands the empire conquer, and neither is Akkadian. People start to use Aramaic, but during this timeframe cuneiform is still widely used

Stage 2: In 538 BCE, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquers Babylon. Aramaic is used as the linguae franca, but cuneiform is still used for local government and temples while administrative use declines. Aramaic is a mother tongue while Akkadian becomes a "male tongue"

Stage 3: Some parts of Mesopotamia are taken over by Parthians (247 BCE — 224 BCE). With Parthians, there's the creation of new cities and breaking up of elite urban groups. They stop supporting local temples, which is what still used cuneiform, and no one reads cuneiform for almost two millennia

Aramaic

The official administrative language and lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires

Tupsarru

Ancient Mesopotamian word that means scribe or tablet writer

Male language

Language that is taught by teachers (typically male) instead of learned at home

Astrological Texts

Led to the creation of the Graeco-Babyloniaca, which had Akkadian or Sumerian Cuneiform on one side and a transcription of how to pronounce it in Greek on the other. This allowed Greeks to figure it out for themselves, and cuneiform became less useful

Graeco-Babyloniaca

Clay tablets with Akkadian or Sumerian cuneiform written on one side with a Greek transcription on the other

Behistun Inscription

The "Rosetta Stone" of cuneiform. Darius the Great ends up ruling the Persian Empire by overthrowing the old ruler, and because people didn't believe he should be ruling, he had an inscription made in the side of the mountain in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian Akkadian

Deciphering Cuneiform

Step 1: Carsten Niebuhr, a German explorer for Denmark, created drawings of Old Persian inscriptions and helped to figure out what direction the script goes. Georg Grotefend, a teacher in Germany, figures out how to read names and find the names of kings in cuneiform

Step 2: Sir Henry Cheswick Rawlinson, "Father of Assyriology," discovered the Behistun Inscription and copies it down. He manages to translate the Old Persian using insights from Grotefend

Step 3: Rev. Edward Hincks determined that cuneiform script must be syllabic, which characters having possible sound values (polyphonic) with determinatives to help navigate the system. He also finds that the one of the scripts is Semitic, which helps. Rawlinson took his achievement of cracking cuneiform

Step 4: A text was chosen to decipher (Tiglath Pilese I) and given to Rawlinson, Hincks, Henry Fox Talbort, and Julius Oppert; all translations were incredibly close

Henry Cheswick Rawlinson

An adventurer and member of the British Military/East India Company and is known as the "Father of Assyriology." Managed to translate part of the Behistun Inscription

Kurdish Boy

A local boy Rawlinson hired to help him copy down the Behistun Iscription

Edward Hincks

A Northern Irishman who dreamed of deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. He determined that cuneiform script must be syllabic, which characters having possible sound values (polyphonic) with determinatives to help navigate the system

The Royal Asiatic Institute Test

A test performed by the Royal Asiatic Institute to determine if cuneiform was actually a written language; it proved it was

Precursors to Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Egyptians developed art that later hieroglyphs borrowed from. They decorated pots, palettes, mace heads, rock drawings, seals and sealings, etc.

Narmer Palette

One of the earliest historical documents and visual records of ancient Egypt; represents the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and is from Predynastic Egypt

Tomb U-J

Part of a necropolis of early royal tombs and dates to the Naqada III (Dynasty 0) period. Included goods imported from Canaan, and was one of the first pieces of evidence for writing. There were over 125 ink inscriptions on pottery as well as 180+ bone tags found there

Pristine Writing System

A writing system that is invented independently from all others. It's debated if Egyptian writing is pristine

Serekhs

A palace facade with a Horus bird on top of it. It represents the pharaoh

Cartouche

Royal name plates; means bullet casing in French

Hieroglyphs

A system of pictorial writing where symbols or pictures represent objects, sounds, or ideas. They are present in Egyptian, Mayan, and Luwian writing systems

Egyptian Language Features

It's part of the Afro-Asiatic Language Family, and it's related to Semitic languages (generally has words with three consonant roots, but the vocabulary is completely different). They didn't have any "L's" and Egyptians didn't spread their language or writing. It's preserved in Coptic

Logoconsonatal

A writing system that contains logograms, consonants, determinatives, and phonetic complements

Hieratic

Basically Egyptian cursive; read from right to left and was written mostly with ink on papyrus or pot shards. It was used for admin and other such things, not everyday stuff

Demotic

Egyptians called it document writing, and it developed out of hieratic. It was used for everyday business and admin

Coptic

Egyptians started to use a Greek script during the Ptolemaic period. They add 6—7 letters from Demotic for Egyptian sounds

Features of Egyptian Writing

Hieroglyphs used typically 750 signs most of the time, but that changed during the Graeco-Roman period (5000 signs). It should be read into the face of the characters; start in the middle, then read left or right

Uniconsonantal Signs

25 signs that signify one consonant

Biconsonnantal Signs

Each bilateral sign counts for a combo of two consonants

Ex. gm = anything with a vowel in the middle

Triconsonantal Signs

Symbols that stand for a combo of three consonants

Phonetic Complements

A phonetic symbol or character added to a logographic writing system to clarify its pronunciation or prevent ambiguity

Group Writing

During the New Kingdom, many foreign words and names (mostly from Canaan/Syria) had to be incorporated into Egyptian writing. The w consonant and the aleph consonant are used to write the vowel "u" and "a" in foreign words respectively; dashes are also used to represent the presence of vowels

Egyptian Scribal Toolkit

Contained a wooden/ivory palette with two ink cakes (minimum), one red, one black, a minimum of two reed brushes, a water pot, knives, string, and seals

Red Ink Uses

Rubrics, denote dangerous material, scribal correction, dates, and titles

Egyptian Scribal Positions

Pen behind hear, seated and cross legged, typically fat

Egyptian Scribal Pedagogy

There's a lack of evidence for early scribal education. It seemed that they learned at people's homes, temples, the palace, and tombs, all scribes went through an elementary phase, and then they were made as apprentices. Their curriculum included math and physical skills. They had to copy things down like Kemy.t (model letter with moral instruction), Satire of the Trades, the Instruction of Amenemope, etc.

House of Life (pr ankh)

It was at first thought to be a school, but is now associated with temples where scribal professional would gather together, copy, and describe texts

Perception of Hieroglyphs

The Egyptians believed that writing had magic and power and whatever you wrote became real. Snake hieroglyphs will sometimes be written with knives put through them, and there's a dead-man determinative for enemies. Gods appeared as hieroglyphs

Kemy.t

A model letter with moral instructions that students had to copy; basically describes how to write a letter

Satire of the Trades

An ancient Egyptian wisdom text that uses comical exaggeration and hyperbole to mock manual labor and show how being a scribe was a lot better than having to do physical work

Thoth

The god of writing. Appears as either a baboon or ibis headed man. Records the dead

Book of the Dead

A book was created to be buried with the dead that contained the right spell that would bring them to the underworld. Claim that the dead had achieve Ma'at/justice.

Ptolemaic Egyptian

When the Ptolemys take over Egypt, Greek competes with Egypt to be the lingua franca. Coptic also develops over this time period.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs Obsolescence

Egypt keeps getting taken over, starting with Alexander the Great and he really enforces Greek being used in Egypt. After he dies, the Ptolemaic Kingdom comes forth. They still support local temples, which helps to keep hieroglyphs alive. Demotic is now only used for admin, and Coptic develops. Greek is slowly beating Egyptian at being the lingua franca. Rome takes over and they use Greek as the lingua franca. Demotic dies out. The third century crisis happens to Rome and they have no money, so they can't support temples anymore and hieroglyphs start to die out. Rome turns to Christianity and all local Egyptian temples are closed (except for one in Philae).