CLCIV 328 - Midterm

writing A conventional system of marks used to represent the symbols and structures of language.

pictogram A pictorial representation.

ideogram (logogram) A representation of a word or concept. Pictograms are a kind of ideogram/logogram.

phonogram A written symbol that represents a speech sound. Letters are a type of phonogram.

syllabogram A written symbol that represents a syllable.

ideographic/logographic A written system based on ideograms/logograms.

syllabary A writing system based on syllables.

alphabet A writing system based on individual speech sounds.

proto-writing Any set of (ancient) written symbols that may record information but are not systematically related to language. May or may not be a precursor of true writing.

Mesopotamia “The land between the rivers” (mostly in modern-day Iraq). Often called the “fertile crescent” or the “cradle of civilization” (bad). Major historical regions from South to North: Sumer, Babylon(ia), Akkad, Assyria.

Uruk The location where the first clay tablets were found dating back to 3300 BC. The Uruk Period (4000 BC - 3100 BC) was when the first city-states developed in Mesopotamia and the first writing took place.

Darius I (the Great) The king of Persia during the Achaemenid dynasty (550 BC - 486 BC). Old Persian was first written down during his reign. He claimed to have invented the script, though he likely hired linguists to create it.

cuneiform A set of writing systems that developed over hundreds of years. First developed as Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, the first identifiable language written in it was Sumerian. Not a language, but a writing system used for many languages. “Wedge-shaped” impressions in clay. Used for 3000 years. A mix of syllabary and ideographic writing.

stylus A writing utensil, often made of reed, stone, or bone.

Avestan An Indo-European ancestor of Old Persian and Sanskrit.

Old Persian An Indo-European language (like Latin, Greek, and English) and the ancestor of modern Persian (Farsi). First written during Darius I’s reign. An imitation of cuneiform in style but not actually a cuneiform system. First discovered at Persepolis near Shiraz. Initially thought to be decorative, but decipherment began in the 1800s. Its use ended after Alexander the Great's conquest.

Georg Grotefend A German high school teacher who made major advancements in deciphering Old Persian. He identified word dividers and assumed the script was alphabetic. Though partially incorrect, his work helped decode names and royal titles.

Behistun (Bisitun/Bisotun) A site near the Zagros Mountains with trilingual inscriptions of Darius I. The scripts include Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. Old Persian was the first translated, helping later decipherment of the other two.

Sir Henry Rawlinson An English army officer who copied the Behistun inscriptions for decipherment. Credited with deciphering Babylonian cuneiform, though recent studies suggest he borrowed from another scholar.

Sumerian A language isolate (no known relatives). The first identifiable language written in cuneiform, dating to the late 4th/early 3rd millennium BC. Agglutinative word structure (like Turkish or Tamil), where a core verbal root gets many prefixes and suffixes.

Akkadian (Babylonian, Assyrian) A Semitic language, the second identifiable language written in cuneiform (2600 BC). Root-based word structure where consonant roots are modified with vowels and consonants for different meanings. Split into Assyrian (northern) and Babylonian (southern) varieties, further divided into Old (1950-1530 BC), Middle (1530-1000 BC), and Neo- (1000-600 BC) periods.

Semitic A family of languages with a root-based structure like Akkadian.

rebus A system where symbols representing smaller word fragments combine into larger words/phrases (e.g., "2 bee oar knot 2 bee" = "to be or not to be"). Helps transition a language from pictographic to syllabographic writing.

Hammurabi (Hammurapi) A king of Babylon (18th century BC). Commissioned the Law Code
Egyptian The language spoken in Egypt, part of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Hieroglyph The formal pictorial script used in ancient Egypt, primarily for monumental inscriptions. Read top to bottom and sometimes right to left or left to right. Key to deciphering Egyptian through spelling and proper names.

Hieratic A cursive script derived from hieroglyphs, used on papyrus. More standardized spelling than hieroglyphs. Retained for religious use after 660 BC and died out by the 2nd century AD.

Demotic An extremely cursive script that evolved from hieratic. Used for non-religious texts from 643 BC onward, mostly phonetic. Declined during the Greco-Roman period.

Papyrus A writing material made from the papyrus plant, used in Egypt and later adopted by the Greeks and Romans.

Coptic A script and language used by Christian descendants of ancient Egyptians. Key to deciphering the Rosetta Stone. Replaced by Arabic in daily speech but still used in the Coptic Church.

Athanasius Kircher A 17th-century scholar who pioneered the study of hieroglyphs. Learned Coptic to decipher Egyptian but made many incorrect assumptions. One of the first to believe hieroglyphs had phonetic value.

Rosetta Stone A bilingual stone inscription containing Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and demotic. Key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Stela (Stele) An upright monument containing text and/or images, used for inscriptions in ancient cultures.

Thomas Young A physicist and early researcher of the Rosetta Stone. Identified repeated sequences and cartouches, making significant contributions to the decipherment of hieroglyphs.

Cartouche An oval enclosing hieroglyphs that signify the name of a royal person in ancient Egypt.

Jean-François Champollion The linguist who fully deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822. Built on Young’s work and used his knowledge of Coptic to crack the script’s phonetic system.

Greek Dark Ages A period of upheaval in Greece (approx. 1100–750 BC) where writing (Linear B) was lost until the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet.

Acrophonic Principle It's the principle of drawing a picture of something to represent the first (or sometimes another) sound in a word.

Alphabet A system where individual symbols represent individual speech sounds, called letters.

Abjad An alphabetic system that uses consonant symbols but no vowel letters, sometimes using diacritics or consonants to represent vowels.

Abugida A system where consonant letters represent consonants plus a basic vowel (often "a"), with modifications to indicate different vowels.

True Alphabet It has separate letters for both vowels and consonants.

Wadi el-Hol It's the site of early Proto-Sinaitic graffiti, dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (21st-18th century BC).

Byblos It existed from 1700-1400 BC in modern-day Lebanon, with around 13 inscriptions, and is likely a syllabary based on Egyptian and early Semitic influences.

Phoenician An abjad developed by the Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast, influencing Greek writing by adding letters for vowels.

Ugaritic It is a cuneiform alphabetic script, visually modeled on Mesopotamian cuneiform, with two different alphabet orders.

Etruscan In ancient western Italy, the language is unrelated to any known language, and its script is mysterious.

West Greek Alphabet It used the Phoenician letter for "h" (heta) and borrowed the "waw" letter for both "w" and "u."

East Greek Alphabet It used the Phoenician letter for "h" to represent the sound "e."

Serif A flaring at the beginning or end of strokes as a stylistic feature in certain letterforms.

Square Capitals A formal Roman script used for official monuments, with tall letters and serifs, imitating stone carving.

Rustic Capitals They are more flowing and less like stone carving, with letters that are often rounded.

Uncials It was an early script moving toward lowercase letters, focused on "economy of movement."

Minuscule (Half-Uncial) Letters evolved from majuscule, with varying height and vertical orientation, forming the basis of modern lowercase letters.

Charlemagne He encouraged the Carolingian Renaissance and the improvement of literacy in his empire.

Alcuin Alcuin was an Anglo-Saxon monk who helped lead the revival of scholarship during the Carolingian Renaissance.

Carolingian Minuscule A highly legible script created under Charlemagne's reign, combining features of minuscule scripts from the British Isles and the continent.

Black Letter (Gothic Minuscule) A medieval script with thicker strokes and letters written closer together, originating around 1150.

Johannes Gutenberg He invented the printing press around 1454, which revolutionized book production.

Sanskrit It accounts for minor pronunciation changes in words and was not written down for a long time due to its sacred nature.

Prakrits Regional varieties of early Indic languages that evolved into modern Indian languages.

Futhark (Runic) The runic alphabet of Germanic languages, derived from the northern Etruscan alphabet, starting around the 4th century BC.

Brahmi An abugida system used for writing Prakrit, the basis for many scripts in India, arranged according to phonetics.