The birth of the alphabet- writing system of language

Written language is more conservative than spoken language! (Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2007] 521) 382

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 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?

 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

 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.

Hammurabi’s Code Epic of Gilgamesh Creation Story, Enuma Elish Gilgamesh and Enkidu cylinder seal impression with cuneiform

 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

 Nobody knows exactly what Ancient Egyptian sounded like, but the meaning of hieroglyphics was deciphered using the Rosetta Stone which was found in  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 3 rd language  In 1823, Jean Francois Champollion announced that he deciphered the text Rosetta Stone Jean Francois Champollion

 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.

 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

1500 BC: Cave Drawings as Pictograms 4000 BC: Sumerian Cuneiform 3000 BC: Hieroglyphics 1500 BC: West Semitic Syllabary of the Phonecians 1000 BC: Ancient Greeks Borrow the Phoenician Consonantal Alphabet 750 BC: Etruscans Borrow the Greek Alphabet 500 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. 3814

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. 3816

Invent a pictogram for each of the following words: eyeboylibrary treeforestwar honestyuglyrun Scotch tapesmoke (Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2011] ) 3817

3818

3819

3820

3821

