Today we will be

learning:
The birth of the alphabet- writing system of
language

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

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Writing and Civilization

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 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 didnt 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 wedgeshaped.
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

Mesopotamia
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
Hammurabis Code
Writing is used to tell stories, such as
Gilgamesh, flood myths, creation stories
(the Enuma Elish) and others.

Mesopotamia

Hammurabis
Code

Creation Story, Enuma Elish

Epic of Gilgamesh

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 39 x 24 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

HISTORY OF WRITING
SYSTEMS
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.

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14

RECYCLING OF SYMBOLS
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.

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16

PICTOGRAMS
Invent a pictogram for each of the
following words:
eye
boy
library
tree
forest
war
honesty ugly
run
Scotch tape smoke
(Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2011] 545546)
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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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