History of Writing

The necessity of writing

The agrarian society and writing
Types of writing

Language existed long before writing, emerging probably simultaneously with sapience, abstract thought and
the Genus Homo. In my opinion, the signature event that separated the emergence of palaeohumans from their
anthropoid progenitors was not tool-making but a rudimentary oral communication that replaced the hoots and
gestures still used by lower primates. The transfer of more complex information, ideas and concepts from one
individual to another, or to a group, was the single most advantageous evolutionary adaptation for species
preservation. As long ago as 25,000-30,000 years BP, humans were painting pictures on cave walls. Whether
these pictures were telling a "story" or represented some type of "spirit house" or ritual exercise is not known.
The advent of a writing system, however, seems to coincide with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to
more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to count ones property, whether it be parcels
of land, animals or measures of grain or to transfer that property to another individual or another settlement.
We see the first evidence for this with incised "counting tokens" about 9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile
crescent.

Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to
represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. One of the earliest
examples was found in the excavations of Uruk in Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the
crystallization of the Sumerian culture.

The pictures began as representing what they were, pictographs, and eventually, certain pictures represented an
idea or concept, ideographs, and finally to represent sounds.

head

foot

sun "day"

hand

woman

Eventually, the pictographs were stylized, rotated and in impressed in clay with a wedge shaped stylus to
become the script known as Cuneiform. The pictograph for woman, as seen above became

Written language was the product of an agrarian society. These societies were centered around the cultivation
of grain. A natural result of the cultivation and storage of grain is the production of beer. It is not surprising,
therefore, that some of the very oldest written inscriptions concern the celebration of beer and the daily ration
alotted to each citizen.

Early cylinder seal depicting

beer production
It's tempting to claim that the development of a writing system was necessitated by the need to keep track of
beer, but perhaps we can be satisfied that it was just part of it.
The signs of the Sumerians were adopted by the East Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia and Akkadian became
the first Semitic language and would be used by the Babylonians and Assyrians. The Akkadian characters
continued to represent syllables with defined vowels.
For the next step toward the development of an alphabet, we must go to Egypt where picture writing had
developed sometime near the end of the 4th millennium BC. One of the earliest examples is the name of NARMER, either the first or second Pharoah of an united Egypt in 3100 BCE. The name appears as two syllabic
figures between the cows' heads on the Kings cosmetic pallete.

First glyph "Nar" (Egyptian "monster fish," "cuttle fish.")

Second glyph "Mar" is a pictograph of a drill or borer

Unlike Akkadian, the Egyptian syllabic system had no definitive vowels. Some hieroglyphs were biliteral,
some triliteral. Others were determinatives that at the end of the word gave a sense of the word and others were
idiographs. Eventually, however, certain Egyptian hieroglyphs such as
which was pronounced
r'i meaning "mouth" became the pictograph for the sound of R with any vowel. The pictograph for "water"
pronounced nu
became the symbol for the consonantal sound of N. This practice of using a
pictograph to stand for the first sound in the word it stood for is called acrophony and was the first step in the
development of an ALPHABET or the "One Sign-One sound" system of writing. The Egyptian consonants
were:

A glottal stop similar to the Hebrew Alef

Consonantal Y, like the Hebrew Yod

Sometimes abbreviated as \
ee used in the last syllable

\, sound of Y or

Gutteral sound corresponding to Hebrew

Ayin
W or U, corresponds to Hebrew Waw

Sound of B

Sound of P
Sound of F
Sound of M
Sound of N
Sound of R

Sound of emphatic H

Pharyngeal H, like Hebrew Het

Like German CH as in ich
Sound of Z
Sound of S

SH, Corresponds to Hebrew Shin

Q, corresponds to Hebrew Qof
Sound of K
Hard G
Sound of T
Sound of TCH, as in hatch
Sound of D
Sound of DJ, or Hebrew Tsade
See banner below as source of hieroglyphs

The Egyptians used the acrophones as a consonantal system along with their syllabic and idiographic system,
therefore the alphabet was not yet born. The acrophonic principal of Egyptian clearly influenced ProtoCanaanite/Proto-Sinaitic around 1700 BC. Inscriptions found at the site of the ancient torquoise mines at
Serabit-al-Khadim in the Sinai use less than 30 signs, definite evidence of a consonantal alphabet rather than a
syllabic system.
This is the alphabet that was the precursor to Phoenician, Greek and Roman. Meanwhile, in the North another
experiment in a consonantal alphabet was taking place. Excavations of the ancient city of Ugarit, modern Ras
Shamra, has produced texts in a cuneiform script that was also consonantal. In the order of the Alef-Beyt:

The Semitic languages diversified along geographic lines as Northwest Semitic, Northeast, Southwest and
Southeast. Northwest Semitic consists of 2 major groups, Aramaic and Canaanite. Canaanite is represented by
Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew. Northeast Semitic consists of the ancestral Akkadian, represented by
Babylonian and Assyrian. The Southwest and Southeast Semitic languages consisted of North and South
Arabic and Ethiopic.
The term epigraphy is generally used for writing on hard durable materials such as stone or postsherds (ostraca)
but some use the term for any inscriptional remnants of a past civilization.

Palaeography is the study of the progressive changes and developments in the form of letters over time and is
usually applied to writing on less durable materials such as parchment, leather or papyrus. An experienced
palaeographer can often date a specific manuscript with fair accuracy. Epigraphy on stone is usually harder to
date since more archaic forms were often retained for monumental inscriptions. The causes of changes in
scripts were primarily sociological and psychological, a script hand being a reflection of styles and trends for
particular time periods. Unfortunately, this is not measurable for the palaeographer whose primary tool is a
systematic collection or database of thousands of exemplars of written material of known date.
Spelling and the sequence of characters in a word and their setting in a grammatic structure is the provenance of
Orthography.
Using the fonts I have created for classroom work by my various scholar friends in the discussion lists, I have
arranged the following inscriptions of Genesis 1:1 to display the development of the Semitic scripts since the
10th century BCE.

Archaic Scripts (click on font for download)

Old Phoenician 10th-9th
cent. BCE
Moabite 850 BCE
Early Aramaic 800 BCE
Siloam Inscription 700
BCE
Samaritan *
Lachish Ostraca 6th
cent. BCE
*Samaritan retained the use of the archaic script.

Aramaic Square Scripts

Elephantine Payrus 5th
cent. BCE
Nabataean Aramaic 1st
cent. CE
Great Isaiah Scroll 200-100
BCE
Habakkuk Pesher 150-100
BCE
Codex Leningradensis 1010
CE.
Modern Hebrew

The Phoenician Alphabet was adopted by the early Greeks who earned their place in alphabetic history by
symbolizing the vowels. Therefore, the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek scripts all came from the Phoenician. The

Greek alphabet led to Latin and Cyrillic. Aramaic led to Arabic and most of the scripts used in India. The
entire Western World became the inheritors of those beer drinkers in Mesopotamia and the torquoise miners in
the Sinai.
Phoenician
Early Greek
Roman

Writing systems can be conveniently classified into broad "types" depending on the way they represent their underlying
languages.
Logographic
A system of this kind uses a tremendous number of signs, each to represent a morpheme. A morpheme is the minimal
unit in a language that carries some meaning. So, a logogram, a sign in a logographic system, may represent a word, or
part of a word (like a suffix to denote a plural noun). Because of this, the number of signs could grow to staggering
numbers like Chinese which has more than 10,000 signs (most of them unused in everyday usage).
Chinese
Jurchen
Khitan
Mixtec
Naxi
Nushu
Tangut
Logophonetic
This is somewhat like a stripped down versions of logographic systems. In essence, there are two major types of signs,
ones denoting morphemes and ones denoting sounds. Most of the logophonetic systems are logosyllabic, meaning that
their phonetic signs mostly denote syllables. An exception is Egyptian, whose phonetic signs denote consonants.
Akkadian
Aztec
Cuneiform
Egyptian
Elamite
Epi-Olmec
Hittite
Indus Script

Japanese
Linear A
Linear B
Luwian
Maya
Sumerian
Zapotec

Syllabic
In a syllabic writing system, the overwhelming number of signs are used solely for their phonetic values. These phonetic
signs are Syllabograms, meaning that they represent syllables rather than individual sound. A few non-phonetic are used
for numbers, punctuation, and commonly used words.
Bengali
Brahmi
Buginese
Burmese
Byblos
Cherokee
Cypriot
Devanagari
Ethiopic
Grantha
Gujarati
Gupta

Gurmukhi
hPhags-pa
Javanese
Kadamba
Kalinga
Kannada
Kashmiri
Kawi
Kharosthi
Khmer
Landa
Lepcha

Malayalam
Mangyan
Meithei Mayek
Merotic
Modi
Nagari
Old Persian
Old Kannada
Oriya
Rejang
Tocharian

Sarada
South Asian Writing Systems
South Asian Writing Systems Comparison
Sinhala
Tagalog
Takri
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Tibetan

Consonantal Alphabet or Abjad

Consonantal alphabets are also known as abjads, and are all descendents of the Proto-Sinaitic script. In a "pure"
consonantal alphabet, vowels are not written. However, nearly consonantal alphabets use certain conventions to
Arabic
Aramaic
Avestan
Berber & Tifinagh
Hebrew
Nabataean
Old Hebrew
Pahlavi

Phoenician
Proto-Sinaitic
Samaritan
Syriac
South Arabian
Thamudic
Tifinagh
Ugaritic

Syllabic Alphabet or Abugida

South Asian scripts such as Brahmi and its descendents fit into both syllabary and alphabet. It is syllabic because the
basic sign contains a consonant and a vowel. However, every sign has the same vowel, such as /a/ in Brahmi. To make
syllables with a different vowel, you add special markings to the basic sign, which is somewhat like an alphabet. Hence
the name "syllabic alphabet".
Bengali
Brahmi
Buginese
Burmese
Devanagari
Grantha
Gujarati
Gupta
Gurmukhi
hPhags-pa
Javanese
Kadamba
Kalinga
Kannada
Kashmiri
Kawi
Kharosthi
Khmer
Landa
Lepcha

Malayalam
Mangyan
Meithei Mayek
Modi
Nagari
Old Kannada
Oriya
Rejang
Sarada
South Asian Writing Systems
South Asian Writing Systems Comparison
Sinhala
Tagalog
Takri
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Tibetan
Tocharian

Segmental Alphabet
Nearly all the sounds in a language can be represented by an appropriate consonant and vowel alphabet. However, just
take a look at English spelling and you can almost feel we"re back to logographic systems :) !
Armenian
Coptic
Cyrillic
Etruscan
Faliscan
Futhark

Georgian
Glagolitic
Gothic
Greek
Korean
Latin

Different Types of Writing -

Throughout their more than 3.000 year long history, the Ancient Egyptians used
three kinds of writings to write religious and secular texts: hieroglyphic, hieratic
and, from the 25th Dynasty on, demotic.

Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphic writing is the basis of the two other writings. It owes its name to the
fact that when the Greeks arrived in Egypt, this writing was mainly used for sacred
(Greek hieros) inscriptions (Greek glypho) on temple walls or on public
monuments.

Hieroglyphic writing uses clearly distinguishable pictures to express both sounds

and ideas and was used from the end of the Prehistory until 396 AD, when the last
hieroglyphic text was written on the walls of the temple of Isis on the island of
Philae. It was used in monumental inscriptions on walls of temples and tombs, but
also on furniture, sarcophagi and coffins, and even on papyrus. It could either be
inscribed or drawn and often the signs would be painted in many colours. The
quality of the writing would vary from highly detailed signs to mere outlines.
Drawn on papyrus or on linen, the signs would often be simplified but they would
still be recognisable as individual signs. A special, cursive form of hieroglyphic
writing was used for the Book of the Dead. This style was also used for the texts in
the tombs of the 18th Dynasty kings Thutmosis III and Amenhotep II, giving the
impression that a large papyrus scroll was unrolled against the walls.

Nicely sculpted hieroglyphic

signs on a piece of stone at
the Louvre Museum.

The Papyrus of Ani uses a

special, more cursive form
of hieroglyphic writing.

Hieratic
Hieratic writing is as old as hieroglyphic, but it is more cursive and the result of a
quick hand drawing signs on a sheet of papyrus with a reed brush. While writing,
the scribe would often omit several details that made one sign different from
another. The sign
, for instance, representing an arm and a hand holding
something, would be written in the same way as the sign
, which simply
represents an arm and a hand and normally has an entirely different meaning.
Several smaller signs, written in one quick flow, would melt together, but despite
this, the hieratic text can still be transcribed into hieroglyphics.
Hieratic was mainly used for religious and secular writings on papyrus or on linen
and during the Greek-Roman era occasionally in an inscription of a temple wall.

The 'Satire of Professions',

boasting the profession of
scribe, found on a wooden
board in Deir el-Medina,
written in hieratic.

It was called hieratic by the Greeks because when they arrived in Egypt, this
writing was almost exclusively used by the Egyptian priests (Greek hieratikos,
priestly). Prior to demotic, it was also used in administrative and private texts and
in stories.

Demotic
Demotic writing started being used during the 25th/26th Dynasty. In part, it is a
further evolution from hieratic: like hieratic, demotic was a handwriting, but the
strokes of the reed brush or the reed pen are even quicker and more illegible.
Hieratic signs representing a group of hieroglyphs could be broken up, not as to
represent the individual hieroglyphic signs again, but to facilitate the writing. With
these entirely new signs, unknown in hieroglyphic or hieratic were shaped. The link
between handwriting and hieroglyphic text slowly faded with demotic. Where
hieratic texts often are transcribed into hieroglyphic before translation, demotic texts
usually are not.

26th Dynasty contract,

written in demotic.

Demotic was mostly used in administrative and private texts, but also in stories and
quite exceptionally in inscriptions. The last demotic inscription was also found in
the temple of Isis on the island of Philae.
Its name comes from the Greek word demotikos meaning popular.
It is important to note that neither writing would entirely replace another, but it
would merely restrict the other writings to specific domains and be restricted itself
to other domains. Thus demotic would become the writing of the administration
from the 26th Dynasty on, but it did not entirely replace hieratic as a handwriting,

which was still being used in religious texts.

Hieratic, on its part, did not replace hieroglyphic either. From its beginnings,
hieratic was hieroglyphic, but more cursive and written by a speedier hand. As the
two writings evolved, practicality caused hieratic to be used when a text need not be
written in the slow but detailed hieroglyphic signs and was used in administrative
texts, texts that were not to be inscribed on monuments or on funerary objects, texts
that mattered for their contents only, ...