Calendar of Events for the month of:
All presenters will speak during the midday break for ariston (lunch).
In honor of students and tutors returning to their studies, this month we will focus on the magic of writing. This program was postponed from the previous month.
Day 1:Come and hear Phrynikhos of Tegea give a thoughtful presentation on the power of writing. Is writing a good idea? Sokrates reports a story of an Egyptian king telling Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing, "You who are the father of letters have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess... You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant."
Hear Phrynikhos of Tegea discuss the ways writing has been used through time for both good and bad purposes. Writing has been used to seek immortality. Etruscan writing survives mostly in funerary inscriptions. The Egyptians felt that words have the power to make things live for eternity. Egyptian hieroglyphs, like Egyptian art, show each object by their most characteristic or best angle. Writing has also been used to keep leaders in power, such as when both the Egyptians and Hittites claimed victory at the Battle of Kadesh in 1285 B.C. Writing is an important part of identifying and protecting property. The script of the Indus Valley appears primarily on seals which identify items in the capital city. The Sumerians, pre-Homeric Greeks, and other groups used writing extensively to record inventories. And to the delight of all, writing has been used to record knowledge and literature.
Day 8:Kushim of Uruk will talk about Sumerian and other cuneiform writing scripts. Many believe that the Sumerians were the first to invent writing. The oldest written tablets were found in Uruk and date to 3300 B.C. These first tablets are mostly numerical tables and pictograms that record amounts of barley and other products. By 2500 B.C. cuneiform signs were used widely by the Sumerians. In the late 3rd millennium B.C. or early 2nd millennium B.C., the direction of the writing changed. Cuneiform signs were turned 90 degrees and were now written horizontally instead of vertically. Instead of writing from right to left, signs were now written from left to right. These changes are thought to have made writing easier for the scribes. Cuneiform signs could be carved on objects of stone, wax, metal, ivory, and glass, but most signs were pressed into clay tablets. Unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs were not written in ink. Mesopotamian scribes were not as highly revered as they were in Egypt.
In time, the cuneiform script was adopted and modified by scribes from 15 different languages. The Akkadians and Babylonians were some of the first groups to adopt the cuneiform script. Hittite archives of the 2nd millennium B.C. include documents written in Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform as well as Hittite cuneiform. The Hittites also developed a hieroglyphic system that was used on seals and rock inscriptions. The multilingual merchants of Ugarit (in Syria) used ten languages and five writing scripts to keep their trading empire in business. The main written language was Akkadian cuneiform. In time, they created an Ugaritic cuneiform that used an alphabet of 30 cuneiform signs. The cuneiform of Ugarit died out around 1200 B.C. under the onslaught of the Sea Peoples. The Assyrians of the 1st millennium B.C. and, still later, the Persians also developed their own cuneiform scripts.
The use of cuneiform is now waning. The Aramaic alphabet, descended from the Phoenician script, is replacing it. Soon it will end altogether. [The last known cuneiform inscription dates to 75 A.D.]
Day 15:Kai-nefer of Saqqara will discuss the Egyptian writing systems. The Egyptians will tell you that they were the first to invent writing. Other Egyptians will admit that the oldest evidence for Egyptian writing dates to 3100 B.C., a few hundred years after the Sumerians began writing. While cuneiform developed slowly, Egyptian writing appears very suddenly. The early Egyptians may have gotten the idea of writing from Mesopotamia and then used existing symbols on Egyptian pottery, weapons, amulets, etc. to form the basis for their hieroglyphs. While cuneiform uses a syllabic system, Egyptian hieroglyphs record only consonants, not vowels. Egyptian writing generally is written from right to left but scribes have felt free to change the direction of the writing for aesthetics and symmetry or to show respect to the gods. The signs are oriented so that the front of a sign is read first. If a sign faces right, then the direction of the writing is from right to left.
The first Egyptian hieroglyphs were used as short labels on stone objects and pottery in later Predynastic times. The first continuous texts appeared during the Old Kingdom (c. 2650 to 2135 B.C.). Middle Egyptian, the language of the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (c. 2135 to 1785 B.C.), was considered to be the classical stage of Egyptian. It was similar to the Egyptian of the Old Kingdom. About 700 different signs were used during the Middle Kingdom. Late Egyptian, the everyday language of the New Kingom and the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1300 to 1080 B.C.) was very different from Old and Middle Egyptian. The everyday language of later periods is called Demotic. By Graeco-Roman times, the number of hieroglyphs had exploded to 6000. Most of these signs are rarely used.
In time, two cursive scripts evolved from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Hieratic is almost as old as the hieroglyphs. It was used in daily administrative and business contexts while hieroglyphs were increasingly used in religious and monumental contexts. Demotic evolved around 650 B.C. and later replaced hieratic as the writing system for daily use.
Day 22: Stasikupros of Pylos will discuss Greek and other writing systems. The oldest writing system in the Greek world dates to Minoan times. The Minoans were writing in Crete since 1900 B.C. By that time, the Sumerians, Egyptians, and people of the Indus Valley had all developed writing scripts. The Chinese would develop writing a few hundred years later, around 1200 B.C.
The Minoans first began using a hieroglyphic-type script around 1900 B.C. This script is largely confined to seal stones and seals. A better-known script arose out of this first script. We can call the second script, Linear A. Linear A was developed around the eighteenth century B.C. The Minoans used the Linear A script on clay tablets throughout Crete and islands in the southern Aegean, such as Melos and Kea. The script also appears on objects of stone, pottery, and metal, including a pot on Thera. The mysterious script died out when Minoan civilization collapsed in the 15th century B.C. Nevertheless, Linear A influenced the Mycenaeans and other peoples of the area. The people of Cyprus created a writing system based on Linear A by 1500 B.C. This writing appears on tablets, clay balls, and clay cylinders. This script continues to be used in Hellenistic times.
Yet another script seems to be a contemporary of Linear A. The people of Phaistos in southern Crete have a circular clay disc that has mysterious symbols punched into it. No one can read this disc. The symbols are not even related to the hieroglyphic script of the area. The disc seems to date to 1700 B.C. or earlier.
Out of Linear A came a script called Linear B, the first script to be used to record the Greek language. Some of the signs of Linear A resemble those used in Linear B. Linear B was used by the Mycenaeans to record inventories and economic transactions. These economic records were not meant to be archived and few tablets list the date. The surviving Mycenaean tablets were baked when the palaces that housed them were burned to the ground. Linear B tablets are larger than most Linear A tablets and Mycenaean scribes generally created more orderly tablets.
The Greek alphabet that we know today is said to have come from Kadmos, who brought 'Phoenician letters' to Greece. The Phoenician alphabet developed around 1000 B.C. in an area that had been writing since the 2nd millennium B.C. The Phoenician alphabet was very influential in the world of writing. The Aramaic script developed out of Phoenician and became the official script of the later Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian empires, displacing cuneiform. The Phoenician script was also the basis for the first Hebrew script, which was developed around the 9th century B.C. A later Hebrew script developed from the Aramaic script. The Phoenician alphabet was also adapted by the early Greeks.
It is not known when Greeks in Phoenicia first adopted the Phoenician alphabet. The oldest known alphabetic Greek inscriptions seem to have appeared around 730 B.C. Others argue that Greeks first borrowed the alphabet as early as 1100 B.C. During that time, the Phoenicians wrote from both left to right and right to left, like early Greek writings. Only later did both Phoenician and Greek writing directions stabilize. While Linear B was used in economic contexts, early Greek alphabetic writings reflect private, literary concerns. The Greeks added vowels to the Phoenician writing system.
The Ionian alphabet became the dominant alphabet in Greece by 403 B.C. Before then, other Greek alphabets existed. Greek colonists took the Euboean alphabet to Italy around 750 B.C. The Etruscans adopted this script around 700 B.C. The Romans later adapted the Etruscan alphabet to fit their needs.
In a very real sense, writing has brought immortality to the authors and cultures that have recorded their thoughts in writing. Writing can appear in the form of cuneiform, hieroglyhs, or alphabetic letters. The words can be inscribed in stone, baked in clay, or written on papyrus. The documents can contain business transactions or epics. No matter the writing style or language, the written word has preserved the past and scholars have brought it to life. That is the magic of writing.
Sources:
Reading the Past: Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1990, 1998.
The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs, and Pictograms, Andrew Robinson, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
Return to The Library Meeting Room
Return to the main room of the Bibliotheke of Berea.