Origins of Writing

COMUNICHIAMO! Sembra facile... e cosa vuol dire? Come si fa? Perché? In quanti bisogna essere per farlo?
Comunicare è raccontare, ricordare agli altri ciò che si pensa o si desidera, ciò che succede. Gli uomini hanno sempre voluto comunicare e per farlo hanno cercato gli strumenti più efficaci, anche se non avevano carta e penna, telefoni e computer.
Pensate a quando eravate piccoli e che prima di imparare a scrivere sui vostri quaderni, cercavate il modo di dire i vostri pensieri. E certamente vi ricordate quando disegnavate all’asilo o a casa, su qualsiasi cosa, anche se la mamma non era sempre contenta...
L’uomo, fin da quando era ‘piccolo’ nella storia del mondo, si servì di ogni strumento e di ogni spazio per comunicare. Provate a immaginare di stare senza carta e senza penna. Come comunichereste? Se siete arrabbiati o contenti potete rivelarlo con la voce, o con le espressioni del viso, con i gesti. E in quale altro modo potete dire qualcosa di voi? E se siete lontani dalla persona a cui volete dire qualcosa?
Ancora adesso, per questo, si usa per esempio suonare le campane, per annunciare un momento particolare della giornata, lo scandire delle ore, o una festa o un lutto; una volta si usavano anche per avvertire dell’arrivo dei nemici. Nella giungla si usavano i tam tam dei tamburi e i Pellerossa dell'America settentrionale oscuravano la prateria con le nuvole di fumo.
Ma quello che l’uomo voleva era poter ‘segnare’, fermare, il suo pensiero su ogni spazio possibile per conservarlo nel tempo e diffonderlo. Per questo, ‘inventò’ la scrittura.

Writing!  Few human inventions are as pervasive and central to the modern world.  Each and every day, we read thousands of words—whether in traditional formats like books, magazines, or newspapers, or on the increasingly common computers, smartphones, ebooks, and tablets.  But even though writing seems thoroughly modern, it can be traced back more than 5,000 years to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

This lecture series and illustrated guidebook begins with a thorough consideration of what writing actually is, and precisely how it differs from other kinds of graphic communication systems, like pictography, rebus, and numerical notation.  Writing always records language, and it does so in surprisingly similar ways in all writing systems, whether ancient or modern.  In this sense, the way humans wrote millennia ago is not radically different from how we write today.  The lectures then turn to an exploration of the origins and development of writing, tracing the birth of our own alphabet, and its connections to the early Germanic Runes.  They also explore the independent invention of writing in China, and its adoption and elaboration in Japan.  In order to more deeply examine the subject of writing, the theory and practice of decipherment is explored.  Not all writing systems can be deciphered, so what are the limitations?  And how can they be overcome?  Several case studies put decipherment to the test, including Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (Champollion), Old Persian cuneiform (Grotefend), Mycenaean Linear B (Ventris), Mayan hieroglyphs (Knorosov) and Aztec hieroglyphs (Aubin and Lacadena).  Topics explored along the way include: the reasons behind the difficult and still incomplete decipherments of Etruscan and Meroïtic; the urge that numerous invididuals have had to reform writing, or to invent a more ‘perfect’ writing system; and an assessment of Darius the Great's claim that he himself invented the Old Persian (Achaemenid) syllabary.

In comparing the world's writing systems we slip the shackles of parochialism, recognizing that our alphabet is but one of many similar writing systems, all of which capably serve the needs of their users.  Writing is deeply conservative and resistant to change.  It is frequently adapted and altered during borrowing, but a culture rarely abandons or radically modifies its own extant writing system except in the most dire instances of cultural transformation.  An equally important topic is the deeply interdependent relationship of writing and civilization, including the social, political, and economic forces that led to the adoption of new media and technology for writing.  These forces not only shaped the form, function, and distribution of writing, but through it they have transformed civilization itself.  In the concluding lecture, all that has been discussed about the interplay between writing and civilization is used to predict one possible future of writing.

Preistoria e Protostoria egeo e cipriota (Periploi 6) A.M. Jasink, L. Bombardieri (a cura di), AKROTHINIA. Contributi di giovani ricercatori italiani agli studi egei e ciprioti (Periploi 7) A.M. Jasink, G. Dionisio (a cura di), MUSINT 2. Nuove esperienze di ricerca e didattica nella museologia interattiva (Periploi 8) A.M. Jasink, J. Weingarten, S. Ferrara (edited by), Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas. The semantics of a-literate and proto-literate media (seals, potmarks, mason's marks, seal-impressed pottery, ideograms and logograms, and related systems) (Periploi 9) Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas The semantics of a-literate and proto-literate media (seals, potmarks, mason's marks, seal-impressed pottery, ideograms and logograms, and related systems) Non-scribal Communication Media in the Bronze Age Aegean and Surrounding Areas : the semantics of a-literate and proto-literate media (seals, potmarks, mason's marks, seal-impressed pottery, ideograms and logograms, and related systems) / edited by Anna Margherita Jasink, Judith Weingarten, Silvia Ferrara. -Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2017. (Strumenti per la didattica e la ricerca ; 196) http://digital.casalini.it/9788864536378 ISBN 978-88-6453-636-1 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-637-8 (online) Peer Review Process All publications are submitted to an external refereeing process under the responsibility of the FUP Editorial Board and the Scientific Committees of the individual series. The works published in the FUP catalogue are evaluated and approved by the Editorial Board of the publishing house. For a more detailed description of the refereeing process we refer to the official documents published on the website and in the online catalogue of the FUP (www.fupress.com).

Thе сomparison of Ukhtasar-Jеrmadzor petroglyphs with Еgyptian hiеroglyphs
shоws morе than 30% similarity among thе signs usеd in both systеms. It
is thеrеforе pоssiblе to assume that Еgyрtian hiеroglyphs and thе pеtroglyphs of Siunik havе the same origins. Taking into соnsidеration thе fаct that thе Ukhtasar-Jеrmadzor pеtroglyphs wеre crеatеd muсh еarliеr, in thе 18th-11th millеnnia B .C., than the Egyptian hiеroglyphs, whiсh arе from 6th-4th millеnnia B.C., it is possiblе to rеason basеd on thе rеsults of this invеstigation, that thе Egyptian hiеroglyphs signs originatе from thе Siunik pеtroglyphs.

En el horizonte de una investigación amplia acerca de las solidaridades entre las configuraciones de lenguaje (usos poéticos y formas de escritura incluidos) y las maneras de concebir lo real y habitar el mundo, se interrogará el legado de la antigua Mesopotamia (legado que ha sido sólo recientemente puesto a disposición de un público más vasto, llenándose así un vacío importante en la historia y genealogía de las concepciones intelectuales, las cuales suelen ser remontadas sólo hasta el pensamiento de Grecia clásica). Tras un bloque preliminar –en que, guiados por De la Gramatología de J. Derrida, se delimitarán los desafíos mayores que impone un pensamiento de la escritura– la serie de indagaciones a seguir pueden ser agrupadas bajo las rúbricas de dos títulos ya clásicos en los estudios mesopotámicos: Antes de la Musas (Foster) y Antes de la Filosofía (Jacobsen). En el primer bloque, a través de una lectura e interpretación de los llamados ‘textos literarios’ –y poniendo especial atención a las formas poéticas de significación– se examinarán las concepciones mesopotámicas de un ‘lenguaje fuerte’ (Enuma Elish), del origen y funciones de la escritura (El mito de Anzu, Enmerkar y el Señor de Aratta), para luego evaluar las hipótesis dominantes acerca de la intencionalidad de la escritura a la luz del lugar que se asignaba el hombre en el cosmos (el consabido pesimismo existencial mesopotámico: Atrahasis, Gilgamesh). En el segundo bloque del seminario, a través de una lectura y análisis de los llamados ‘textos científicos’, se examinará cómo, impactados por su propio invento, se desarrolla en Mesopotamia una racionalidad y conciencia histórica bajo la lógica de su escritura, introduciéndose un giro frente al pensamiento mitopoético al transformarse la comprensión y experiencia del espacio y el tiempo. Se pondrá atención a una serie de saberes (que en Mesopotamia se hallaban tramados en la figura del escriba y sólo pueden ser separados desde una perspectiva moderna) para evaluar hasta qué punto la semiótica, la hermenéutica y las estrategias específicas de la escritura se imponen en la taxonomía de lo real (análisis de ‘listas léxicas’), en la ‘ciencia’ de la adivinación deductiva como lectura de la escritura del mundo (tratados adivinatorios), en la medicina diagnóstica como lectura de la sintomatología del cuerpo (tratados médicos), y, sobre todo, en la historiografía como sometimiento de la dispersión temporal a formas de narración que configuran la experiencia histórica (crónicas).

 Ո՞Վ ԷՐ ՄԵՍՐՈՊ ՄԱՇՏՈՑԸ  ՈՐՏԵՂԻ՞Ց ԵՆ ՄԵՍՐՈՊՅԱՆ ԱՅԲՈՒԲԵՆԻ ԳՐԱՆՇԱՆՆԵՐԸ  ՀԱՅՈՑ ՉՈՐՍ ԱՅԲՈՒԲԵՆՆԵՐԸ Համլետ Մարտիրոսյան Հնագույն քաղաքակրթությունների հետազոտման կենտրոն Նվիրում եմ իմ ծանոթ ու անծանոթ համախոհներին 1. ՆԵՐԱԾՈՒԹՅՈՒՆ Ասորեստանի, իսկ հետագայում աքեմենյան Իրանի ու Հռոմի դեմ մղած ծանր ու երկարատև պատերազմները խիստ բացասաբար ազդեցին Հայոց մշակույթի վրա: Հայոց ազգային մշակույթը հատկապես ու զգալի բացասական ներգործություն կրեց հելլենիզմի դարաշրջանում:

A discussion of the origins of Mesopotamian writing, from proto-cuneiform down through the development of the syllabary. In particular, the article presents an analysis of arguments presented by proto-cuneiform specialist Robert Englund and myself for a non-Sumerian, non-Semitic language in Uruk-period Southern Mesopotamia.
    It is argued that an early Indo-European-speaking community shared the multilinguistic landscape and had a decisive role in the early development of writing. It should be noted that the article does not suggest that Englund endorses these arguments, but rather demonstrates that his ideas are compatible with them.

This is the third chapter from this book posted on this website.

It concerns the possibility that numbers, writing, and pictures are related to one another in the Western tradition. Writing and picturing are often associated, but counting is rarely spoken about in the same context, so this is an intriguing possibility.

The argument turns on an analysis of Denise Schmandt-Besserat's theories of the origins of counting in the Ancient Middle East. The details of her theories, and their reception, are not of as much interest here as the philosophic possibility that an account like hers lets us posit a common origin for pictures (or images), numbers (or mathematics), and writing.

The idea of the book as a whole is to try to rethink some of the received ideas about pictures and their relation to language. There are a couple of chapters in the book that try to do that by considering prehistoric, or protohistoric, practices. So it's more about contemporary understanding than about what might have happened in the cultures Schmandt-Besserat studied.

The main aim of the present paper is to open
a debate of the multiple features related to the origin of
writing in Egypt. Although some questions arose in the
past, overall referred to the original place where emerged
the Egyptian writing, there are still many other questions
waiting for discussion: why was the writing invented?
How was the writing constructed? Which was the origin
of some of the earliest signs? These are just some of
several questions that arise when we approach to the
subject. In the present article, some ideas will be exposed
together with an historic and cultural contextualization of
the period in which writing emerged in Egypt.

Visual codes including three types of signs (logogram, phonograms and determinatives) are the earliest stage in the development of writing. Until recently, the oldest known visual code identified so far, the early precursor of the hieroglyphs, has been discovered in pre-Dynastic Egyptian context (Tomb U-j, near Abydos, 3320 BC). An examination of artifacts from the Nahal Mishmar copper hoard (end fifth millennium BCE) suggests the development of a visual code that employs these three types of signs in Southern Levant, many centuries before its earliest expression in Egypt and in Mesopotamia. This visual code is tridimensional, and its encoded messages focus on metallurgical processes and their cultural significance. The implications for our understanding of the Ghassulian culture and the development of writing in the Ancient Near East are discussed.

La Historia y la Arqueología académica sigue considerando que el inicio de la escritura se produjo en Sumer o Egipto a finales del IV milenio anterior a Jesucristo. Sin embargo, este debate continúa abierto hoy en día, y hay quien apoya que la escritura de los sellos del Indo, descubiertos en Harappa, es aún más antigua que las anteriores. Igualmente, se sigue considerando que a la Península Ibérica la escritura llegó con los colonizadores fenicios hacia el décimo siglo anterior a Jesucristo. Ellos fueron los que alfabetizaron a la población nativa y la empujaron hacia el "recto camino" de la civilización. Sin embargo, varios descubrimientos que se vienen realizando desde los últimos años del sigo XX hasta el presente están poniendo seriamente en cuestión esta idea, y cada vez son más las voces que defienden que entre muchas de las manifestaciones del llamado Arte Rupestre Esquemático del Neolítico y el Calcolítico, tanto en cueva como en rocas al aire libre, se hallan claros casos de inscripciones, es decir, de mensajes que fueron escritos con posibles signos de proto-escrituras lineales que bien podrían ser ya logofonográficas...

Mittelägyptisch gilt als die klassische Literatursprache. Während die Grammatik des Altägyptischen und Mittelägyptischen einander sehr ähneln, unterscheidet sich die des Neuägyptischen doch durchaus von diesen beiden. Außer dem Demotischen treten quasi alle Sprachstufen in zwei Schriftformen auf: Sie sind zum einen in Hieroglyphen belegt, die z. B. in Stein gehauen wurden, zum anderen in Hieratisch, einer Kursivschrift, das auf Papyri oder Ostraka verwendet wurde. Bei dem Demotischen handelt es sich wie beim dem Hieratischen um eine Kursivschrift. Im Ptolemäischen nahm die Zahl der benutzten Hieroglyphen sprunghaft zu. Die koptische Schrift bildet die letzte Stufe der ägyptischen Schriftentwicklung. Sie ist eine reine Lautschrift, die in griechischen Buchstaben wiedergegeben wird, ergänzt durch 8 Zeichen, die es im griechischen Alphabet nicht gab. Die koptische Sprache wird heute noch in der koptischen Kirche verwendet. Die Hieroglyphenschrift ist eine Kombination aus Lautzeichen (Phonogramme), Deutzeichen (Determinative) und Bildzeichen (Ideogramme). Die Leserichtung variiert von rechts nach links, von links nach rechts oder von oben nach unten. Sie ist durch die Blickrichtung der als Hieroglyphen vorkommenden Tiere erkennbar. Es gibt im Ägyptischen weder Satzzeichen noch eine Abgrenzung zwischen den Worten in Form von Abständen. Allerdings enden viele

A book presenting a revolutionary discovery, the decoding of messages from the Paleolithic age. Here below is an excerpt, revealing a chapter of history of 20,000 years ago. The  methods used to reach the description are explained in the book, along with the reading of several other prehistoric documents.

The Turkic "kök" script was syllabic and not alphabetic. It borrowed nothing from other writing systems, but all writing systems of the world, especially the Indian Brahmi and Kharosti Indian scripts and the ancient Chinese writing, originate in the ancient extinct logographic and logo-phonetic Turkic script. This work gives a plausible origin for each of the syllabic signs of the Kök script, including the most rare of its signs which are usually not even included in sign lists.

La genèse des écritures suscite beaucoup d'intérêt mais reste souvent mal comprise. Par les différentes contributions de cet ouvrage, plusieurs supports d'image en Egypte prédynastique sont examinés, avant de s'interroger sur le lien entre l'écrit et l'image, la pratique graphique et le contexte socio-culturel dans lequel cette invention s'est produite ainsi que le statut du signe. Il semble en effet que la relation entre le signe et le support puisse être une clef de compréhension. La genèse des premières écritures suscite beaucoup d'intérêt. Toutefois, jusqu'à ces dernières années, les travaux sur ce problème partaient tous d'une approche «phylogénétique», c'est-à-dire d'un stade constitué et reconnu de l'écriture vers ses origines, comme on recherche les étapes de l'évolution entre le singe et l'Homme, squelette par squelette. Les recherches les plus récentes ont permis l'apparition d'un nouveau point de vue, qui conduit à prendre en compte des modes de communication visuels antérieurs ou contemporains de l'écrit mais qui n'en sont pas (para-ou proto-écriture). Ce colloque a eu pour ambition de faire se rencontrer des spécialistes qui travaillent sur différents systèmes graphiques attestés au IVème millénaire en Egypte. Ont été ainsi pris en compte différents supports matériels comme les sceaux, les potmarks (des signes incisés sur la surface des vases), des objets de prestige (palettes à fard, têtes de massue et manches de couteau), les gravures rupestres du Désert oriental et les décors peints des vases de Nagada II. Les auteurs s'interrogent aussi sur le lien entre l'écrit et l'image, le contexte socio-culturel dans lequel cette transformation s'est produite et le statut du signe. Il semble en effet que la relation entre le signe et le support puisse être une clef de compréhension : moins le support et l'agencement sur celui-ci est prégnant, plus le signe lui-même le devient, comme un tout et non comme une partie d'un ensemble. Hors de son contexte, un élément n'est plus lisible. Le passage d'une représentation synthétique plus ou moins rigide à des variations analytiques à combinatoire illimitée s'est produit. Des pistes très prometteuses sont ouvertes par la prise en compte des techniques de mémorisation de performances orales liées à la pratique rituelle.

Unlike China’s earliest readable texts, the late Shāng 商 (13th-11th c. BCE) ‘oracle bone inscrip­tions’, preserved mostly on water turtle plastrons and bovine shoulder blades (jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文), which were largely forgotten until their rediscovery at the turn to the last century, bronze in­scriptions (jīnwén 金文), attested from the 12th century BCE onwards, seem to have been always known and were occasionally mentioned throughout the classical period. They were first system­atically cataloged during the Northern Sòng 宋 dynasty (960-1127). It was already during this ini­tial phase of scholar­ship already that several authors noticed that some of the most archaic bronze texts include graphs with a strongly  “pictograph” character, often clearly distinct in posi­tion, size and ductus from the more linear and abstract graph shapes en­countered in the texts which they accompany. The famous Chinese paleographer and writer Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 (1892-1978) first called these graphs “lineage symbols” (zú huī 族徽) in a study published in 1930, where he argued that they represent quasi-totemic identity markers of ancient Shāng lineages and poli­ties and stressed their status as proto-writing. While Guō’s theory continues to receive wide sup­port in Western and Chinese studies on the subject, there is no lack of controversies about whether they should be classified and analyzed as “glottographic” writ­ing sensu strictu or rather as “emblems”, i.e. non-linguistic symbol systems, functioning somewhat like heraldic signs or “coats of arms” in various Europan traditions. Nor is there any clear consensus, whether they repr­esent names of individuals, kin-, lineage- or ex­ogamy-based groups, or even other social and political entities.

Proceeding from the most recent catalog and study of these signs (Hé Jǐngchéng 2009), I will first introduce the extant corpus some 900 simplex graphs, summarize the recent Chinese and Japa­nese scholarship on their archaeological contexts, distributional patterns and possible relation­ship towards neolithic pottery marks, and then focus on their combinatory prop­erties, as evi­denced in a corpus of some 530 compound graphs known so far. It is hoped that this glimpse into the early history of  transitions from non-textual to textual functions of such symbols will allow for the formulation of some more theoretical points, useful for a comparative typology of the emer­gence of logographic writing.

Клинасто писмо или клинопис сматра се најстаријим системом писања на свету - настао је крајем 4. миленијума пре Христа у древној Месопотамији. Назив је добило према карактеристичном облику знакова, чији делови подсећају на клинове (лат. cuneus - клин, па одатле и енглески назив cuneiform, нем. Keilschrift). Сам термин је, највероватније, први употребио Томас Хајд, који у својој Historia religionis veterum Persarum из 1700. године говори о "dactuli pyramidales seu cuneiformei". Облик знакова последица је материјала који су коришћени при писању: знакови су урезивани тврдим оштрим предметом (обично је то засечена трска, које је било у изобиљу на рекама, мада су писаљке прављене и од дрвета, костију, метала...) на мекој површини - влажној глини (повремено и на другим материјалима). Средства и начин писања мењали су се током векова, па треба имати у виду да знакови, нарочито из прве фазе развоја овог писма, немају увек подразумевани "клинасти" карактер. Најстарији клинописни записи, пореклом из древног сумерског града Урука, датирају се на око 3200 година пре Христа. Почеци клинастог писма, међутим, сежу дубоко у прошлост, хиљадама година пре његове званичне појаве. Порекло му лежи у древном ситему бројања и рачунања, коришћеном од стране раних пољопривредних култура древног Блиског истока...

One theory sustains that the invention of writing is linguistically determined and limited to societies whose language is rich in monosyllabic morphemes (Daniels 1992, Boltz 2000). Its validity, however, depends on an assessment of the role of acrophony in the invention of scripts across the globe, something which is still unrealized. As far as the Anatolian Hieroglyphic script is concerned, Hawkins (1986) set forth the only attempt to understand the linguistic rationale behind the use of rebus and acrophony in the script’s invention. In his opinion, a pattern is observable: the syllabic values of the signs were always drawn from monosyllabic or reduplicated stems of Luwian or Hittite words. Thirty years on, this picture of Anatolian Hieroglyphic, while not far from reality, needs to be fully reassessed. This article represents an effort towards that goal.