by Mariya Popova, “Literary translation”

A Historical Journey Through Writing Systems and

Evolution of Letter’s Shape
It is not obvious to a modern person why the letters of the English alphabet
are shaped the way they are. What were the main mind shifts that led to the invention
of different writing systems? And why did some writing systems occur to be used
widespread till now and another died?
Before answering these questions, it is necessary to focus on the history of the
first writing tries and its motivation.
1. Cuneiform as the example of logo-syllabic writing system
Denise Schmandt-Besser's hypothesis [1] suggests that the ancient Sumerians
and Elamites initially used a system of clay tokens of various shapes to keep track of
their possessions, such as livestock and other goods with each token denoting one
object (cow, ram, etc.). These tokens evolved over time, with markings and imprints
appearing on them (fingerprints, serifs, recognizable geometric shapes). The tokens
were placed in clay envelopes, sealed with a cylindrical seal for identification.
Around 3300 B.C., imprints of the tokens along with the owner's seal began
to appear on the surface of the clay containers. This duplication of information
allowed for reading the contents without breaking the seal, ensuring the security of
the information. Eventually, the physical tokens disappeared, leaving only their
imprints, and the containers changed from spherical to flat, leading to the emergence
of the first clay tablets with recorded quantities of various objects.
During this period, there was no universal unit of measurement, and each
symbol represented a specific qualitative and quantitative attribute. For example, the
signs "1 goat", "2 sheep", "3 measures of grain" played the role of a "picture symbol",
they were pictograms by definition. The early symbols of writing took the form of
countable objects or goods, functioning as pictograms.
Over time, combinations of these pictograms formed stable ideograms, whose
meanings went beyond the sum of their individual depictions. For example, the sign
"bird" together with the sign "egg" gave the combination "fecundity" not only in
application to birds, but also as an abstract term.
Such pictograms and ideograms are considered as precursors of writing
evolving into symbols representing sounds and forming words by 3000 B.C. But in
some moment it appeared to be not enough – the needs went beyond agricultural
accounting and there was no possibility to represent all necessary words as pictures or
logograms. So cuneiform script gradually expanded its vocabulary, adding syllabic
symbols. This new logo-syllabic writing system used both – logogram symbols,
representing the whole word, and between 600 and 1,000 characters to spell words by
dividing them up into syllables, like 'ca-at' for cat, or 'go-at' for goat [2]. From this
point Sumerian writing becomes fully capable of ciphering and deciphering
information independently from knowing particular domestic phenomena.
 However the use of cuneiform gradually declined over time for several
reasons like emergence and spread of other, more practical writing systems, evolving
societal needs and the requirement for more versatile writing systems, political and
cultural changes leading to the displacement of existing writing systems and
technological advancements in writing tools and materials, favoring more efficient
methods of communication and record-keeping.
2. Egyptian hieroglyphs as the example of logo-syllabic writing
system
Like cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs were used for record-keeping, but also
for religious purposes. However Egyptian hieroglyphs combined not only logographic
and syllabic but also alphabetic elements, with about 1,000 distinct characters in total.
[4]
There is no knowing who invented Egyptian hieroglyphs, but hieroglyphic
writing probably originated at one of the rival royal courts in the late-fourth
millennium BC, before Egypt was unified under the first dynasty. While the idea of
writing may have been borrowed from Mesopotamia (where it had been developed
centuries earlier), the hieroglyphic system was distinctively Egyptian. Still, different
versions are being argued on whether Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian
Cuneiform were invented independently.[3][5][6][7]
Hieroglyphic script was the oldest in the evaluation of Egyptian writing. Each
hieroglyph was a picture of a thing that existed in the world or imagination of the
ancient Egyptians, for instance, the ground plan of a simple house , a human mouth ,
or a pair of legs in motion . These could be used to write the words that they depicted,
or related words: for example, “house”; “come.”
Eventually ideograms and phonograms began to appear. Ideograms were used
to convey both sound and meaning (sound and meaning signs). For example depicts a
house (in plan) and represents the sound combination of p + r = pr. The sign is used in
the word pr = house. Phonograms were used to indicate the sounds of signs (sound
signs). The sign Dw represents a sand hill and is used as a sound sign in which means
evil. The sound of these signs is in Latin letters, known as transliteration. We shall
start with unilateral signs which could be identified as "Alphabet".[8]
As Egyptian writing progressed, different versions of the hieroglyphic script
emerged, including hieratic and demotic, so called Cursive hieroglyphs used for
religious literature on papyrus and wood. Hieratic, a stylized form of hieroglyphs, was
used for religious, public, commercial, and private documents, while demotic, an even
more condensed script, eventually replaced hieratic for most purposes, while hieratic
was mostly used by priests for religious writing.
3. From logo-syllabic to alphabetic writing systems
Demotic Egyptian script became the base of Proto-Sinaitic script that later
evolved into the Phoenician alphabet, used as a base for old Greek – the first pure
alphabetical language. In Proto-Sinaitic script for example, the hieroglyph for pr
"house" (a rectangle partially open along one side) was adopted to write Semitic /b/,
after the first consonant of baytu, the Semitic word for "house".
The earliest known alphabetic (or "proto-alphabetic") inscriptions are the so-
called Proto-Sinaitic (or Proto-Canaanite) script sporadically attested in the Sinai and
in Canaan in the late Middle and Late Bronze Age. The script was not widely used
until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC.
The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite"
script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Phoenician uses a system of acrophony to
name letters. The names of the letters are essentially the same as in its parental scripts,
which are in turn derived from the word values of the original hieroglyph for each
letter. The original word was translated from Egyptian into its equivalent form in the
Semitic language, and then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's
value.[9]
4. Writing systems evaluation and their role in history
The Polish American Assyriologist Ignace Gelb distinguished four stages in
this evolution, beginning with picture writing, which expressed ideas directly;
followed by word-based writing systems; then by sound-based syllabic writing
systems, including unvocalized syllabaries or consonantal systems; and concluding
with the Greek invention of the alphabet.[10]
The invention of the alphabet is a major achievement of Western culture. It is
also unique. The alphabet was invented only once, though it has been borrowed by
many cultures. It is a model of analytic thinking, breaking down perceptible qualities
like syllables into more basic constituents. And because it is capable of conveying
subtle differences in meaning, it has come to be used for the expression of a great
many of the functions served by speech.
The alphabet requires little of the reader beyond familiarity with its
orthography. It allows the reader to decipher words newly encountered and permits
the invention of spellings for new patterns of sound, including proper names (a
problem that is formidable for nonalphabetic systems). Finally, its explicitness
permits readers to make a relatively sharp distinction between the tasks of deciphering
and interpreting. Less explicit orthographies require the reader first to grasp the
meaning of a passage as a whole in order to decide which of several possible word
meanings a particular graphic string represents.
5. Evolution of letter shapes
As writing systems developed the shapes of letters became more and more
simple. For example, here’s how the letter “A” most likely came into existence
(Figure 1). All letters started as pictures and evolved over centuries before they finally
acquired their current shape.
 Figure 1.Evoluation of letter A shape from the earliest writing systems to nowadays
Analyzing the motivation that leaded people from ancient times to change
their writing systems, I assume there was some overall trends of writing evolution and
reasons for each of the trends:
Simplification. Most, if not all, writing systems that we know have evolved
towards the overall reduction of the stroke count and the drop of most complex sub-
elements. Indeed, it is much simpler, faster and cheaper to write the “A” letter, than to
draw a bull head. The simplification had boosted the speed of writing, entailed the
spread of writing into less educated majorities, and allowed kings and librarians to
save gold on salaries for professional painters to have their stuff written.
Regularization. Over time, letters evolved to consist of similar, repeating
elements and to be written in similar manner. For example, Latin script has such
repeating elements (radicals) as half-circle (P, B, D, R), horizontal median line (H, A,
F, E), circles (O, Q, C, G) and so on. It greatly contributed to ease of writing and
reading: it’s easier to master the writing system when you can tell exactly how two
letters are different from each other, and where some originality doesn’t hurt
legibility. Also, it made writing arguably more aesthetic (you can easily tell that every
Romanic letter belongs to one common set just by looking at them).
Variation. More often than not, while letters evolve to consist from a limited
set of radicals, they also evolve to utilize it in the most diverse way. For example,
English alphabet starts like this: A, B, C, D, E, F, G… Not like this:

Figure 2.Variation of letters used in alphabets

That’s a rare occurrence in writing system evolution, because every letter
starts from different pictures, but occasionally one can see a stroke popping up to
enhance the difference between two letters. It’s a contribution to legibility and ease of
mastery: it’s easier to pick a system when each element is different from each other as
much as the system allows.
Literature:
1. Before Writing: Volume 1: From Counting to Cuneiform Hardcover – May 1,
1992
2. Cuneiform /anglais Paperback – May 1, 2015by FINKEL IRVING
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/arts/design/20writing.html
4. Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12.
5. Geoffrey Sampson (1990). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction.
Stanford University Press. pp. 78–. ISBN 978-0-8047-1756-4. Retrieved 31
October 2011.
6. Simson Najovits, Egypt, Trunk of the Tree: A Modern Survey of an Ancient
Land, Algora Publishing, 2004, pp. 55–56.
7. David, Rosalie (2002). The Experience of Ancient Egypt. Routledge. ISBN
978-1-134-96799-5. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
8. https://www.worldhistory.org/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs/
9. https://wiki.alquds.edu/?query=Phoenician_alphabet
10. https://www.britannica.com/topic/writing/History-of-writing-systems