Early writing systems
Early writing systems are collections of symbols used to represent spoken languages and play a crucial role in the development of civilizations. Historians often cite the emergence of these systems as a key criterion for identifying complex societies. The earliest known writing system is attributed to the Ancient Sumerians, who developed a pictorial system around 4000-3000 BCE in Mesopotamia, primarily for religious, economic, and agricultural record-keeping. They created cuneiform, a more advanced writing form, which became widely used across the region for over three thousand years.
Following the Sumerians, Ancient Egyptians created hieroglyphics around 3000 BCE, composed of hundreds of symbols that represented sounds, syllables, and complete words. This system was mainly utilized by priests and evolved into cursive forms like hieratic and demotic for more practical applications. The Ancient Chinese writing system emerged during the Shang Dynasty around 1200 BCE, originally inscribed on oracle bones for divination purposes. It evolved into a complex system of thousands of characters, which continues to evolve and endure today.
The study of these writing systems reveals the interconnectedness of early civilizations and highlights the cultural significance of writing in human history. Efforts such as the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project aim to further explore the cross-cultural interactions that influenced the evolution of these important communication tools.
Early writing systems
A writing system is a set of symbols used to represent a spoken language. Historians often consider a writing system an important criterion in determining whether an early group of people comprised a civilization. Early peoples created writing systems mainly for religious, economic, and agricultural purposes. Most historians agree that the Ancient Sumerians developed the first early writing system in 4000-3000 BCE. The Ancient Egyptians and the Ancient Chinese also created early writing systems.
Overview: The Ancient Sumerians
Historians believe the ancient Sumerians most likely created the first writing system around 4000-3500 BCE. The Sumerians established cities in Mesopotamia, an area in the Middle East between and around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, or modern-day southern Iraq.
Sumerian scribes were temple officials who used this first writing system, which consisted of pictures that represented objects. A temple's possessions signified its wealth, so these scribes recorded the amount of grain and the number of animals their temple owned. They used a sharp writing instrument, usually created from a reed, to make an impression in damp clay. When this clay dried in the sun, it became a permanent document.
By about 3000 BCE, the Akkadians developed this pictorial writing into cuneiform, a system of signs used to represent sounds. Scribes used cuneiform to record spoken language from left to right on clay tablets. Archeologists have discovered letters written in cuneiform as well as The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100-1200 BCE), a famous literary work about a king of an Ancient Sumerian city-state.
Cuneiform spread throughout the Middle East and was used to record fifteen languages, including those spoken by the Babylonians and the Assyrians. Ancient civilizations used cuneiform for about three thousand years.
The Ancient Egyptians
The Sumerians most likely inspired the Ancient Egyptians to create a writing system around 3000 BCE. This system, called hieroglyphics, had about seven hundred signs called hieroglyphs and was used to record spoken language. While some hieroglyphs look like the letters of an alphabet, the writing system does not include vowels, so archaeologists do not know how the spoken language was pronounced. Hieroglyphics also had syllabic signs, which represented a series of consonants, and word signs, which stood for a complete word. The writing system also incorporated pictures to represent complex ideas. Like cuneiform, hieroglyphs were often written from left to right but could also be written from right to left and top to bottom.
The Ancient Egyptians called hieroglyphs "the words of God," and the writing system was used mainly by priests. The ornate symbols took a long time to create—painters and sculptors decorated the walls of tombs and temples with hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphics was not a practical writing system to record day-to-day business activities.
Around 1100 BCE, the Ancient Egyptians began using a cursive-style writing system called hieratic, which was an abbreviated version of hieroglyphics that was easier to write. About 700 BCE, hieratic was replaced by demotic script, which was easy to use and read. The word demotic comes from the Greek word demotikos, which means "for the people." The demotic script was popular among the Ancient Egyptians.
Scribes in Ancient Egypt were trained in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Scribes did a great deal of writing—much of what archaeologists know about Ancient Egypt can be attributed to scribes' writings. Scribes used pens made of reed to record important information on papyrus scrolls.
About 200 CE, demotic was replaced by Coptic, a writing system that encompassed the Greek alphabet. After the Arab invasion of Egypt in 640 CE, Ancient Egypt was introduced to the Arabic language and script. By 391 CE, the Ancient Egyptian culture, including its writing system, had disappeared.
No one knew how to read hieroglyphics until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone fifteen hundred years later. The Rosetta Stone is a stone with three types of writing on it: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek—to ensure that all people in Egypt could read it. The stone contains a text written by a group of priests in 196 BCE to honor their pharaoh. For hundreds of years, people tried to decipher the message on the Rosetta Stone but were unable to crack the code. Finally, in 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion, who could read both Greek and Coptic, deciphered the hieroglyphics on the stone. Some signs used in Coptic were once used in demotic. Champollion was able to use these signs, along with the Greek language, to determine the message and interpret the hieroglyphic signs.
The Ancient Chinese
The earliest Chinese writings were created during the Shang Dynasty around 1200 BCE. Strangely, these writings, which contained ten to sixty characters, were inscribed on bone. The writings were questions from scribes to the ancestors of their king. Ancient Chinese kings believed that their ancestors could give them important advice. They hoped their ancestors would crack the bones using hot rods. The patterns created by the cracks would help the kings predict the future.
The Ancient Chinese writing system grew to include thousands of characters. These characters were essentially pictures, which was problematic. It took a great deal of time to memorize thousands of pictures, and some words were difficult to represent. Additionally, many words in the Chinese language sound nearly the same, so messages were often ambiguous. In 213 BCE, people added a second picture to words that sounded the same; the first picture indicated the sound, and the second indicated the word's meaning. Unlike the writing systems of the Ancient Sumerians and the Ancient Egyptians, the Chinese writing system endured through the years. While it has undergone many changes, it is still in use.
Many modern projects continue to explore the development of written language. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS), sponsored by the European Research Council, investigates the interaction and adaptation of writing across cultures and time.
Bibliography
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Brown, Shelby. "Where Did Writing Come From?" Getty, 27 Apr. 2021, www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
Dimosthenis Vasiloudis. "The History of Writing: Tracing the Development of Expressing Language by Systems of Markings." The Archaeologist, 4 Sept. 2022, www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-history-of-writing-tracing-the-development-of-expressing-language-by-systems-of-markings. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
"Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing." Discovering Egypt, discoveringegypt.com/egyptian-hieroglyphic-writing. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.