Cuneiform was used for official accounting, governmental and theological pronouncements and a wide range of correspondence. A cylinder seal is a small pierced object, like a long round bead, carved in reverse intaglio and hung on strings of fiber or leather. These often beautiful objects were ubiquitous in the Ancient Near East and remain a unique record of individuals from this era. Each seal was owned by one person and was used and held by them in particularly intimate ways, such as strung on a necklace or bracelet.
When a signature was required, the seal was taken out and rolled on the pliable clay document, leaving behind the positive impression of the reverse images carved into it. However, some seals were valued not for the impression they made, but instead, for the magic they were thought to possess or for their beauty.
However, what is most remarkable about cylinder seals is their scale and the beauty of the semi-precious stones from which they were carved. The images and inscriptions on these stones can be measured in millimeters and feature incredible detail. The stones from which the cylinder seals were carved include agate, chalcedony, lapis lazuli, steatite, limestone, marble, quartz, serpentine, hematite and jasper; for the most distinguished there were seals of gold and silver.
To study Ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals is to enter a uniquely beautiful, personal and detailed miniature universe of the remote past, but one which was directly connected to a vast array of individual actions, both mundane and momentous. Figure 3. Nevertheless, no matter how old you become, or how long you have been studying, you always learn something new every day that passes.
Although I almost type or write every day, I never consider the situation without writing system. I found that I know too little about ancient literature, they are not only language expression, but also an artistic heritage.
I feel very honored to be able to see the text content left over generations, and it is a pity for the disappeared language that we have never seen before. Thanks, Han! Thank you for giving me an opportunity to read such an interesting article.
Through this article, I learnt how different written languages were developed. After that, Japanese ancestors created Hiragana and Katakana by referring to Kanji to make Japanese language easier, and these three type of Japanese still exist. This is really interesting that Katakana and Hiragana are also somehow derived from Chinese characters, even though they look totally different.
Thanks, Kyohei! First of all thank you Ingrid for a well presented academic lecture on the topic of early invention of writing. It was interesting to learn about where writing was first invented, why it was invented and how. It was an early form of information technology that was invented for the purpose of record keeping, like an excel spreadsheet now! It completely make sense when we see the early form of writing as a pictogram for the purpose of trade and commerce drawn on the walls of the caves.
It would be worth to learn about the differences in writing systems in different languages as for example, Roman, Greek, Chinese, Egyptians etc. As for example, in early years of English acquisition,to develop writing skill, we start teaching from letters as signs that represent a particular sound. And for word formation we teach sound out technique and then say the sound, visualise the letters corresponding to the sound and then write it.
In Chinese as each letter represent a character or as it is defined as Logogram, it must be different technique to teach the art of writing. It would be interesting to know more about this. Thanks, Nusrat! How to best teach English spelling, which is a combination of alphabet and logographic writing, is the million dollar question …. Hi Ingrid, such an interesting topic. In each week, your lecture makes me be interested more and more in literacy.
Therefore, this is the reason why people in each society have invented the writing and the writing has a revolution and improved continually in each generation of that society following their cultural society. Thank you again for your attractive topic. Thanks, Chalermkwan! As you stated, it is curious how one might think writing was invented because of the urge to maintain stories and culture in general for generations to come. In all honesty, I used to be part of that crowd until moments ago.
This notion has been completely erased from my brain thanks to this post! On a more specific note, I was surprised to learn the Incas and the Sumerians had a similar bureaucratic issue and how they came up with useful solutions.
Although these cultures have never been in contact with each other, it is amazing to know they faced related issues somehow. This is applicable to other cultures as well. As a Peruvian, I shall say it is a pity Quipus were not durable enough because of their fabrication and, on top of that, they almost disappeared with colonisation. I am guessing the debate whether they were a form of writing or not shall remain…. Thanks, Alex! It pushed me to be curious, research, and read more about the evolution of writing.
The invention of writing happened independently in different parts of the world and it followed the same fundamental steps.
Simple images can represent something tangible. Pictograms have evolved continuously over the centuries. Today, we often pictograms to represent and simplify data, concepts, and objects. Thank you for your time and effort in creating all three versions. Thanks, T! First of all, thank you for the materials in three different formats.
The content of the written text presents the information in detail. Meanwhile, the digital format, in my opinion, provides the main ideas of of the content. It is like a summary for written and spoken format. It is really helpful to start with the digital format so that readers can understand the main information. After that, readers can get more detail information through the written and spoken formats. The affordance of the spoken one is a reader can listen to it while doing other things.
In comparison, the written format requires readers to fully concentrate since sometimes written text is confusing due to the use of high level of syntax and not to mention the use of difficult academic words. In conclusion, each of the formats has their own affordances and limitation. The readers need to know what sort of information they need general or detail , then they can search the information through the format that meets their need. Thank you for the very interesting article this week, Ingrid.
Also, the video you prepared was so appropriate that it helped me understand. I felt really interesting that most writing systems were inspired by other writing systems.
It is a nationwide Korean holiday to commemorate the creation and proclamation of Hangul. That much, King Sejong is one of the most important figures in Korean history. On the other hand, I thought it was a good thing that writing was in the world.
Thanks for your fantastic works again! Thanks, Subin! You are quite right — writing shows us how all cultures are connected and how artificial borders are!
Such an interesting topic this week! It is so interesting to see how all writing is considered to be derived from one single writing system, and how we all have developed from there to properly suit our languages and make it logical for our languages. It is incredible how developed our language has become, and how writing has helped preserve important historical documents and history. If we did not have any writing, imagine how much information we would have lost! No books, no articles, no journals, all would have been spoken stories from generation to generation!
Thanks, Chris! True but another way to think about it is that knowledge would be different: different kinds of knowledge are transmitted through stories and through writing local-global, concrete-abstract are just two relevant dimensions. That is very true! A good example of this is old traditional Viking history before they started writing with runes , which we still learn about in school in Norway.
A lot of information might be misinterpreted along the way and will change the entire story after generations. Indeed, each writing emerged from images or drawings, i can still recognize some writing or should be images used in ancient China by guessing their meaning even though i never use them in my life. No matter Chinese writing or Egyptian writing, they are all beautiful and related to a specific culture.
Thanks a lot! Thanks, Yuan Li! I agree about the beauty of all writing. Evening, Ingrid. Thank you for your recap lecture this week.
It is an intriguing video and a really helpful supplement for the reading last week. Besides, owing to the super-quick recap thread on Twitter, I could swiftly recall major key points in the min-long video, which is likely to be superb handy for the upcoming quiz. Great lecture! Very interesting, and visuals help a lot! I actually was learning Japanese first and Mandarin Chinese second. Knowing a few Japanese characters, helped me a lot when I moved to China as I could figure out in the local restaurant some dishes on the menu or find the exit in the subway, etc.
Japanese uses kanji, which are pretty much traditional Chinese characters, hiragana syllables used mostly for particles and grammatical endings and katakana that is used to write foreign origin words. Mandarin Chinese uses simplified Chinese characters.
What was most interesting for me is the importance of stroke order when writing kanji, hiragana, katakana and Chinese characters. I tried to find out why it is so important to write strokes in a particular order, and I have found out that it is because when writing by hand, quickly, the character itself is not as legible but everyone can figure out the meaning by the stroke order. When everyone uses the same stroke order for the same characters, they have a particular, familiar shape to them, and if someone would put the strokes in the different order it would lose the whole shape and would be intelligible for the reader.
If there are any native Japanese and Chinese speakers, please let me know if there are other reasons for the stroke order, also I wonder, does this rule apply to Korean as well? Thanks, Moni! Egyptian writing — the famous hieroglyphics — developed independently not long thereafter, under similar circumstances, historians think.
A few thousand years later, as variations on the two systems spread throughout the region, the entire ancient world had writing schemes that vastly improved the efficiency of economies, the accountability of governments and, maybe most importantly to us, our understanding of the past. Reading and writing in ancient times wasn't for the masses, however.
Daily life in Mesopotamia and Egypt was time-consuming, and so writing became a specialized profession, usually for members of the elite class. The highly-regarded scribes of ancient Mesopotamia were even depicted in art wearing cuneiform writing implements a bit like a set of chopsticks in their belts as a mark of their importance.
Read more:. Through cuneiform we hear the voices not just of kings and their scribes, but children, bankers, merchants, priests and healers — women as well as men. To find out more, click here. Sign in. Back to Main menu Virtual events Masterclasses.
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