This blog is all about creating and appreciating art of all forms. From literature to TV shows, from paintings and illustrations to different cultures across the world, this blog is for and about the ‘creators’ of the world.
The blog will follow a pattern of weekly topics ranging from history to eras of eminent literature, from the renaissance to digitization of the artistic world spread over three posts per week. This week, I take a road down history. The blog will talk about how the written medium started; how word spread around in the times of your great-great-great-times 10-grandfather, the first printing press, the first printed book, the modern press and the kind of books that the techie-generation of today love to read.
In this first post, I write about the writings of historic times, the first scripts and the ancient methods of written communications
The first forms of written communications can be traced back to the cave paintings of the Palaeolithic man, some of which date back to 40,000 years. They can be found all across Asia and Europe. As man developed, his forms of written communications also progressed in sophistication and clarity. The first actual writings are considered to be Egyptian Hieroglyphs (or God words) which date back to 3300 BC. These writings consisted of complex symbols which were a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements like ‘the owl’ and ‘the wolf’. Egyptians used cursive literature for religious literature on papyrus and wood. As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone (the most sacred piece of Egyptian history ever found) contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BC), and after Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from some of the foreign conquerors.
The Cuneiform script, known to be created by the Sumerians in the 26th century BC, is one of the earliest forms of written languages. The language is distinguished by the wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by blunt reeds. The name ‘Cuneiform’ itself means ‘wedge-shaped’, derived from its Latin roots- cuneus meaning “wedge” and forma meaning “shape”. Cuneiform began as a system of complicated pictographs but during its 2400 years of its usage, its characters simplified and became smaller in size. By the 3rd century BC, Cuneiform consisted of a complex combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs very much like the English we use today consisting of emoticons and alphabets. Cuneiform although extinct since 2BC, laid the foundations for modern day written language.Historians also argue that a third independent script was invented by man in another part of the world- the Indus script. It is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilization during the mature Harappan periods between the 35th and 20th centuries BC. Most inscriptions are extremely short. It is not clear if these symbols constitute a script used to record a language, and the subject of whether the Indus symbols were a writing system is controversial. In spite of many attempts at decipherment, it still remains a mystery to this date and no underlying language has been identified. The script does not show any significant changes over time.
So this is it for this time. The next post will be about the more modern ways of printing and getting the word around. Till then, see ya.
-Anurag Bagga
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