Development of the Written Language in the Ancient Near East

Description:

Scholars speculate that ancient civilizations developed writing systems to keep track of their livestock and wealth. But, as societal structures became more sophisticated, writing systems also grew in sophistication to accommodate and record the ancient peoples’ mythology, beliefs, poetry, laws, and administrative records. This exhibit focuses on the two writing systems originated around 3000BC and developed in the Ancient Near East; cuneiform, inMesopotamia, and the hieroglyphics in Egypt. Both writing systems evolved to accommodate many languages and civilizations. Cuneiform, from the Latin word for "wedge-shaped", writing was invented in Mesopotania by the Sumerians, one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world. Mesopotamia, often referred to as the “cradle of civilization” contributed pivotal developments that helped build later civilizations, including agriculture, domestication of animals, architecture, astronomy, and writing systems. Thewedge-shaped strokes of cuneiform influenced script styles in thisgeographical area for the next 3000 years. The Sumerian cuneiformscript is an example of how this style was later adapted for the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, Ugaritic, and Old Persian writing systems until 75 AD. The Egyptian Hieroglyphic System, later identified by the Greek word for “sacred carving,” developed at the same time as theSumerian’s cuneiform. Hieroglyphics are described by the Greeks as characters or pictures sculpted in stone on temple walls. The two most common Egyptian scripts were the Hieratic scripts used for religious texts, and the Demotic cursive script, used for ordinary documents. Proto-Sinaitic, the first consonantal alphabet, first appeared around 1900 BCE in the Sinai Peninsula. It is the ancestor of all knownalphabetic scripts, and it was loosely inspired by Egyptianhieroglyphics. From the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet comes the OldCanaanite (ca. 1500 B.C.E.) and then the Phoenician alphabet (ca.1050 B.C.E.) The Phoenician alphabet was later adapted by the Arameans, the Israelites, and the Greeks for their national alphabets. The Aramaic alphabet became widely used in the ancientNear East due to the widespread usage of Aramaic as a lingua franca and official language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th-7th Century BC. The Aramaic alphabet was later adapted for the Arabic and Middle Persian languages. Our modern alphabet derives fromLatin, which is derived from the Greek.

Attribution:

Shayee Khanaka

Date:

2009