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The Slow Deaths of Writing

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The Slow Deaths of Writing News Focus A diverse group of scholars ponders not just why scripts vanish, but why they sometimes survive so long The Slow Deaths of Writing OXFORD,U.K.—The biblical God punished ing Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan glyphs, the Sumerian language of Mesopotamia. humanity for its arrogance by creating in- and Sumerian cuneiform, plus some less tra- More than 3000 years later in 75 C.E., a numerable languages—nearly 7000 at lat- ditional recording systems (see sidebar, Babylonian scribe in a crumbling temple est count. Writing systems, however, es- p. 32), in order to discern larger patterns in completed an astronomical tablet written in caped the curse. During the 5 millennia the scripts’ last gasps. “Their decline is as wedge-shaped symbols impressed in wet since writing first emerged on the same worthy of investigation as their origin,” says clay with a reed stylus. This work, the last Mesopotamian plain as the legendary Tower Oxford Egyptologist John Baines. He and dated example of cuneiform, was completed of Babel, fewer than 100 major scripts his colleagues believe that the death of in the same way as the earliest known have appeared. But once born, they can be scripts can provide new insight into cultural tablets. Scholars have long marveled that surprisingly durable. A handful of re- collapse and the relationship between a script this awkward and difficult system, which re- searchers are now taking a closer look at and its culture. But they also differ in how far quired years of training, survived for so long how scripts vanish to glean insight into to go in comparing script disappearance. amid Mesopotamia’s turbulent history, how and why cultures disintegrate. They The 2-day meeting exploded some gen- fraught with foreign conquests, nomadic in- have found that writing systems show an eral assumptions about the way scripts live cursions, and merchants who brought new amazing tenacity, even in the face of inva- and die. Although in some cases a script and religions and languages as well as scripts. sions, language changes, and religious up- its culture slowly degraded in tandem, in Cuneiform uses more than 400 signs, heavals. Ironically, the more cumbersome other instances writing systems were decou- which can represent a word, a syllable used systems often prove the hardiest. “There is pled from cultural crises and persisted in the alone, or a syllable that can be combined with so much intense emotion invested in face of natural or political disasters. Nor did other syllabic signs to spell out a word pho- scripts, they tend to live longer than they scripts inevitably disappear when people be- netically; most scribes typically relied on 100 have any right to do,” says Mayan anthro- gan to speak a new language. “Scripts and to 200 signs. Before 2000 B.C.E., the general on March 12, 2012 pologist Stephen Houston of Brigham language don’t correlate in any simple way,” population stopped speaking Sumerian and Young University in Salt Lake City, Utah. notes Baines; in some instances a script kept adopted Akkadian and eventually its Baby- Houston was part of an unusual collec- alive a language not spoken by the general lonian and Assyrian dialects. Scribes used tion of scholars who met this spring at the population for 1000 years. And in case after cuneiform to express the new languages but University of Oxford* to hash out a wide va- case, scripts survived in pockets long after also continued to write in the old Sumerian. riety of script deaths and their meanings. An- their culture was all but dead. By the 7th and 8th centuries B.C.E., thropologists and philologists presented case Aramaic—a Semitic language written in studies of more than a dozen scripts, includ- Three millennia of Sumerian symbols an alphabet and which, unlike cuneiform, Perhaps the most stunning example of a assigns a sound to each symbol—was dis- www.sciencemag.org * Disappearance of Writing Systems, Keble Col- script’s protracted life span is cuneiform, placing Assyrian and Babylonian. Aramaic lege, Oxford, 26–28 March 2004. which began around 3200 B.C.E. to express numerals made by workers on the back of Downloaded from CHRISTINE OSBORNE/CORBIS MARCO SIMONI/GETTY IMAGES USER/CORBIS DAVID LEES/CORBIS DAVID G. HO HELLENIC MINISTRY OF CULTURE ROYALTY FREE/CORBIS 30 N EWS F OCUS stone cuneiform inscriptions in the north- he notes, there was a great flowering of last inscription is found at Philae, a temple ern Mesopotamian capitals of Assyria at- astronomical texts. “This was a spinoff complex in southern Egypt, dated 452 C.E., test to the widespread use of the Aramaic product of temple culture,” he says, because says Martin Stadler, an Egyptologist at Ger- language and symbols, yet cuneiform was the Babylonian temples were long famed as many’s University of Würzburg. By then, retained for administrative and religious centers of astronomical observations. “Elite Egypt’s traditional high culture had been re- purposes. In 539 B.C.E., Mesopotamian scholars made money doing astronomy,” he stricted for at least 2 centuries to temples, political control came to an abrupt and suggests. Although the direct evidence for which increasingly were islands amid Greek, permanent end with the arrival of Persian this is lacking, he argues that the prevalence Roman, and Christian influence, and their armies, followed by Alexander the Great of astrological tablets in these later years priests were living a largely secluded exis- and his Seleucid successors and then by hints strongly at an economic basis for the tence. “The question is why did it [Egyptian the Parthians in 126 B.C.E. Along with the continued existence of cuneiform guilds, or script] persist for so long,” says Stadler. conquerors came new writing technolo- families of scholars. But 2 centuries later, Unlike cuneiform, Egyptian writing was gies, such as leather and papyrus for Ara- Babylon’s monopoly over the astronomy- always tied to a single language, Egyptian. maic and Greek writing, although their astrology business weakened, Brown says, But the secret to its long life may be that it perishable surfaces have rarely survived. as more accessible Greek horoscopes spread had evolved into various forms, written in Yet through the centuries of profound through the Roman Empire. That shift, he different media for different uses, says cultural and political changes, numerous suggests, pulled the rug out from under Stadler. The primary form was hieratic, school texts show that scribes continued to cuneiform’s economic basis, although the which was the daily cursive used for ad- teach Sumerian and Akkadian and to write system’s existence may have continued for ministrative purposes and typically written in cuneiform, churning out graduates who another century or two. on perishable materials such as papyrus. took up posts in temples and palaces and Brown’s theory has met with interest and Hieroglyphic was used for monumental among merchants, conducting a host of offi- some skepticism. “We don’t really have any stone inscriptions for royal and religious cial tasks, from recording deeds to noting proof that doing horoscopes was lucrative,” purposes. Around 700 B.C.E., another sacrificial rites. Cuneiform was almost nev- says Jerrold Cooper, a cuneiform specialist system, which scholars call demotic, ap- er used to express Aramaic or Greek. “By at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, peared in lower Egypt, eventually replacing the time Aramaic and Greek [languages] Maryland, who thinks the temples supported hieratic for everyday use. dominated, the scripts were robust enough to themselves by agriculture rather than astrol- Thus when cultural challenges came— survive,” says David Brown, a philologist at ogy. But Cooper adds that the appearance of for example, during the Hellenistic control University College London. The Seleucids the Greek-language horoscopes about the of Egypt, which began in the 4th century on March 12, 2012 insisted that slave and land contracts be same time as cuneiform’s demise does give B.C.E. under the Ptolemies—the scripts made out in Greek script, but some legal credence to Brown’s argument. had so many uses that they lingered. But documents continued to be written in the Roman conquest in 30 B.C.E. gave cuneiform until as late as the start of Par- Write like an Egyptian Greek language and writing—favored by thian rule. Finally, when the scribal schools To the southwest, another great and difficult the empire in the east—a further boost, ceased—perhaps in the 1st century writing system was also finally nearing ex- and demotic was eventually overtaken by B.C.E.—cuneiform’s fate was sealed. tinction, after thousands of years of use. In Greek for law and trade purposes. Still, Brown proposes that a boom in astrology Egypt, as in Mesopotamia, a complex script Egyptian script persisted, primarily in the —essentially a niche market for the script— arose at the end of the 4th millennium temples, which were not only tolerated but www.sciencemag.org kept cuneiform alive for the last few cen- B.C.E., and by the start of the 1st century honored in Ptolemaic and Roman times. turies of its existence. Around 200 B.C.E., C.E., it still lingered in a few temples. The “The Ptolemies and Romans put enormous GETTY IMAGES Downloaded from BRITISH LIBRARY COLLECTION ZAHEERUDDIN/WEBISTAN 31 N EWS F OCUS formed. Scripts such as cuneiform and No Pen or Ink Needed hieroglyphics require extensive schooling, bulky writing material, and significant fi- For most of us, the term “writing” conjures up images of paper and pen. But recording nancial support. Yet the very institutions systems through time have developed in a surprising variety of forms, many of which set up to make this possible can prove re- have been ignored, dismissed, or suppressed.
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