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A diverse group of scholars ponders not just why scripts vanish, but why they sometimes survive so long The Slow Deaths of Writing

OXFORD,.K.—The biblical God punished ing Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan glyphs, the Sumerian language of Mesopotamia. humanity for its arrogance by creating in- and Sumerian , plus some less tra- More than 3000 years later in 75 C.., 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 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 - 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 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 DAVID LEES/CORBIS DAVID G. HO USER/CORBIS 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 , 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 , 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 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 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. Now, as researchers begin to consider how markably durable, says Baines. writing systems die (see main text), they also are examining lesser known systems to understand how societies long considered illiterate transmit knowledge. A long death In the Andes, for example, Incans manipulated knotted strings long before the arrival As hieroglyphics and cuneiform were of the Spanish in the 16th century. Whether this system could record narrative or was falling into disuse, a new script was arising simply an accounting device remains fiercely contested, because the precise meanings in the pre-Columbian world. Maya, which of the complex strings have yet to be un- flourished in Mexico and Guate- raveled (Science, 13 June 2003, p. 1650). Yet mala from 250 C.E. until 800 C.E., despite attempts by Spanish authorities to is made up of some 800 picture and destroy the tradition, it proved surprisingly syllable symbols that have not been resilient. Ecuadorian factory workers still em- fully deciphered, says Brigham ployed khipu in 1653 for labor and account- Young’s Houston. Like Egyptian, ing purposes, and it is used in remote villages the script is closely linked to a sin- for similar purposes even today. “This is not gle language, and like cuneiform it simply a story of attrition,” says Frank was closely tied to the ruling class Salomon, an anthropologist at the University and to religion, used to tell of of Wisconsin, Madison, who has spent years rulers’ exploits and to keep the traveling Andean villages to understand khipu. sacred calendar. In this case the “This is not a dying tradition.” script mirrored its culture’s de- One key factor may be the common use cline, degrading into peculiar of khipu. Mesopotamia’s cuneiform, Egyptian Knotty problem. Scholars still disagree forms, yet it still managed to per- hieroglyphics, and Mayan writing, for exam- on the meaning of khipu, which was sist in pockets for a surprisingly long pe- ple, were the province of a privileged and developed as a recording system in the riod, says Houston. mostly male elite; at most, only 1% of an- Incan empire. A mélange of ecological, social, and on March 12, 2012 cient Egyptians could write, according to Ox- political crises afflicted the 9th century ford University’s John Baines. When the palace or temple cultures supporting those C.E. Mayan empire, marking the end of its elites vanished, the scripts eventually died out. But when Incan elites were wiped out by classical period and leading to a compli- disease and war after the Spanish arrival, khipu use continued quietly, even secretly, cated series of disruptions still being de- among peasants, including large numbers of women who may have been using khipu bated among scholars. Mayan writing re- along with the elite. That fact kept khipu under the radar of authorities. “The survival of flects these disasters—script vanishes khipu has a lot to do with confidentiality,” says Salomon. abruptly and completely at sites such as Whereas the Inca culture, rich in textiles, developed knotted strings, other agricultur- Tikal in the southern lowlands, which may al peoples turned to landscape itself as a kind of writing tablet. The Huli people of the have encountered devastating droughts. Yet www.sciencemag.org central New Guinea highlands, for example, live in a marshy area that they have scored some sites, particularly in the Yucatán to with irrigation ditches named for their ancestors. Although not traditional writing, this the north, show only a gradual decline in method does record history. writing, notes Houston. “These ditches are genealogical maps,” explains Oxford anthropologist Christopher Overall, he notes a steep decline in the Gosden, who has studied the Huli. A canal recalling an esteemed clan leader, for exam- number of texts during this period and the ple, may be the central artery in that clan’s waterway, with newer ditches representing appearance of glyphs without meaning, his successors clustered around it. Many ancient scripts emphasize recording genealogy: which may have been an attempt to imitate Downloaded from the early books of the Bible, for example, or the Sumerian king lists. The Huli’s past may the script without understanding its rules. extend that far or even further. Gosden says archaeological evidence in the form of By the start of the 10th century, Mayan writ- traces of ancient canals and stone implements shows at least 6000 years of human ing is drastically simplified and nearly illeg- habitation and agriculture in this swampy area. “The very nature of the Huli depends on ible and irregular. Mayan classical culture the preservation of their cultivation system,” says Gosden. Any threat to the Huli’s liveli- never recovered fully from these disruptions, hood—such as today’s increasing pressure on the land from a growing population—also although small groups of scribes clearly per- threatens their record of the past. There could be no better example of the way in which sisted and passed on old traditions. But a writing system is deeply rooted—in this case, quite literally—within culture. –A.L. without a “court culture,” Houston says, there was no place for the “literary sculp- tors” of Mayan script to flourish. resources into Egyptian temples,” says year, the Christian Church ordered all pagan Maya revived later, as shown by the Baines, at least in part to honor local gods temples closed. Although some demotic 13th century Dresden and Paris codices and thereby win domestic support. graffiti dates to 452 C.E., and worship con- and numerous other manuscripts. It is a The temples provided a last refuge, but tinued at Philae well into the next century, matter of some debate whether the script even they withered during the economic cri- nearly 15 centuries would pass until hiero- was dying in the 16th century when the sis of the disintegrating Roman Empire in glyphics could be understood again. Spanish arrived, as Houston maintains, or the late 2nd century C.E., according to The tenacity of Egyptian scribes whether it waxed and waned during the Baines. In 394 C.E., someone scrawled de- through the centuries—despite cultural centuries following the end of the classical motic and hieroglyphic text on the Philae and language change—shows how scripts period—perhaps as Latin degraded during

temple in the remote south; the following can linger even as their cultures are trans- the Middle Ages only to revive in the CREDIT: UNIVERSITY MUSEUM/HARVARD PEABODY

32 2 JULY 2004 VOL 305 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org N EWS F OCUS Renaissance. Ultimately, though, the burn- China’s Han, and Persia’s Parthian em- of , therefore, may not have sig- ing of codices, introduction of new dis- pires. Until the 3rd century C.E., the naled the end of a culture as it did in other eases, and the disruption of scribal schools Kushans controlled critical caravan routes times and places. “This script was not an by the Spanish spelled the end for Maya. A along the , minted gold coins, emblem of culture,” says Salomon. handful of glyphs were used into the 19th and revitalized and spread Buddhism to century, probably because users kept these China. Then the empire disintegrated into No unified theory remaining shards of knowledge secret and a set of small and fragmented kingdoms. The scholars at the Oxford meeting thus safe from Spanish depredations. But Nearly simultaneously, Kharosthi rapidly stopped well short of proposing any grand the already-weakened Mayan script, tightly disappears from the region. (As with many theory to account for the death of scripts. linked to Mayan culture, could not survive scripts, however, it hung on for a century The meeting did expose the profound dif- in any meaningful way. or so in some remote areas such as in ference between New World script experts The tale of invaders finishing off a western China.) and their Old World counterparts. Whereas writing system is not always so simple, Yet this wasn’t a case of tandem decline the former tend to be anthropologists however. Even scripts that appear to vanish in culture and script, because despite the trained in comparative studies, the latter suddenly can have an extended afterlife. political fragmentation of the kingdom, tend to be more narrowly focused archaeol- On Crete, for example, the writing form “there wasn’t a traumatic cultural break,” ogists and philologists. “Anthropologists known as Linear A emerged around 1800 says epigrapher Richard Salomon of the are looking more for commonalities, but B.C.E.—the first known writing system in University of Washington, Seattle. “There we’re not trained to do that,” says Cooper. Europe—only to vanish abruptly around is a gap before we have records again, and He argues that New World specialists like 1450 B.C.E. Scholars disagree on virtually this probably was a time of chaos,” he Houston go too far in trying to account for every aspect of Linear A—from its emer- says. But written records emerge again the similarities in script death, such as gence to its disappearance to what the within 2 centuries—and “when they reap- those between Maya and cuneiform. “ repertoire of 100 symbols means. It don’t feel there is any one single - was long thought that invading jor breakthrough or theory,” to explain Myceneans from the Greek main- script disappearance, adds Salomon. land had crushed the existing Cretan Houston acknowledges that no culture and replaced the script with theory can embrace script diversity, what is called , which but he suggests that scholars focus on records ancient Greek. But rather the communities of individuals who on March 12, 2012 than being imposed by invaders, keep particular forms of writing alive University of Sheffield archaeologist for their own peculiar reasons. The John Bennet suspects that the script next step, says Houston, is to go from was simply retooled by Cretans who why scripts die to understanding the came to favor the new language. local processes at work in their de- “Linear B is essentially Linear A cline: “Why do people not choose to with new characters to record Greek teach the next generation? What mo- rather than the Linear A language,” tivates these decisions?” He believes Bennet explains. Thus the story of that threatened scripts seek out “eco- www.sciencemag.org Linear A is not one of extinction but logical niches” to survive change, but transformation, he says. thereby make themselves more vul- nerable to obsolescence. Cuneiform Same culture, new script? and hieroglyphics scribes, for exam- Even scripts that suffer what appears ple, retreated to the safety of the tem- to be a true extinction don’t neces- ples, but in so doing cut themselves sarily signal a dramatic change in lo- off from the emerging political and cal culture. Nearly 2 millennia and social changes. Downloaded from half a world away from ancient Both sides agree, however, that the Crete, another script came to an sheer tenacity of many scripts has abrupt end. Called Kharosthi, this Survivor. Made of tree bark and lime paste, the 74-page much to say about cultural survival and system emerged just before the com- Dresden Codex was written in the 13th century by Mayan destruction. “The question,” says mon era began and the Kushan Em- scribes, saved from Spanish bonfires, and shipped to Europe. Houston, “is not how rapidly scripts pire came into prominence. The die, but why they didn’t die sooner.” script grew at a natural meeting place of pear the materials are similar.” In this case, The appearance of the innovative and flexi- east and west, the high mountains and a new script, Brahimi, arrived from India, ble alphabet in Mesopotamia, for example, deep valleys of today’s and but its content—mostly Buddhist texts— did not lead people to abandon cumbersome , where Persian influence tradi- was strikingly similar to that of the old cuneiform. The two coexisted for centuries. tionally met Indian. It was influenced by Kharosthi writings, he says. “That tenacity shows that if you lose the the Gandharan language, which was based Salomon theorizes that India’s long em- script, it is often the last marker of a civiliza- on India’s and on Aramaic, phasis on oral rather than written tradition tion; it seems to survive longer than any oth- brought from the west by the Achaemenid may have influenced the surprisingly easy er aspect,” says Oxford’s Baines. Such an in- Empire of Persia. shift to a new writing system. India “had a dicator, he says, can provide scholars with a Kharosthi appears in the mid-3rd century relatively casual attitude toward scripts,” Sa- concrete set of data in theorizing on the de- B.C.E., just as the Kushans began to create lomon says. That is in dramatic contrast to cline and fall of civilizations. On that point, a vast but little-known empire that flour- China, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, where scholars are speaking the same language.

CREDIT: COURTESY OF FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF MESOAMERICAN STUDIES ADVANCEMENT THE CREDIT: FOR OF FOUNDATION COURTESY ished at the same time as Europe’s Roman, writing was itself deemed sacred. The death –ANDREW LAWLER

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