1 Textual Traditions Introductory Remarks by the Chapter Editor, Elisabet Göransson
1 Textual traditions Introductory remarks by the chapter editor, Elisabet Göransson Textual criticism and the study of the transmission of texts is by and large depend- ent on writing and written sources. The development of literacy, from the oral trans- mission of texts to the development of written records, was a long process indeed, and it took place in various parts of the world. The earliest stages of writing were pictograms, used by the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese, from which ideograph- ic or logographic writing, which expressed abstractions, was developed. Phonetic writing, in which symbols, phonograms, represent sounds rather than concepts, was then developed into syllabic and later into alphabetic writing. Early Sumerian literature and Egyptian literature, both extant from the late fourth millennium BC onwards, constitute the oldest literatures we know of. A wide range of literary texts – letters, hymns, and poems, but also autobiographical texts – were written in Egyp- tian hieroglyphs. A narrative Egyptian literature became common from the twenty- first century BC onwards (during the Middle Kingdom). The cursive shorthand known as the hieratic script gradually became more widely used, both for record- keeping and for correspondence. Later on, the demotic script was developed from the late Egyptian hieratic script for the same day-to-day uses, and finally the Egyp- tians settled on a revised form of the Greek alphabet, the Coptic alphabet, which simplified writing most decidedly. Similarly, cuneiform literature from the ancient Near East, preserved on mostly fragmentary clay tablets, consists of a large corpus of narrative and laudatory poetry, hymns, laments and prayers, fables, didactic and debate poems, proverbs, and songs (T.
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