WAYS OF COMMUNICATING IDEAS 2 3 Table of Contents Cuneiform Family 07 Hieroglyphic Family 13 Eastern Family 23 Arabic Family 37 Indian Family 47 American Family 55 Nordic Family 61 Roman Family 69 Miscellaneous 85 4 5 Cuneiform Family CHAPTER 1 Cuneiform 6 7 Tablet consisting of partial print of the ancient Sumerian Legend of Etana. (1900-1600 Sumerian BC) About 3000 B.C the Sumerians invented a system of writing called Cuneiform. Cuneiform (from the Latin word meaning “wedged- shaped”) was developed from pictographs which later developed into ideographs that conveyed abstracted ideas. The sumerians wrote for left to right and from top to bottom. Cuneiform contains 560 characters which made up the general and only script used. Cuneiform 8 9 Cylinder Seals The seals were first used in Mesopotamia, late 4th century B.C. and spread to Babylonia, Egypt, and western Asia. The seals originally used pictographs, but eventually incorporated letter forms. The original seals were made of shell or lapis lazuli and later Hematite. What was carved into the seals also changed over time. The first were covered with images of how the society was developing (chariots were used). Later on, the images changed to myths and dieties. Text from the Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley Cylinder seals were small (2 to 6cm) cylinder-shaped stones carved with decorative designs. They were used as a way for individuals to “sign” their names. The cylinder would simply be rolled over the clay, leaving a raised image behind. The seals were mainly used by royalty and officials as a way to sign documents, such as letter, deeds and records. They were also used on ceramics and bricks as a way for the Cuneiform makers to distinguish their work from others. 10 11 Hieroglyphic Family CHAPTER 2 Hieroglyphic 12 13 Text from the Ethnic Studies Library, University of Aztec Alphabet California, Berkeley The “Aztec” writing system is the most highly pictographic of all “transitional” scripts. Practically all the symbols are crude pictures. There are numerous instances of pure ideographic writing. As a result, the script is more in the nature of mnemonic aid that is to be supplemented by an oral description rather than of true writing. In some respects, the writing might already be considered as “traditional”. Abstract ideas are represented by signs borrowed from homonyms. The Aztec writing system was used in the valley of Mexico and Cotzumalhuada on the Pacific slope of Guatemala. It is a writing system that comes from the hieroglyphic family. Hieroglyphic 14 15 Hieroglyphs, characters in any system of writing in which symbols Egypt represent object (such as told, animals, or boats) and ideas (such as motion, time , and jot). The ancient Greeks first used the term Hieroglyph (meaning “sacred Carving”) to describe decorative characters carved on Egyptian monuments. the therm is mainly used to refer to the system of writing used by the ancient Egyptians. The name of Rosetta refers to the crucial breakthrough in the research regarding Egyptian hieroglyphs. It represents the translation of “silent” symbols into a living a language. It is necessary in order to make the whole content of information of these symbols accessible. Image from Heiroglphs Without Mystery, An Introduction to Egyption Hieroglyphic Writing by Karl-Theodor 16 17 Zauzich. The name Rosetta is attached to the stone of Rosetta. This is a compact basalt slab (114 x 72 x 28cm) that was found in the small Egyptian village Rosette (Raschid), which is located in the western delta of the Nile. Today the stone is kept at the British Museum in London. It contains three Inscriptions that represent a single text in three different variants of script, a decree of the priests of Memphis on honor of Ptolemaios. V. (196 b.c.). The text appears in form of hieroglyphs (script of the official and religious texts), of Demotic (everyday Egyptian script), and in Greek. The representation of a single text of the three mentioned script variants enabled the French scholar Jean Francois Champollion in 1822 to basically decipher the hieroglyphs. With the aid of the Coptic Language (language of the Christian descendants of the ancient Egyptians), he succeeded to realize the phonetic value of the hieroglyphs. this proved the fact that hieroglyphs do not have only symbolic meaning, but that they also served as a ”spoken language”. Spread from Introducing Egyptian Hieroglyphs by Papyrus was the most important writing material in the ancient world. Barbara Watterson. Our word “paper” derives form the word papyrus, an Egyptian word that originally meant “that which belongs to the house” (the bureaucracy of ancient Egypt). Papyrus is a triangular reed that grew along the banks of the Nile, and at an early stage of their history the Egyptians developed a kind of writing material made out of the pith within the stem of the papyrus plant. At the same time they developed a script that ultimately provided the model for the Symbols meaning star in Hieroglyphic Egyptian Hieroglyphs. two most common alphabets in the world, the Roman and Arabic. 18 19 Hieractic Hieroglyphic is the term used to describe the sacred characters of the ancient Egyptian language in its classical phase. There are also similar pictographic styles to Egyptian in Crete, Asian Minor, Central Edwin Smith papyrus in America, and Mexico. Egyptian Hieratic Script is one of the oldest surgicall documents in record. Hieroglyphics are conventionalized images used mainly to represent arbitrary and seldom obvious meanings. There are 604 basic symbols in Egyptian hieroglyphic, that are read in several directions, including top to bottom, but usually right to left with the pictures facing the beginning of the line. The three possible uses for Hieroglyphics are as ideograms, phonograms, and as determinatives or unpronounced symbols after a picture to classifying meaning. As Hieroglyphics progressed, most words required determinatives. Egyptian hieroglyphic appeared in several stages, starting with the 1st Dynasty, (3110–2824 B.C.) when it was perfected. Hen the Old Kingdom when it started to go out of use and to the New Empire where the hieroglyphics (from 500 B.C. on) were only understood by scholars. Hieroglyphic 20 21 Eastern Family CHAPTER 3 Eastern 22 23 Chinese Written Chinese has no alphabet. Instead, it consists of about 50,000 characters. A person who knows about 4,000 of the most frequently used characters can read a Chinese newspaper of modern novel. Scholars who read ancient Chinese literature and documents must learn many more characters. The earliest known examples of Chinese are inscriptions carved in bones and shells during the Shang Dynasty. These early forms of Chinese were pictograms. The characters, also called graphs were pictograms. The characters, also called graphs were drawing or pictures of the objects they represented. As Chinese script developed, characters became more simplified and less pictographic. Chinese chacters that say North (left) and South (right). Some characters are not pictures but represent abstract words. Examples include the characters for up and down. Such characters, called simple graphs, are few in number. Compound graphs, however, are more numerous. Compound graphs are formed by two or more characters. For example, the character meaning to bark is a compound graph formed by the characters for mouth and dog. Text from the Ethnic Studies Eastern Library, University of 24 California, Berkeley 25 Korean Koreans learned to write from the Chinese and used wenyan as the written language for many centuries before they began writing their own language. Korean, however, differs drastically from Chinese, and therefore the adaptation of Chinese characters was difficult. In 1446 King Sejong declared that the Chinese writing system was ill suited for the Korean language. He is credited with providing the most remarkable writing system ever invented. This system is a unique alphabet called Hangul. The system consists of twenty-eight basic signs, twenty-four of which are in use today. Each of these twenty-four letters represents a single consonant or vowel. Korean differs from most other languages in that the letters of each syllable are grouped together into clusters. Korean can be written from left to right or top to bottom. Photonegative strip of Korean Eastern characters from the Oakland 26 27 Museum of California. Even with the invention of Hangul, Koreans continue to use Chinese both in the form of the written language wenyan and in their new script. In Hangul texts Chinese loan words are written with Chinese characters to be read in Sino-Korean. Since Chinese loan words from a substantial part of the Korean vocabulary, Korean texts are often Another photonegative strip interspersed with Chinese characters. Still, Native Korean words of Korean characters from the Oakland Museum of are usually written with Hangul. North Korea abolished the use of California. Chinese characters after the division of the country, but they continue to be used in South Korea. The verse reads: “The Five Mountains are steep and angled and the Yellow River flows with mighty force. Yet history waves at the bases of the Six Classics”. It is interpreted as signifying that the calligrapher cannot obtain a mature style by merely learning technique, but must also master the Six Classics. Eastern 28 29 Japanese Painting by Katsushika Hokusai from the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Today, the two kana systems, called syllabaries, and about two- thousand Chinese characters are used in writing Japanese. The hiragana syllabary is used most often. It is a set of rounded characters derived from cursive Chinese characters. The more angular katakana syllabary is derived from parts of Chinese characters. Katakana is used to write words and other language elements in the equivalent elements of another alphabet.