EARLY ALPHABETS / Overview I / Lvii

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GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / Overview i / lvii

Early Alphabets

1 Visual Language Systems 1

2 Cuneiform 13

3 Egyptian Hieroglyphics & Scripts 18

4 The Phoenician Alphabet 29

5 The Greek Alphabet 35

6 The Etruscan Alphabet 43

7 The Latin Alphabet 46

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet

ABCD Alphabetic Charactersitics EFGHI CRITERIA 1. A set of visual symbols 2. Used to express one or more languages JKLMN 3. Individual glyphs for individual sounds 4. Smaller units than syllables or words 5. Characters representing consonants OPQR 6. Characters representing vowels 7. Standard ordering (alphabetical order) STUV WXYZ

40,000–4,000 BCE Visual Language Systems Several thousand years of proto-alphabetic exploration resulted in a wealth of written variety but also created a number of usability issues.

40,000–4,000 BCE Protowriting systems • Image-based communication • These cannot be considered “writing” Early evidence of protowriting has been discovered in the Chauvet and Lascaux caves in France and the Altamira Caves in Spain.

Repetition of agreed-upon shapes is the essence of a writing system.

CIRCA 4,000 BCE Non-alphabetic writing systems • Pictographs, rebuses, logographs, ideographs, and syllabaries • Disparate and hard to learn • Localized • Lacked structure • Functioned differently

CIRCA 3,200 BCE Pictographic systems Considered the first step towards written language systems

• Image-based communication • Derived from petroglyphs • Reliance on cultural knowledge • Limited use case • 1 character = 1 word • Required many characters

CIRCA 2,000 BCE Phaistos Disk • 241 highly detailed pictograms • Hatchet, eagle, carpenter’s square, animal skin, vase • Relief impressions in terra cotta • Origin of movable type?

CIRCA 3,000 BCE Rebus systems • Two or more symbols are used to force the phonetic expression of a word • Required heavy understanding of spoken language • Extremely limited use case A rebus must be deciphered, unlike pictographs, which only need to be identified.

CIRCA 3,200 BCE Logographic systems • Reliance on cultural knowledge • Limited use case • 1 character = 1 word • Required many characters • Difficult to use outside originating tribes • Chinese hanzi, Japanese kanji, and Korean hanja

CIRCA 3,000 BCE Ideographic systems A combination of two or more pictographs intended to represent a concept

ox + mountains = wild ox

CIRCA 3,000 BCE Syllabaries • 1 character = 1 syllable • Basic speech elements • Consonant and vowel combination • Words required many drawn strokes

3,200 BCE Cuneiform A major writing development in Sumeria (present day Iraq) comprised of abstract marks corresponding to spoken sounds.

3,200 BCE Cuneiform Early cuneiform was pictographic, but eventually turned on its side and abstracted into lines and shapes

3,200 BCE Cuneiform • Began as a method of recording basic information • Harvested clay from local river beds • Means “wedge shaped” • Wedge-shaped stylus by 2,500 BCE, rather than a pointed stylus

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet

2,700 BCE Egyptian Hieroglyphics & Scripts Ancient Egyptians produced three innovative varieties of proto-alphabetic written expression.

2,7000 BCE Hieroglyphics Greek for “sacred carving” Made from three different parts:

1. Ideographs Pictorial denotation of an object 2. Phonographs Denote a sound or sequence of sounds 3. Determinatives Provide clues to meaning and sounds

2,700 BCE Hieroglyphics Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before the lower.

2,700 BCE Hieroglyphics • Vowel sounds existed but were unwritten • Consonantal alphabet (no vowels) • Requires cultural knowledge • Relied on grouping devices

2,700 BCE Hieratic Script Developed around the same time as the hieroglyphic script and was used for official tasks (record keeping, accounting, and writing letters).

660 BCE Demotic Script The popular script, a name given to it by Herodotus, developed from a northern variant of the Hieratic script in around 660 BCE. It lasted roughly 200 years.

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Egyptian Demotic Script

Classical Greek

© Kevin Woodland, 2020 The Rosetta Stone, Memphis, Egypt, circa 196 BCE. Discovered in 1799 CE by Napoleon’s army in Rosetta, Egypt. On display at the British Museum in London since 1802 CE. Translated in 1823 CE by Jean-François Champollion. GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / Hieroglyphs & Egyptian Scripts 28 / 57

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet

1,000 BCE The Phoenician Alphabet Cuneiform, Hieroglyphs, and Cretan pictographs come together to form the seeds of the first modern alphabet.

1,000 BCE The Phoenicians • Modern day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel • Seafaring merchants and ship builders • Needed an alphabet for their native tongue

1,000 BCE The Phoenician Alphabet • Distillation of Cuneiform, Hieroglyphs, and Cretan pictographs • Simple for non-Phoenician people to learn • Read from right-to-left

1,000 BCE The Phoenician Alphabet • Unprecedented use of alphabetical order • 22 letters, each representing a single sound (phonetic) • Democratized writing for Phoenicians • Consonantal alphabet (no vowels)

1500 BCE Since vowels sounds were not specified, a two-syllable word like drama could have at least nine different pronunciations.

1. drama 4. drima 7. druma 2. dramu 5. drimu 8. drumu 3. drami 6. drimi 9. drumi

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet

800 BCE The Greek Alphabet Greece, an epicenter of science, philosophy, democracy, art, architecture, literature, and alphabetic evolution.

800 BCE Cadmus • Mythic Greek Cadmus • Brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece • Invented history • Created prose • Designed a few Greek letters • His use of writing allowed him to raise and control armies quickly

800 BCE The Greek Alphabet • Early Greek used Phoenician characters, arranged the same • Anyone who could read ancient Phoenician could also read Greek • Five were changed to vowels, making it a true alphabet • All capital letters (at first) • No punctuation, paragraphs, or word spacing • The direction of reading changed several times

Greek was often read in a format known as boustrophedon or as the ox plows

One row would read left-to-right and then switch from right-to-left

START HERE

Centralized by Athens

400 BCE • Classical Greek settled on right-to-left orientation • Letterforms became monumental and some letters were reversed • Lower-case were added • Based on formal geometric ideals, lack of scripted-details

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet

700 BCE The Etruscan Alphabet The Latin alphabet shows heavy influence from the Etruscan alphabet of 700 BCE.

700 BCE Etruscan Alphabet The Etruscan alphabet of 700 BCE was one of several Old Italic alphabets used in Italy during this period.

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet

250 BCE The Latin Alphabet The final expression of our current Western written language.

Ancient Rome

750 BCE Rome was a village on the Tiber River

200 BCE Rome conquered Greece in the second century BCE

100 BCE By the end of the first century CE the Roman Empire stretched from the British Isles in the north, to Egypt in the south, and from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to the Persian Gulf at the base of the ancient land of Mesopotamia

476 CE Fall of Roman Empire

250 BCE Greek influence The Romans modeled their art, literature, religion, and philosophy from the Greeks

• Greek scholars and libraries were taken to Rome • The Roman Alphabet came to the Romans from Greece

250 BCE Evolution of the Latin alphabet The Latin Alphabet is formed and consists of 20 letters. “Julius Caesar, Son of Gaius” would have been written: CAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR

250 BCE Evolution of the Latin alphabet Spurius Carvilius designs the letter G to replace the Greek Z (zeta) character, bringing the count to 21 letters.

100 BCE Evolution of the Latin alphabet After the Greek conquest, the Greek letters Y and Z were added to the end—but the G remained—because Romans were appropriating Greek words using these sounds, bringing the count up to 23 letters.

410 CE Evolution of the Latin alphabet Rome is sacked by the Visigoths and there is no alphabetic progress several centuries. The count stays at 23 letters.

476 CE Evolution of the Latin alphabet The Roman Empire falls while Emperor Constantine remains in Ravenna, Italy. The Latin alphabet has gained use all over the world. The count stays at 23 letters.

900 CE (MIDDLE AGES) Evolution of the Latin alphabet The V has been representing two Old English sounds so the U was formed to assume the soft vowel sound previously made by the V. The count is up to 24 letters.

1,100 CE (MIDDLE AGES) Evolution of the Latin alphabet The V, which currently makes a U sound, is often doubled-up into the ligature VV, so the W (double-u) is added. The count is up to 25 letters.

1,300 CE (MIDDLE AGES) Evolution of the Latin alphabet Finally, the letter J is formed to act as a consonantal version of the letter I, which was commonly used in manuscripts, especially at the beginnings of words. The count resolves at 26 letters.

3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet

4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE

40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet

800 BCE Greek Alphabet Summary The evolution of our modern alphabet can be traced through Sumerian pictographs, to the Phoenician alphabet, the Greek alphabet, and ultimately our Latin alphabet.