Writings from Ancient Egypt

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The comparison of multiple editions of traditional texts led to improved textual scholarship. [120] The ability to share and compare results from many regions and enlist more people into the production of science soon led to the development of early modern science. [119] Books of medicine began to incorporate observations from contemporary surgery and dissections, including printed plates providing graphic displays, to improve knowledge of anatomy. [121] With many copies of traditional books and new books appearing, debates arose over the value of each in what became known as the battle of the books. [122] Maps and discoveries of exploration and colonization also were recorded in books and governmental records, [123] often with the purpose of economic exploitation as in the Archives of the Indies in Seville but also Debate surrounds the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation, the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, and the Vinča symbols dated around 5500 BCE. All are undeciphered, and so it is unknown if they represent authentic writing, proto-writing, or something else. Koosed, Jennifer L. (2006), (Per)mutations of Qohelet: Reading the Body in the Book, New York and London: T & T Clark International (Continuum imprint), ISBN 0-567-02632-9

The Phoenician alphabet is simply the Proto-Canaanite alphabet as it was continued into the Iron Age (conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BCE). [ citation needed] This alphabet gave rise to the Aramaic and Greek alphabets. These in turn led to the writing systems used throughout regions ranging from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. For its part the Greek alphabet introduced for the first time explicit symbols for vowel sounds. [55] The Greek and Latin alphabets in the early centuries of the Common Era gave rise to several European scripts such as the Runes and the Gothic and Cyrillic alphabets while the Aramaic alphabet evolved into the Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac abjads, of which the latter spread as far as Mongolian script. The South Arabian alphabet gave rise to the Ge'ez abugida. The Brahmic family of India is believed by some scholars to have derived from the Aramaic alphabet as well. [56] Grakliani Hill writing [ edit ] The original Sumerian writing system derives from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BCE, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing by using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. By the 29th century BCE, writing, at first only for logograms, using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform) developed to include phonetic elements, gradually replacing round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing by around 2700–2500 BCE. About 2600 BCE, cuneiform began to represent syllables of the Sumerian language. Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. From the 26th century BCE, this script was adapted to the Akkadian language, and from there to others, such as Hurrian and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian. Allen 2000, p.5; Foster 2001, p.xv; see also Wente 1990, pp.5–6 for a wooden writing board example. It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing was developed around 2000 BCE for Semitic-speaking workers in the Sinai Peninsula by giving Egyptian Hieratic letters Semitic values (see history of the alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic script). The Geʽez script of Ethiopia and Eritrea is an evolution of the Ancient South Arabian script, in which early Geʽez texts were originally written. [34] Hieroglyphics are found on seals, plaques, tombs, pottery and walls on ancient Egyptian remains which tell us about beliefs, gods, clothing, everyday life and culture.Lichtheim, Miriam (1980), Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume III: The Late Period, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-04020-1 The symbols they used were called hieroglyphs , which comes from a Greek word meaning ‘sacred carving’ .

Morenz, Ludwid D. (2003), "Literature as a Construction of the Past in the Middle Kingdom", in Tait, John W. (ed.), 'Never Had the Like Occurred': Egypt's View of Its Past, translated by Martin Worthington, London: University College London, Institute of Archaeology, an imprint of Cavendish Publishing Limited, pp. 101–118, ISBN 1-84472-007-1 The ancient Egyptians also used papyrus and writing boards which recorded laws, taxation and government business. During the late Middle Kingdom, greater standardization of the epistolary formula can be seen, for example in a series of model letters taken from dispatches sent to the Semna fortress of Nubia during the reign of Amenemhat III (r. 1860–1814 BC). [149] Epistles were also written during all three dynasties of the New Kingdom. [150] While letters to the dead had been written since the Old Kingdom, the writing of petition letters in epistolary form to deities began in the Ramesside Period, becoming very popular during the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. [151] While Common Law developed in a mostly oral environment in England after the Romans left, with the return of the church and then the Norman invasion, customary law began to be inscribed as were precedents of the courts; however, many elements remained oral, with documents only memorializing public oaths, wills, land transfers, court judgments, and ceremonies. During the late Medieval period, however, documents gained authority for agreements, transactions, and laws. With the founding of the United States laws were created as statutes within written codes and controlled by central documents, including the federal and state Constitutions,with all such legislative documents printed and distributed. [86] Also court judgments were presented in written opinions which then were published and served as precedents for reasoning in consequent judgments in states and nationally. Courts of Appeals in the United States only consider documents relating to records of prior proceedings and judgements and do not take new testimony. [87] Writing and government, states, bureaucracy, citizenship, and journalism [ edit ]

Curriculum

Phonetic system: graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages: In Europe and the colonies in the Americas the introduction of the printing press and decreasing cost of paper and printing allowed for greater access of ordinary citizens to gain information about the government and conditions in other regions within the jurisdictions. [94] The Reformation with an emphasis on individual reading of sacred texts, eventually increased the spread of literacy beyond the governing classes and opened the door to wider knowledge and criticism of government actions. Divisions in English society during the sixteenth century, the Civil War of the seventeenth century, and the increased role of parliament that followed, along with the splitting of political religious control [95] were accompanied by pamphlet wars. Underground Egyptian tombs built in the desert provide possibly the most protective environment for the preservation of papyrus documents. For example, there are many well-preserved Book of the Dead funerary papyri placed in tombs to act as afterlife guides for the souls of the deceased tomb occupants. [24] However, it was only customary during the late Middle Kingdom and first half of the New Kingdom to place non-religious papyri in burial chambers. Thus, the majority of well-preserved literary papyri are dated to this period. [24]

Much of what we consider knowledge is inscribed in written text and is the result of communal processes of production, sharing, and evaluation among social groups and institutions bound together with the aim of producing and disseminating knowledge-bearing texts; the contemporary world identifies such social groups as disciplines and their products as disciplinary literatures. The invention of writing facilitated the sharing, comparing, criticizing, and evaluating of texts, resulting in knowledge becoming a more communal property across wider geographic and temporal domains. Sacred scriptures formed the common knowledge of scriptural religions, and knowledge of those sacred scriptures became the focus of institutions of religious belief, interpretation, and schooling, as discussed in the section on writing and religion in this article. Other sections in this article are devoted to knowledge specific to the economy, the law, and governance. This section is devoted to the development of secular knowledge and its related social organizations, institutions, and educational practices in other domains. Main article: Writing in ancient Egypt The slab stela of the Old Kingdom Egyptian princess Neferetiabet (dated c. 2590–2565 BC), from her tomb at Giza, with hieroglyphs carved and painted on limestone [3] Private letters, model letters, and epistles [ edit ] Hieratic script on an ostracon made of limestone; the script was written as an exercise by a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt. He copied four letters from the vizier Khay (who was active during the reign of Ramesses II).

Egyptian languages

By the 14th century a rebirth, or renaissance, had emerged in Western Europe, leading to a temporary revival of the importance of Greek, and a slow revival of Latin as a significant literary language. A similar though smaller emergence occurred in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. At the same time Arabic and Persian began a slow decline in importance as the Islamic Golden Age ended. The revival of literacy development in Western Europe led to many innovations in the Latin alphabet and the diversification of the alphabet to codify the phonologies of the various languages. Lichtheim, Miriam (2006), Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume II: The New Kingdom, with a new foreword by Hans-W. Fischer-Elfert, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-24843-0 Gozzoli 2006, pp.283–304; see also Parkinson 2002, p.233, who alludes to this genre being revived in periods after the Middle Kingdom and cites Depauw (1997: 97–9), Frankfurter (1998: 241–8), and Bresciani (1999).