THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019 19
cal scripts are often considered more
advanced than ideographic ones. “We
don’t espouse the hierarchy, but really
the area where you have a gray zone
is when you look at Mesoamerica,” he
said. Mayan writing consists of logo-
grams (signs representing whole words;
for example, a jaguar head for “jag-
uar”) and syllabograms (signs repre-
senting syllables; “ka” + “ka” + “u” =
cacao). The script was meant to be
read in a zigzag fashion, from left to
right and top to bottom. A few years
ago, after a visit to Teotihuacán, the
members of the band Iron Maiden got
a scholar to translate their song titles
into a Mayan language called Yucatec
and had the hieroglyphs printed on
the tail fin of their 747.
Erdman moved on to a Chinese or-
acle bone, and then to a little wooden
board that, in ancient Egypt, had served
as a sort of toe tag for a mummy. Writ-
ing, Erdman said, developed in order
to name things, to count things, and to
communicate in the afterlife. A shabti
figurine, for example, was inscribed
with a list of chores for the servants of
the dead.
About forty different writing sys-
tems were on display in the gallery.
One of the newest was developed by
the Vai people of Liberia, in 1832.There were anonymous writers: a
landowner from Ravenna, wealthy but
illiterate, used a symbol that looked
like a star inside a wagon wheel to
sign a nine-foot-long papyrus real-es-
tate deed. Erdman pointed out the
Mainz Psalter, the second book in the
West that was printed using movable
type, and said, “Printing didn’t kill
handwriting. Printing wanted to
mimic handwriting. Scribes could do
full color.” Illuminating a manuscript
seems significantly easier than oper-
ating a Double Pigeon, a Chinese
typewriter that required the typist to
recognize two thousand different
metal character blocks.
The English alphabet used to have
five more letters, including “thorn,”
which represented a “th”-like sound
and fell out of favor when printers
such as William Caxton (“The Can-
terbury Tales”) started leaving it out.
Erdman doesn’t think that hand-
writing will ever disappear; there’s too
much the hand can do that the key-
board can’t.
Nearby, an Apple IIe computer was
on display. “It started with shadow—
removing light to create writing, like
with carving,” Erdman said. “Now we’re
writing with light.”
—Lauren Collins“Try not to bring up feudalism with my dad tonight.”• •
1
LONDONPOSTCARD
GRAPHICAL
T
he last time handwriting enthu-
siasts had this much fun was
probably back in 2010, when Lindsay
Lohan’s unexpectedly tidy courtroom
notes went viral. So far, this past year
has brought Donald Trump scrawling
“nice” on a map that showed the Golan
Heights as part of Israel; an Ohio law
encouraging the return of cursive; and
the Duchess of Sussex doing callig-
raphy at a nursing home. (She used
to work in a stationery shop and once
told Esquire that she would wear a
tube sock over her hand to avoid get-
ting oils on her correspondence.) In
London, the British Library is put-
ting on an exhibition called “Writing:
Making Your Mark.” There is plenty
of handwriting (a papal indulgence
from 1455, Joyce’s color-coded “Ul-
ysses” drafts), but the show also cov-
ers printing, typing, computing, and
tattooing. Practically the only things
missing are the three scribbled wills
that were found, earlier this year, in a
cupboard and under couch cushions
in Aretha Franklin’s house. “We felt
like we couldn’t just say, ‘This is Sa-
maritan writing,’” Michael Erdman,
one of the show’s curators, explained
the other day. “Especially in the age
of the Internet, that’s just called a Goo-
gle search. At a time when people
might no longer think writing is nec-
essary, we’re introducing them to all
it involves.”
Erdman began a tour of the show
with a Mayan limestone stela from
647 A.D. It seemed like a good time
to ask how the professionals define
“writing.” Erdman said, “Writing is a
graphical representation of speech.”
In traditional scholarship, alphabeti-
eccentric that even a farmer won’t deign
to consume it? Items that aren’t used to
feed animals or the compost pile go even
further down the chain—to that cross-
roads of lowest possible consumer dis-
cernment. They end up on Instagram.
—Henry Alford