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FIND OUT MORE. Ancient Egypt 370–371 • Writing 339

History^369

ROSETTA STONE 3

In 196 BCE, Egyptian scribes carved the

same text in three different scripts on this

stone. It was discovered at Rosetta, Egypt,

in 1799 CE, and provided the key to

translating Egyptian hieroglyphs.

First Scripts

Writing was invented in Mesopotamia, around 3400 BCE. Cities

had grown so big that people could no longer do business by

keeping every detail in their heads. Rulers needed to keep track

of who had paid their taxes, which craftworkers had been given

rations, and how many goods they had made.

CUNEIFORM

Cuneiform is the name given to

the wedge-shaped script, written

using trimmed reeds, developed

by scribes in Sumer around

3200 BCE. It was borrowed by

other Middle Eastern peoples

to write and develop their

own languages, before the

. ALPHABET was developed.

HOW WAS THE FIRST SCRIPT WRITTEN?

The first pictograms were scratched on

to tablets of wet clay, using stalks from

reeds that grew beside Mesopotamian

rivers. The tablets were then dried in the

sun to preserve the written text. Scribes

(people trained to copy manuscripts)

soon began to trim the reeds to make

a triangular tip, which created clear,

wedge-shaped marks.

The world’s first alphabet was invented in

around 1000 BCE by the Phoenicians, who

lived in the eastern Mediterranean region.

Unlike pictogram scripts, the alphabet used

letters that stood for individual sounds.

WHY WAS THE FIRST ALPHABET SO IMPORTANT?

The Phoenicians discovered that letters could be put

together in different combinations to spell almost all

known words. Alphabetic writing needed fewer than

30 letters, compared with the 600 cuneiform symbols

used by Sumerian scribes, or the 5,000 characters

used by Chinese scholars. This made it much easier to

learn, so literacy (reading and writing) became much

more widespread in societies using alphabetic scripts.

WHERE ELSE DID PEOPLE USE PICTOGRAMS?
Different forms of picture-writing developed in Egypt,
China, and Meso (Middle) America. In the Indus Valley,
scribes used pictures combined with symbols – a
system that today’s experts have still not explained.
1 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS
These hieroglyphs form part of the Book of the Dead,
found inscribed on the walls of the tomb of Pharaoh
Rameses VI (r.1156–1148 BCE) in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

Smooth clay

surface for

writing on

Clear cuneiform

marks left on clay

Ancient Greek

(written using

an alphabet)

Egyptian demotic

(picture-based script used

for writing quickly)

CUNEIFORM SCRIPT 1

This Mesopotamian clay tablet, made soon after 2900 BCE, lists

details of fields and crops. The cuneiform script is very neatly

written, with wedge-shaped symbols formed in straight rows.

ORACLE BONE 3

In around 1500 BCE, priests

carved questions in Chinese

characters on to bones.

Egyptian hieroglyphs

(picture writing)

Pattern of cracks on

heated bone gave an

answer to a question

WHAT WERE EARLY FORMS OF WRITING LIKE?

The first writing was made up of pictograms – small pictures representing

objects or expressing actions or ideas. These writing systems, which included

. CUNEIFORM, were complicated, and few people managed to learn them.

ALPHABET

first scripts