be represented by its own phonogram. Th e group of phono-
grams in the language is called the alphabet. But hieroglyphic
writing is not purely alphabetic. It uses other signs besides the
alphabet. Still, about half of the signs in any hieroglyphic text
are those of the alphabet.
Ideograms always denote both sound and meaning. Pho-
nograms always denote sound but only sometimes denote
meaning. Th e result is asymmetry. An ideogram denotes the
signifi er of a word. Th e signifi er is linked to the signifi ed in
the sign. Th at is why an ideogram indirectly denotes a sound.
In referring to both sides of a word—that is, a whole word—an
ideogram is always a logogram, or a “word character.” Only a
full sound pattern as signifi er is linked to a signifi ed. Th ere-
fore, only a phonogram denoting a full sound pattern is also
a logogram.
A third type of hieroglyph is the determinative. It appears
at the ends of words and determines the meaning class to which
a word belongs. Hieroglyphs oft en function in more than one
capacity. Ideogram, phonogram, and determinative are there-
fore functions rather than types of hieroglyphs. A word can
be written in many combinations of one or more of the three
types—ideogram, phonogram, and determinative—and con-
tains from one to fi ve or six hieroglyphs, sometimes more.
Hieroglyphs normally exhibit their full pictorial quality
only when chiseled or painted. Th is is hieroglyphic writing
proper. When writing with a pen on papyrus, scribes used
cursive variants. Pen-written hieroglyphs are called hieratic,
which is derived from the Greek word for “priestly.” Th e dis-
tinction between hieroglyphic and hieratic appears fi rst in
the religious writings of Clement of Alexandria (ca. 250–210
c.e.). Hieratic was by that time used mainly in religious texts
inscribed by priest-scribes on papyri. Earlier, hieratic had
been used for all pen-written texts composed in the fi rst three
stages of the language: Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian.From about 650 b.c.e. onward an extremely cursive vari-
ant of hieroglyphic writing called demotic was used for more
than a millennium. It denotes the fourth stage of the lan-
guage, also called demotic. Demotic means “of the people.”
Th e name fi rst appears in the writing of Herodotus (fl. fi ft h
century b.c.e.). Hieroglyphic proper and hieratic had by then
become limited mainly to monumental and religious texts. In
demotic the hieroglyphs of a word oft en merge into a single
composite sign taking on a life of its own. Th erefore a demotic
word was oft en written with its own signs. Demotic therefore
makes great demands on a reader’s paleographic memory.
Hieroglyphic writing as a rule runs from right to left ,
with people and animals facing right. Texts were mostly writ-
ten in lines. Columns of hieroglyphs were commonly used
in monuments and were the norm in hieratic in the third
millennium b.c.e. Th e sign list in A. H. Gardiner’s Egyptian
Grammar contains fewer than 800 signs. Th e number of signs
used frequently is less than that.THE MIDDLE EAST
BY BRADLEY SKEEN
Th e cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the
world. Its earliest form was semipictographic, devised around
3400 b.c.e. to record the language used by the ancient inhab-
itants of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. Th is so-called pro-
tocuneiform may have been developed to write the Sumerian
language (which is related to no other known language), but
early cuneiform writing was not used for Sumerian until the
middle of the third millennium b.c.e. Aft er 2500 b.c.e. it was
quickly adapted to record the east Semitic Akkadian language
of people living in the same area. Eventually many other lin-
guistically unrelated languages used cuneiform, including
Elamite, Hittitte, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hurrian, Urartian,
and Old Persian.
Writing was invented at Uruk in the context of a complex
society that produced a large agricultural surplus and needed
to record the incomings and outgoings of that produce and
other commodities. Th e invention of writing at Uruk by
administrators managing the large agricultural estates and
workshops of Eanna, the household of the goddess Inanna,
was thus a very specifi c, pragmatic development driven by
the need to record estate activities. Because of its diffi culty,
the cuneiform writing was used only by professional scribes,
educated bureaucrats, and other elites whose positions in so-
ciety were bolstered by their access to writing, especially in
the form of legal and religious documents.
Th e precursors of cuneiform writing began to develop as
early as 8000 b.c.e. Th e fi rst step was the use of tokens—small
clay objects marked with simple symbols—to record business
transactions, such as the transfer of livestock from a shepherd
to a temple estate. Eventually traders documented transac-
tions by sealing tokens inside a large hollow clay ball known
as a bulla. Seeing the specifi cs of what was recorded, however,
required breaking the bulla, thus making it useless. Th e so-Abu Simbel—hymn in praise of King Ramses II (Courtesy of the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)writing: The Middle East 11850895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1185 1185 10/10/07 2:31:23 PM