Reading in the modern world

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Chapter Four: The history of the book

Deep history

The history of writing

What is writing? It is often described as a graphic system which replicates the linguistic system.

However, Roy Harris argues that this characterization of writing is the judgement of

hindsight¹. Writing is a system expressed by visual symbols representing spoken language;

however, it is more flexible and more widely applicable than the common definition suggests.

For example, musical notation and counting systems are taken to be full writing systems which

are independent of language. Harris is more liberal than Goody or Gelb and would include in

his category of writing systems many of the so called 'proto-writing systems' excluded by

others. Proto-writing systems may be descriptive, representational or mnemonic. Mnemonics

such as the knotted handkerchief mentioned above are generally operated for the benefit of the

writer alone, and are hard if not impossible for another to interpret. At best these have a

tenuous relationship to language. There are some interesting cases in the ethnographic record of

mnemonics being used for myths and rituals. These at times closely resemble true writing

systems².

There are three basic types of writing system.

Writing System:

Symbols represent: Distinguish on the basis of :

Logographic words/sounds semantics

syllabic syllables phonetics

alphabetic phonemes phonetics

Logographic writing systems form the basis of all known alphabetic systems, which have

developed from them. However, other syllabic writing systems seem to be stable and wholly

¹(1986).

²Goody 1987: 15-17.

adequate to late twentieth century society. For example, Japanese is a syllabic writing system

used in one of the most technologically advanced and successful state in the world.

Standard histories of writing start by considering early pictographic or logographic systems,

and then describe at greater length the development of the Latin alphabet (which I am using to

compose this text). The next landmark is the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth

century. Typewriters were invented late in the nineteenth century, the Biro in 1944, and the

IBM personal computer was introduced in August 1981. To paraphrase '1066 and All That',

the history of writing has clearly come to an end.

Before I present a slightly different approach to this history, I will go into a little more detail.

This material is the basis for some of the claims already made in Chapter 1 about the

consequences of literacy, and it also provides more details of the examples for the technological

implications of writing that have been discussed above.

Two charts summarize the standard early history of writing.

One from Graff

There are seven known early logographic systems

(1) Sumerian- Akkadian (Mesopotamia), 3100 B.C. to 75 A.D.
(2) Proto-Elamite (Elam, Mesopotamia), 22OO B.C. to 300 B.C.
(3) Egyptian (Egypt), 3100 B.C. to second century A.D.
(4) Proto-Indic or Proto-Indian (Indus Basin), around 2200 to 1000 B.C.
(5) Cretan (Crete and Greece), 2000 B.C. to twelfth century B.C. (hieroglyphic, Linear
A and Linear B).
(6) Hittite and Luwian (Anatolia and Syria), 1500 B.C. to 700 B.C. (Anatolian
hieroglyphic).
(7) Chinese (China), 1500-1400 B.C. to the present day.

.
The history of the four systems that have been deciphered (Proto-Elamite, Proto Indic and
Linear B remain undeciphered)¹ is summarized below²:

Writing type

Logo-syllabic

Sumerian- Akkadian³

¹Goody 1987: 28.

²Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

³Mesopotamia, 3100 B.C. to 75 A.D.

Egyptian¹

Hittite,
Luwian²

Chinese³

SyllabicCuneiform Syllabaries
(Elamite,
Hurrian etcetera.) West Semitic Syllabaries
(Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, etcetera.)

Aegean Syllabaries
(Linear A,
Linear B,
Cypro-Minoan, Cypriot,
Phaistos, ByblosJapanese

Alphabetic

Greek,

Korean⁴

Aramaic
(vocalized),
Hebrew,
Latin, etcetera.

From these early logographic systems, first syllabic systems and then alphabetic systems

developed. However, we must be cautious about the so-called early 'logographic' systems. In

fact, all known logographic systems are (or were) mixtures of logographic and syllabic writing.

It is simply not possible to use a unique sign for every word in the language ⁵ . As examples of

the multiple problems which would arise: it would become increasingly hard to create

neologisms, and the written language would become extremely difficult to learn. Instead

languages employ a restricted vocabulary of a few thousand words (all that are needed for most

¹Egypt, 3100 B.C. to 2nd century A.D.

²Anatolia and Syria, 1500 B.C. to 700 B.C. (Anatolian hieroglyphic).

³China, 1500-1400 B.C. to the present day.

⁴The Korean alphabet was invented in 1446 to replace a complicated writing system based on borrowed Chinese

logographic symbols. There were originally 28 letters. Their number has now been reduced to 24.

⁵Chinese has some 8,000 signs, which is far exceeded by the total number of words in the Chinese language.

purposes), plus some additional rules for using these signs to refer to their sounds rather than

their meanings. For example, Sumerian cuneiform writing used so called 'gunu' lines to this

effect¹.

Logographic signs. In systems of pictorial signs, a picture represented the object depicted.

From these were developed systems in which a picture represented the sound of a word, or of

part of a word. This is called rebus writing, and it is best explained by reference to the

examples below. In rebus writing signs are divorced from their meanings. Hence, it may be a

step towards a syllabic or phonemic writing system. Arguably, only a phonemic writing system

(where one sound can have several different meanings, as in 'eye' and 'I') can fully represent

the complexity of language. It is a significant step away from a logographic system by the

process of phonetization². This is the first step in the development of a full writing system.

Initially, a graphic mark has a descriptive meaning. Then it becomes the symbol for the name of

that meaning, and finally it becomes the symbol of a word.

¹Hooke (1954: 747).

²Goody (1987: 27/8).

Some rebus writing.

Question: is this a noun phrase (an eyesore) or the
beginning of a sentence ( I saw...)?

man

drake

mandrake

This point may be emphasized by considering the current state of Japanese writing. Japanese

employs ideograms, borrowed from the Chinese approximately 2000 years ago, as well as a

syllabic writing system with two differing scripts. There are some 1850 Kanji ideograms which

come from the Chinese system. The Japanese can use either on or kun senses of the Kanji

characters. The on is the phonological interpretation, based on Japanese version of eighth-

century Chinese. The kun is the semantic interpretation which takes Japanese words with the

same meaning as the Chinese original. For example, the character 'pat'

means eight in Chinese. Its on is pati, its kun is ya,the modern Japanese word for eight ¹.

Aspects of the history of writing

The first written records were of two sorts, monumental along the lines of 'Kilroy was here',

and bureaucratic: a debt has been incurred or tax has been paid.

The earliest surviving writing comes from the ancient Near East where city states practised

grain agriculture and gave tribute to temples and rulers. Records of these were written, some of

which have survived². The clay tablets, dating from 3000 B.C. and before, record tax and

tribute paid. They also include documents of trade: bills of lading, invoices and receipts.

Indeed, merchants used seals with pictorial images that may well have formed the basis of the

very earliest writing systems.

The records of transactions, whether of tribute or trade, are all written in the form of lists.

There are pictorial signs for commodities, followed by a numeric notation (in translation:

'Sheep, five off', etcetera). The numbers are emphasized as strongly as the objects that are

being counted. Numeracy is as much a product of large scale social organization as literacy.

¹Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, p 96.

²Goody (1987: 23).

For the first 500 years of writing the records are 'purely economic or administrative, never

religious or historical.'¹

The other sort of early written record following the very earliest period is found in the

monuments carved in stone to commemorate historical events, for example to celebrate a

victory in war. These also contain many numbers: 'X many have been killed', or 'This town

was captured with Y people'.

Early writing logs the land, its rulers and its trade. It was used to make records rather than to

communicate². For this reason, the writing did not need to be universally comprehensible.

The records are more akin to a mnemonic system than to writing as we now think of it, and

consisted of a more arbitrary type of writing. Thus it can be seen that the purpose of writing is

connected to the form of the script itself.

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