Blog No. 4

The last form of research i completed was to look within a library for books that I could physically borrow. I went to Swinburne Tafe in Prahran. I did a search for 'original alphabet' but the results seemed to focus on actually teaching children the alphabet. So I changed my search terms to 'history alphabet' and received more relevant results. I only looked at books and resources in Prahran, and these are the resources I came up with, and some of the quotes I will be using in the final piece.



Picture taken from Amazon.com



The Story of Writing by Andrew Robinson

·         Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible, yet is it a skill most writers take for granted.

·         We learn it at school, and as adults we seldom stop to think about the mental-cum-physical process that turn our thoughts into symbols on a piece of paper or on a video screen, or bytes of information in a computer disc.

·         The earliest Egyptian writing dates from 3100BC, that of the Indus Valley from 2500BC, that of Crete from 1900BC, that of China from 1200BC, that of Central America deom 600BC (all dates are approximations,)

Writing: A Chronicle

Date	Historical  Moment	Date	Historical  Moment
Ice Age (after 25,00BC)	Proto-writing, i.e. pictographic communication, in use	2nd cent.	Runic inscription begin, northern Europe
8000BC onwards	Clay ‘tokens’in use as counters, Middle East	394	Last inscription written in Egyptian hieroglyphs
3300BC	Sumerian clay tablets with writing, Uruk, Iraq	615-683	Pacal, Classic Maya ruler of Palenque, Mexico
3100BC	Cuneiform inscriptions begin, Mesopotamia	712	Kojiki, earliest work of Japanese literature (in Chinese characters)
3100-3000BC	Hieroglyphic inscriptions begin, Egypt	Before 800	Printing invented, China
2500BC	Indus script begins, Pakistan/N.W. India	9th cent.	Cyrillic alphabet invented, Russia
18th cent. BC	Cretan Linear A inscriptions begin	1418-1450	Sejong, king of Korea, reighs; invents Hangul alphabet
1792-1750BC	Hammurabi, king of Babylon, reigns; inscribes law code on stela	15th cent.	Movable type invented, Europe
17th-16th cent. BC	First known alphabet, Palestine	1560s	Diego de Landa records Mayan ‘alphabet’, Yucatan
1450BC	Cretan Linear B inscription begins	1799	Rosetta stone discovered, Egypt
14th cent. BC	Alphabetic cuneiform inscriptions Ugarit, Syria	1821	Cherokee ‘alphabet’ invented by Sequoya, USA
1361-1352BC	Tutankhamun reigns, Egypt	1823	Egyptian hieroglyphs deciphered by Champollion
c. 1285 BC	Battle of Kadesh celebrated by both Ramesses II and Hittites	1840s onwards	Mesopotamian cuneiform deciphered by Rawlinson, Hincks and others
1200BC	Oracle bone inscriptions in Chinese characters begin	1867	Typewriter invented
1000BC	Phoenician alphabetic inscriptions begin, Mediterranean area	1899	Oracle bone inscriptions discovered
730BC	Greek alphabetic inscriptions begin	1900	Knossos discovered by Evans, who identifies Cretan Linear A and B
c. 8th cent. BC	Etruscan alphabet appears, northern Italy	1905	Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions discovered by Petrie, Serabit el-Khadim, Sinai
650BC	Demotic inscriptions, derived from hieroglyphs, begin, Egypt	1908	Phaistos Disc discovered, Crete
600BC	Glyphic inscriptions begin, Mesoamerica	1920s	Indus civilization discovered
521-486BC	Darius, king of the Persians, reigns; creates Behistun inscription (key to decipherment of cuneiform)	1940s	Electronic computers invented
400BC	Ionian alphabet becomes standard Greek alphabet	1948	Hebrew becomes a national language in Israel
c. 270-c. 232BC	Ashoka creates rock edicts in Brahmi and Kharosthi script, northern India	1953	Linear B deciphered by Ventis
221BC	Qin dynasty reforms Chinese character spelling	1950s onwards	Mayan glyphs deciphered
c. 2nd cent. BC	Paper invented, paper	1958	Pinyin spelling introduced in China
1st cent. AD	Dead Sea Scrolls written in Aramaic/Hebrew script	1980s	Wordprocessors invented; writing becomes electronic
75AD	Last inscription written in cuneiform	23 Dec. 2012	Current Maya Great Cycle of time due to end

Alphabet at Work by William Gardner

·         The ABC is such a rudimentary experience for most of us that once early school days are over, its use and form are taken for granted. Behind today’s letter shapes, however, is a heritage as diverse and fascinating as that of any other art form.

Ancient Scrolls: The Lerner Archaeology Series by Michael Avi-Yonah

·         After the cities appeared, people needed some way of keeping track of the great number of things and people that were crowded together in the city’s many houses, store-rooms, workshops, and palaces. The earl city dwellers invented marks or signs to represent the things and people they wanted to keep track of, and this is how the idea of writing began.

·         Once people could read and write, it was not necessary to depend on a person’s memory to preserve knowledge. Information could be written down, and it would be preserved exactly, as long as the material it was written on survived. In fact, some of the earliest writings of mankind have survived into our own time, and they are now kept carefully guarded in museums.

·         The Semitic languages – which include Hebrew and Arabic – still use this ancient way of writing from right to left.