by Umair Mirxa @Dastaan World
In ancient Sumer, along the Nil Canal, lay the city of Uruk – the first city of the world. It was founded by the Sumerian King Enmerkar approximately 4,500 years ago. At its peak c. 2900 BCE, it spread across an area of approximately 250 hectares, and had an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 residents. Dominated by large temple estates, and ruled by priest-kings, it surpassed all other populated sites in the region.
History of Writing
It is here, on the rich, alluvial soils of the southern Mesopotamian plains that writing was first invented, c. 3500-3000 BCE. The history of writing begins here.
Sumerian civilization, and particularly the city of Uruk, was a stratified society. Early written texts list as many as 120 officials from different walks of life. The officials included leaders of the city, law, plow, and lambs, in addition to cooks, gardeners, jewelers, metalworkers, potters, priests, stone-cutters, and weavers.
The need to govern and manage such varied people and professions led to the recording of data on clay tablets, especially for the purposes of accounting and the disbursement of revenues.
Known today as cuneiform, this ancient writing system involved using a blunt reed implement to make specific wedge-shaped marks in wet clay. Some scholars believe that Egyptian hieroglyphics were developed from Sumerian cuneiform, although the theory is disputed.
Phoenician writing, which would eventually lead to the Greek and Roman phoenetic writing systems, also owes its development to the advances made in the written word by the Sumerians – even if it was quite different when compared to the cuneiform system.
Writing was developed, independently of Mesopotamia, c. 2600 BCE in the Indus Valley civilization, c. 1200 BCE in China, and c. 300 BCE in Mesoamerica by the Maya civilization. Writing systems first emerged in Egypt c. 3100 BCE, however, historians contest whether or not they developed independently of Sumerian writing.
Evolution of Writing
Pictographs – symbols representing objects – constitute the earliest form of writing. However, they were merely a way to record the simplest of facts. For anything more complex than a list of items or basic financial transactions, a more elaborate system was necessary. Thus, phonograms – symbols representing sounds – gradually replaced pictograms.
Writers could now begin to truly express themselves, for the first time in the history of writing. We can see complex ideas and thoughts being written down on clay tablets, from around 2600 BCE onward, for an extensive variety of economic, literary, political, religious, and scholarly texts.
So arose a discipline never before possible: written history. Scribes began to record contemporary events, their knowledge. stories, and religious beliefs. In time, they created the most delightful of art forms: literature.
The Mesopotamians were now able to record everything they thought and knew and believed in for posterity. They could tell the stories of their gods and heroes, and this in particular became an important tradition for all civilizations of the ancient world.
The task was only made easier once the Phoenicians brought the alphabet out of Egypt and Crete, and distributed it to the entire Mediterranean.
Writing evolved yet again, into Aramaic and Greek alphabets, which gave rise to various writing systems across Africa, Europe, and Western Asia.
Early Greek and Latin alphabets evolved into European scripts, including Runes, and the Gothic and Cyrillic alphabets. Similarly, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac – possibly even Sanskrit – scripts evolved from the early Aramaic alphabet.
The Value of Writing
Our world is, and for ages has been, driven by the written word. The history of writing is the history of human civilization. One can trace it through texts inscribed on clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, and paper. Most recently, we have taken to recording our knowledge, opinions, stories, and histories in digital documents on the internet through computers, phones, and silicon tablets.
From ancient Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. From the early Semitic alphabets and Chinese characters to the Greek and Latin alphabets which we are most familiar with today. Pick whatever form, language, or method. The written word has shaped the very fabric of human society, culture, and history. It has defined religion, created nations, brought peace, and incited war.
From The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey to The Lord of the Rings, Ulysses, and American Gods, from Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Joyce, Tolstoy, and Tolkien to McCarthy, Murakami, Pynchon, King, and Gaiman, and from Dante, Milton, and Blake to Wordsworth, Keats, Poe, Whitman, and Frost, writing has also served to teach, inspire, and entertain us in ways no other medium can quite achieve.