The importance of writing in the history of the development of civilization can hardly be overestimated. Language, like a mirror, reflects the whole world, our whole life. And reading written or printed texts, it’s as if we are getting into a time machine and can be transported to both recent times and the distant past.

The possibilities of writing are not limited by time or distance. But people did not always master the art of writing. This art has been developing for a long time, over many millennia.

First, picture writing (pictography) appeared: some event was depicted in the form of a picture, then they began to depict not the event, but individual items, first observing the similarity with what is being depicted, and then in the form of conventional signs (ideography, hieroglyphs), and, finally, they learned to depict not objects, but to convey their names with signs (sound writing). Initially, only consonant sounds were used in sound writing, and vowels were either not perceived at all, or were indicated by additional symbols (syllabic writing). Syllabic writing was used by many Semitic peoples, including the Phoenicians.

The Greeks created their alphabet based on the Phoenician letter, but significantly improved it by introducing special signs for vowel sounds. The Greek letter formed the basis of the Latin alphabet, and in the 9th century the Slavic letter was created by using letters of the Greek alphabet.

The great work of creating the Slavic alphabet was accomplished by the brothers Constantine (who took the name Cyril at baptism) and Methodius. The main merit in this matter belongs to Kirill. Methodius was his faithful assistant. Composing Slavic alphabet, Kirill was able to catch in the sound of the Slavic language he knew from childhood (and this was probably one of the dialects of the ancient Bulgarian language) the basic sounds of this language and find letter designations for each of them. When reading Old Church Slavonic, we pronounce the words as they are written. In the Old Church Slavonic language we will not find such a discrepancy between the sound of words and their pronunciation, as, for example, in English or French.

The Slavic book language (Old Church Slavonic) became widespread as a common language for many Slavic peoples. It was used by the Southern Slavs (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats), Western Slavs (Czechs, Slovaks), and Eastern Slavs (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians).

In memory of the great feat of Cyril and Methodius, the Day of Slavic Literature is celebrated all over the world on May 24. It is celebrated especially solemnly in Bulgaria. There are festive processions with the Slavic alphabet and icons of the holy brothers. Since 1987, in our country on this day the holiday of Slavic writing and culture began to be held Gelb I.E. Study of the writing systems of the ancient Slavs. M., 2003..

The word “alphabet” comes from the names of the first two letters of the Slavic alphabet: A (az) and B (buki):

ABC: AZ + BUKI

and the word “alphabet” comes from the name of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet:

ALPHABET: ALPHA + VITA

The alphabet is much older than the alphabet. In the 9th century there was no alphabet, and the Slavs did not have their own letters. And therefore there was no writing. The Slavs could not write books or even letters to each other in their language.

In the 9th century in Byzantium, in the city of Thessaloniki (now the city of Thessaloniki in Greece), two brothers lived - Constantine and Methodius. They were wise and very educated people and knew the Slavic language well. The Greek king Michael sent these brothers to the Slavs in response to the request of the Slavic prince Rostislav. (Rostislav asked to send teachers who could tell the Slavs about the holy Christian books, book words unknown to them and their meaning).

And so the brothers Constantine and Methodius came to the Slavs to create the Slavic alphabet, which later became known as the Cyrillic alphabet. (In honor of Constantine, who, having become a monk, received the name Cyril).

Cyril and Methodius took the Greek alphabet and adapted it to the sounds of the Slavic language. Many of our letters are taken from Greek, which is why they look similar to them.

Photo: Vladislav StrekopytovOn the shores of Lake Orestiada in Western Macedonia(Northern Greece) is a city Kastoria, known to Russian tourists primarily for its fur centers, where specialized shopping tours are organized for inexpensive, but very high-quality fur coats made of natural fur. But there is a lot of interesting things in Western Macedonia besides fur coats, which, however, is not always told to participants on shopping tours.

One of these places “for tourist gourmets” is a museum-reconstruction of a prehistoric settlement Dispilio on the shore of Lake Orestiada. This place is known not so much for the modern reconstruction of frame adobe houses on stilts, but for the so-called sign from Dispilio, on which pictographic signs are applied, reminiscent of ancient writing. This may be the oldest written language in the world!

For a long time, Sumerian cuneiform was considered the oldest written language on Earth. As archeology developed, it became clear that it was preceded by a stage of pictographic writing. In the same Sumer, finds of tablets with pictographic writing (for example, a tablet from Kish), strikingly similar to the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt (which means they had a common source), date back to the middle of the 4th millennium BC.

However, in 1961 in Romania, near the village of Terteria, three clay tablets with graphic writing of the “Sumerian” type, dated to the mid-6th millennium BC, were discovered. That is, they older than the first material evidence of writing in Mesopotamia for at least 1000 years! The time of creation of the tablets was determined by an indirect method, using radiocarbon analysis of objects found in the same layer with them. Later it turned out that the writing of Terteria did not arise out of nowhere, but was an integral part of the one widespread in the middle of the 6th - early 5th millennium BC. pictographic writing of the Balkan Vinci culture (Danubian proto-writing). Currently, up to a thousand objects of the Vinca culture are known on which similar pictograms are scratched. The geography of the finds covers the territory of Serbia, western Romania and Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Macedonia and Northern Greece. Despite hundreds of kilometers separating them, the pictographs show remarkable similarities throughout the entire range of the Vinca culture.

The tablet from Dispilio also contains similar symbols. Radiocarbon dating dates the tablet to approximately 5260 BC.

It turns out that the pictograms of the Danube proto-writing are the oldest form of writing in the world. In other words, the so-called “ancient European writing” existed on the continent not only long before the Minoan, traditionally considered the first writing of Europe, but also before the Proto-Sumerian and Proto-Chinese writing systems. This system arose in the first half of the 6th millennium BC. BC, spread between 5300-4300 years and disappeared by 4000 BC. e. Moreover, it is likely that Sumerian proto-writing is directly derived from Danubian. The set of symbols and totems not only strikingly coincides, but they are also located in the same sequence - on areas of the surface separated by lines, the symbols should be read in a circle counterclockwise.

So, the ancient inhabitants of the Balkans wrote “in Sumerian” back in the Stone Age - in the 5th millennium BC. e., when there was no trace of Sumer himself! The pictographic writing of ancient Crete also contains distant echoes of the Vinci writing, on the basis of which the oldest Aegean writing in Europe from the times of the Minoan civilization (late 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC) was formed. Based on this, a number of researchers conclude that primitive writing in the Aegean countries has its roots in the Balkans of the 4th millennium BC, and did not at all arise under the influence of distant Mesopotamia, as was previously believed.

And the Sumerian writing itself most likely arose under the influence of the Danube proto-writing. How else can we explain that the oldest writing in Sumer, dating back to the end of the 4th millennium BC, appeared completely suddenly and in a fully developed form. The Sumerians adopted pictographic writing from the Balkan peoples, later developing it into cuneiform.

Reference
The Neolithic lake settlement of Dispilio was discovered in the dry winter of 1932, when the lake level dropped and traces of the settlement became visible. A preliminary study was carried out in 1935 by Professor Antonios Keramopoulos. Regular excavations began in 1992. It turned out that the site was inhabited by people from the late Middle Neolithic (5600–5000 BC) to the Late Neolithic (3000 BC). A number of artifacts were discovered in the village, including ceramics, wooden structural elements, seeds, bones, figurines, personal jewelry, and flutes. All of them belong to the Vinca culture. The tablet with the signs was discovered in 1993 by the Greek archaeologist George Urmuziadis.
On the shore of the lake, an exact copy of the settlement was created with huts on pile platforms, in natural sizes, made from natural materials. Tree trunks were used for the frame of the houses, and branches and ropes were used for the walls. Each hut was plastered using lake clay, and the roofs were covered with thatch. Inside the huts there are everyday objects found during excavations: clay vessels, bowls, fruit dishes, as well as tools made of stone or bone - exact copies, the originals of which are in the Dispilio Museum itself.

TAGS:Greece,Western Macedonia

The earliest pictographic writing may have originated in the Mesolithic period. The so-called “Azil” churingas date back to this time. These are pebbles on the surface of which all kinds of symbolic figures are painted or engraved. They are called “churings” by analogy with similar objects of the Australian aborigines, for whom churngs are symbolic containers for souls. In the Neolithic, ornamental designs were painted on clay vessels. Each group of tribes had its own ornamentation system, which was very stable over hundreds and even thousands of years. Among the repeating drawings about 3.5 thousand years ago, conventional signs were discovered, possibly indicating the emergence of logographic writing. In the East, systems of this writing were formed no later than the 4th millennium BC. e. (Nast Asian, Proto-Elamite, Proto-Indian, Ancient Egyptian, Cretan, Chinese).

THE EMERGENCE OF WRITING

From the 3rd millennium BC e. Egyptian writing began to turn into a logographic-consonantal system. The spelling of the letters also changed.
The most ancient monuments Logographic writing was Sumerian and Proto-Elamite writing, which arose in the 5th-4th millennium BC. e. They wrote on stone and clay tablets. However, already from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. writing began to acquire a logographic-syllabic character. The writings lost their imagery, turning into combinations of cuneiform strokes. This was apparently due to the material used to write in Mesopotamia - clay. It was easier to press out wedge-shaped marks on clay than to draw lines. On the basis of Sumerian, the Urartian script arose, which was used in the Caucasus in the 9th-4th centuries. BC e.
The writing used in Central Asia in the 6th-4th centuries had a special syllabic character. BC e. This is the so-called Persian (or Achaemenid) cuneiform. Monuments of such cuneiform writing are found even in the Southern Urals.
At the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. e. Sound writing began to spread widely. It was simpler than other systems and required only 20-30 letter signs. It is assumed that the number of letters in the first alphabets was related to the number of days in the lunar month, with the addition of the number of zodiac signs. From the first Phoenician sound writing most of the modern systems writing.

Writing, according to archaeological excavations, arose during the period of the primitive communal system, about 15 thousand years ago. Of course, this was a primitive form of information transfer. The earliest period in the development of writing is pictography (transmission of information by drawings). It is interesting that in some tribes such writing was preserved until the end of the 19th century.

In pictography, the verb “to speak” was represented by a mouth, “to look” by eyes, etc. It is curious that when illiterate people try to write down their thoughts, they now also denote similar verbs.

But it was quite difficult to convey information using drawings, so they were gradually simplified, turning into diagrams and signs; This is how ideographic writing arose (Greek “idea” - concept, “grapho” - write). In the end, the sign that denoted a concept or, later, a word, turned into a letter that was part of the word.

History of writing

Thus, it became possible to form any word from individual letters. This is how the alphabet appeared.

The oldest ideographic writings date back to the 4th millennium BC. In Egypt, the walls of magnificent buildings were painted with hieroglyphs (Greek “hieros” - sacred, from “glufo” - carve). Each sign denoted a separate word, but over time, hieroglyphs in Egypt began to denote syllables and even sounds, becoming the prototype of alphabetic alphabets.

Egyptian writing was first deciphered in early XIX century. This was done by the French scientist Jean Francois Champollion. Among the trophies of Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign was the famous Rosetta Stone with identical inscriptions in three languages. The very first consisted of hieroglyphs, the second was demotic (common cursive) writing, and the last was Greek writing. Champollion completely deciphered the text and concluded that in the 1st century. BC. Egyptian writing had already acquired a mixed character - ideographic, syllabic and partly phonetic.

In the 4th century. The Sumerians, who lived in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates, also acquired their own writing. Sumerian writing was a mixture of pictographic and hieroglyphic characters. Perhaps it is somehow connected with Egyptian writing, but this cannot be said for sure.

Completely independently from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. hieroglyphic Chinese writing developed, which exists to this day. While the number of ideographic signs in other languages ​​was declining, in Chinese it was growing with the formation of new words. Therefore, in the modern Chinese language there are about 50 thousand ideographic signs, and ancient Chinese writing in the 1st-2nd centuries. BC. consisted of only 2,500-3,000 hieroglyphs.

Alphabet is a set of symbols, letters (or other graphemes), arranged in a rigid order and designed to reproduce certain sounds. Modern European alphabets developed from Greek, which was transmitted to the Greeks by the Phoenicians, inhabitants of an ancient country on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In the VI century. BC. Phenicia was conquered by the Persians in 332 BC. e. - Alexander the Great. The Phoenician alphabet did not have vowels (this is the so-called consonantal letter - consonant sounds were combined with arbitrary vowels), it had 22 simple characters. The origin of Phoenician writing is still the subject of scientific debate, but probably minor changes it goes back to the consonantal Ugaritic script, and the Ugaritic language belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages.

The invention of the Slavic alphabet is associated with the names of two enlightenment brothers Cyril (c.827-869) and Methodius (815-885).

They came from the family of a Greek military leader and were born in the city of Thessaloniki (modern Thessaloniki in Greece). The elder brother, Methodius, entered military service in his youth. For ten years he was the governor of one of the Slavic regions of Byzantium, and then left his post and retired to a monastery. In the late 860s he became abbot of the Greek monastery of Polychron on Mount Olympus in Asia Minor.

Unlike his brother, from childhood Cyril was distinguished by his thirst for knowledge and, as a boy, was sent to Constantinople to the court of the Byzantine Emperor Michael III. There he received an excellent education, studying not only Slavic, but also Greek, Latin, Hebrew and even Arabic. He subsequently refused public service and was tonsured a monk.

In 863, when the Byzantine emperor, at the request of the Moravian prince Rostislav, sent the brothers to Moravia, they had just begun translating the main liturgical books. Naturally, such a grandiose work would have dragged on for many years if a circle of translators had not formed around Cyril and Methodius.

In the summer of 863, Cyril and Methodius arrived in Moravia, already with them the first Slavic texts. However, their activities immediately aroused the discontent of the Bavarian Catholic clergy, who did not want to cede their influence on Moravia to anyone.

In addition, the appearance of Slavic translations of the Bible contradicted the regulations catholic church, according to which church service should have been held in Latin, and the text of the Holy Scriptures should not have been translated into any languages ​​other than Latin.

To this day, scientists continue to debate about what kind of alphabet Kirill created - Cyrillic or Glagolitic. The difference between them is that the Glagolitic alphabet is more archaic in its lettering, and the Cyrillic alphabet turned out to be more convenient for conveying the sound features of the Slavic language. It is known that in the 9th century. Both alphabets were in use, and only at the turn of the 10th-11th centuries. Glagolitic alphabet has practically fallen out of use.

After the death of Cyril, the alphabet he invented received its current name. Over time, the Cyrillic alphabet became the basis of all Slavic alphabets, including Russian.

Date of publication: 2014-10-25; Read: 390 | Page copyright infringement

1 Rock carvings are also called pisanitsa or petroglyphs (from the Greek petros - stone and glyphe - carving). They depict animals and household items. They could also serve to mark the boundaries of the tribe’s possessions, hunting grounds, and give ideas about environment. They also made it possible to transmit information and store it for centuries.

2 Material letter. When used, household items and tools were endowed with a certain meaning, known to the sender and recipient. Elements of the material letter have survived to this day.

3 Knotted writing is a mnemonic way of storing thoughts and messages. Knots were tied on ropes painted in different colors in predetermined places. Their location was used to transmit information.

4 Pictographic writing or pictography (from Latin pictus - drawn and Greek grapho - writing). Objects began to be replaced by their images. The overall content of the image was displayed as a picture or series of pictures. But with the help of primitive drawings it is difficult to depict actions or show the quality of objects. Appeared during the Neolithic.

5 Ideographic writing (from the Greek idea - concept, representation). For this letter, special characters are used - ideograms. With their help, entire concepts were designated. Ideograms are numbers, chemical symbols, and mathematical symbols.

6 Hieroglyphic writing, which used special. signs - hieroglyphs (from the Greek hieroglyphoi - sacred writing). They could denote not only entire concepts, but also individual words, syllables, and even speech sounds. This type of writing was used in ancient Egypt in Sumer.

7 Cuneiform. Appeared around 3000 BC, the characters of this type of writing consisted of groups of wedge-shaped dashes that were extruded into wet clay. It originated in Sumer, then began to be used in Assyria and Babylon.

8 Phonographic letter (from gray.phone - sound). This is sound writing using signs (letters) meaning certain sound units of the language (sounds, syllables). It has been known since the 13th century BC. arose from ideographic in Phenicia. In the IX-VIII centuries. BC.

Ancient writing

The Greek alphabet was based on the Phoenician script.

9 Slavic writing. The third bookish and written language after Greek and Latin appeared in 863 as a basis Slavic alphabet the brothers (Cyril and Methodius) took Greek, adding several signs to indicate hissing and some other sounds that were absent in the Greek language. There were two varieties of the Slavic alphabet - Cyrillic and Glagolitic. Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and other writing systems arose on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Date of publication: 2015-10-09; Read: 191 | Page copyright infringement

studopedia.org - Studopedia.Org - 2014-2018 (0.001 s)…

Writing originated among the Sumerians more than five thousand years ago. Later, it began to be called cuneiform.

They wrote with a pointed reed stick on clay tablets. Thanks to the fact that the tablets were dried and fired, they became very strong, which allowed them to survive to this day. And this is very important, because thanks to them, the history of the emergence of writing can be traced.

There are two assumptions about its appearance: monogenesis (origin in one place) and polygenesis (in several places).

There are three primary centers for the emergence of writing:

1. Egyptian

2. Mesopotamian

3. Far Eastern (China)

Everywhere the development of writing followed one path: first drawing, and then written signs.

Sometimes, instead of letters, people sent each other various objects. True, such “letters” were not always interpreted correctly. A striking example is the war between the Scythians and Darius, king of Persia.

The first step towards the appearance of writing was drawing. And the image that designated this or that object began to be called a pictogram. As a rule, they painted people, animals, household utensils, etc. And if at first they depicted a reliable number of objects, that is, they drew as many as they saw, then they gradually moved to a simplified version. They began to draw an object, and next to it, with dashes, they specified its quantity.

The next step was to extract the characters from the drawings. They denoted the sounds that made up the names of objects.

A very important step was the image not only in a concrete form, but also in an abstract one. Over time, the need arose to write down long texts, so the drawings began to be simplified, and conventional signs called hieroglyphs (from the Greek “sacred writing”) appeared.

In the XII-XIII centuries. Sinaitic inscriptions appeared. Thanks to this, the number of written characters rapidly decreased. And syllabic writing arose. And after it the alphabet appeared.

Each nation created its own alphabetic letter. The Phoenicians, for example, assigned an indifferent vowel to each sign. Jews and Arabs did not use vowels.

The most ancient writing.

But the Greeks, based on the Phoenician letter, introduced signs for vowels, began to depict stress, and even introduced an analogue of modern notes.

Thus, writing was not invented by any specific person, it appeared as a result of a vital need. And even during our era it is actively developing. Thus, Cyril and Methodius created a letter for the Slavs, and Mesrop Mashtots for the Armenians.download dle 12.1
The Legend of Voluntary Slavery

Rock carvings, scientifically called petroglyphs, are found in different parts of the world and belong to different historical eras from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages. Ancient people applied them to the walls, ceilings of caves, open rock surfaces and individual stones. The oldest Paleolithic rock paintings were found in caves and grottoes in Southern France and Northern Spain. The rock carvings are characterized by figures of animals, primarily the objects of ancient man's hunt: bison, horses, mammoths, rhinoceroses; less common predators are bears and lions. In Russia, petroglyphs were called pisanitsa. Here, Paleolithic drawings were discovered in the Kapova Cave in the Urals and on the rocks near the village of Shishkino on the Lena River. Already in ancient times, the style and technique of rock paintings were varied - from contour drawings scratched on stone to bas-relief polychrome painting, for which mineral paints were used. Rock paintings had magical meaning for ancient people.

Wampum (from the Indian wampumpeag - threads with shells strung on them), a means of remembering and transmitting messages among the Indian tribes of the North. America. The content of the message was expressed by the color, number and relative position of the shells. Wampum could also be used instead of money.

Khipu means to tie a knot or simply a knot; this word is also understood as counting (cuenta), because the nodes contained a count of any objects. The Indians made threads of different colors: some had only one color, others two colors, others three, and others even more, because the simple color and the mixed color each had their own special meaning; the thread was tightly twisted from three or four thin turns, and it was as thick as an iron spindle and about three-quarters of a vara long; each of them was attached in a special order to another thread - the base, forming a kind of fringe. By color they determined what exactly such and such a thread contained, something like: yellow meant gold, white meant silver, and red meant warriors.

Pictographic letter

(from Latin pictus - drawn and Greek grapho - writing, pictorial writing, pictography), displaying the general content of a message in the form of drawings, usually for memorization purposes. Known since Neolithic times. Pictographic writing is not a means of fixing any language, that is, writing in the proper sense. However, it is very important - people drew pictures on the surface of rocks, stones, etc. This was the starting point for the development of descriptive writing.

Conclusion. All of the above methods for recording speech were very limited in their application. Not every thought could be transmitted over long distances or “stopped in time” with their help. The main disadvantage of these methods is the lack of clarity and unambiguity in their reading.

The oldest writing on Earth

A lot depends on the skill of the one who draws, as well as on the insight of the one who reads.

Although, for example, pictography is also used in modern world: road signs, street signs. The use of pictograms as an aid is very convenient. The meaning can be conveyed very quickly, the image is understandable to everyone: both children who cannot read and foreigners who do not have a translator. Very widespread received pictograms in modern computers. By pressing the button with the corresponding icon on the computer screen, you can call up your favorite game or other program you need for work.

Pre-letter letter

Ideographic writing (from the Greek idea - idea, image and grapho - writing) is a writing principle that uses ideograms. The ancient Egyptian, Sumerian and other ancient writing systems were largely ideographic in nature. The greatest development has been achieved in Chinese hieroglyphs.

Many ideographic signs - ideograms - came from drawings. Moreover, among many peoples, some signs were used as pictograms (and then they depicted a specific object) and as ideograms (and then they denoted an abstract concept). In these cases, the drawing appears in a figurative, i.e., conditional meaning.

Hieroglyphic writing. The most ancient of the varieties of ideographic writing were hieroglyphs, consisting of phonograms and ideograms. Most hieroglyphs were phonograms, that is, they denoted a combination of two or three consonant sounds. Ideograms denoted individual words and concepts. The Egyptians did not mark vowel sounds in writing. The most commonly used were 700 hieroglyphs. The oldest hieroglyphic texts date back to the 32nd century BC. e.

"Sacred Signs"

In Egypt there is a legend about how the idea of ​​phonogram writing came about.

“About 5 thousand years ago, Pharaoh Narmer ruled in Egypt. He won many victories and wanted these victories to be engraved in stone forever. Skilled craftsmen worked day and night. They depicted the pharaoh, and the killed enemies, and captives, and even showed with the help of drawings that there were 6 thousand captives. But not a single artist could convey the name of Narmer himself. And for him this was the most important thing. This is how Egyptian artists wrote down the name of the pharaoh. They depicted a fish, because the word “nar” means “fish” in Egyptian. "Mer" in the same language means "incisor". An image of a fish above an image of a chisel—this is how the artists solved the task assigned to them.”

Hieroglyphic writing was used not only by the Egyptians, but also by the Babylonians, Sumerians, Mayans, and ancient inhabitants of the island of Crete. And in our time, the peoples of China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan write in hieroglyphs.

Conclusion. Compared to types of pre-writing, hieroglyphic writing has a number of advantages: unambiguous reading of the message, the ability to convey not only everyday, but also scientific information, abstract concepts. And phonideograms (hieroglyphs containing an indication of sound) even give an idea of ​​​​the sounding word.

But imagine how many signs you need to remember with their meanings if, for example, there are about 50 thousand of them in the Chinese language! Such a huge number is almost impossible for one person to remember, even if you learn only the actively used 4-7 thousand hieroglyphs.

Alphabetic writing

Sound-letter writing originated in the depths of ideographic writing. The idea of ​​conveying the sound of words in writing, which originated with the Sumerians, was embodied in different versions by other peoples. All methods were based on the use of simple signs denoting monosyllabic words in writing complex signs for other words. One such option is Chinese phonideograms. However, this is still very far from designating individual speech sounds with signs (letters), which forms the basis of phonographic (sound-letter) writing.

Phoenician and Greek writing. The Phoenicians, who lived about 2000 years ago, came up with signs for sounds. This is how letters and the alphabet appeared. And they all agreed! Just imagine that instead of “Mom washed the frame,” we would write “Mm ml rm.” Fortunately, after 200 years the Phoenician alphabet was in Ancient Greece. “It’s not very convenient to read words made up of only consonants,” the Greeks reasoned and changed some of the consonants into vowels. The Greek scientist Pelamed managed to create 16 letters. Over the course of many years, scientists of subsequent generations added some two, some three, and one even 6 letters. Huge efforts were spent to improve the letter, to make it more understandable and convenient for people. This is how the Greek alphabet came into being. It consisted of letters that denoted both consonants and vowels. Greek writing became the source for all European alphabets, including the Cyrillic alphabet.

Slavic alphabet. In ancient times, more than 1000 years ago, the Slavic peoples did not have their own written language. And so, in the second half of the 10th century, two scientists originally from Greece, the brothers Cyril and Methodius, came to Great Moravia (the territory of modern Czechoslovakia) and began to work on the creation of Slavic writing. They knew Slavic languages ​​well, and this gave them the opportunity to compose the Slavic alphabet. Having developed this alphabet, they translated the most important Greek books into the then ancient Slavic language (it is called Old Church Slavonic). Their work gave the Slavic peoples the opportunity to write and read in their own language.

The Slavic alphabet existed in two versions: Glagolitic - from verb - “speech” and Cyrillic. Until now, scientists do not have a consensus which of these options was created by Kirill. Most modern researchers believe that he created the Glagolitic alphabet. Later (apparently at the council in Preslav, the capital of the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon in 893), the Cyrillic alphabet appeared, which eventually replaced the Glagolitic alphabet.

Russian alphabet. With the adoption of Christianity in Rus', the Cyrillic alphabet was also adopted, which laid the foundation for the Russian alphabet. Originally it had 43 letters. Over time, some of them turned out to be superfluous because the sounds they denoted disappeared, and some were superfluous from the very beginning. The Russian alphabet in its modern form was introduced by the reforms of Peter I, as a result of which the style of the letters was changed (it came closer to the printed Latin alphabet) and the obsolete letters “omega”, “ot”, “yus big”, iotized “a”, “e” were excluded , "xi", "psi". During the second half of the 17th century, “e”, “th”, “e” were introduced. And after the October Revolution in 1918, “yat”, “fita”, “and decimal”, “Izhitsa” were excluded from the Russian alphabet. Thus, the modern alphabet has 33 letters.

Conclusion. Alphabetic writing gave people a range of possibilities.

First of all, freedom from time and distance has become a universal means of expressing thoughts and feelings. It became possible to convey the sound of a word in writing, to record all the words of a particular language (including abstract concepts) using the least number of characters. But the whole matter is now complicated by the need to know and be able to apply spelling and punctuation rules.

In conclusion

In the Russian alphabet, the letters of the Slavic alphabet not only changed over time, but their names were also simplified. If at the beginning of the twentieth century your great-grandmother had difficulty memorizing the beautiful “names” of letters: “az”, “buki”, “vedi”, “verb”, “dobro”, then now you can easily blurt out: “a”, “be”, “ve”, “ge”, “de”!

So, when you sit down to study, don’t forget to mentally thank everyone who took part in creating a simple and convenient letter.

Conclusion: For thousands of years, people have strived to ensure that writing:

1) could transmit various types of information;

2) was understandable;

3) it was simple and convenient.

The first writing that arose on Earth was Sumerian. This happened about 5 thousand years ago.
Their writing is called cuneiform after its later form.

• monogenesis (invented in the 1st place)
• polygenesis (in several foci).

Writing is represented in 3 primary foci, the connection of which has not been proven:

1. Mesopotamian (Sumerians)
2. Egyptian (according to the theory of monogenesis, introduced from the Sumerians)
3. writing of the Far East (Chinese, according to the theory of monogenesis, introduced from the Sumerians).

Writing develops uniformly everywhere - from drawings to written signs. Pictography turns into graphics system. Picture writing turns into language graphics not when pictures disappear (for example, in Egypt pictures were used, but this is not picture writing), but when we can guess what language the text is written in.
Sometimes people sent each other various objects instead of letters.
Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century. BC e., talks about the “letter” of the Scythians to the Persian king Darius. A Scythian messenger came to the Persian camp and placed gifts before the king, “consisting of a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows.” The Scythians did not know how to write, so their message looked like this. Darius asked what these gifts meant. The messenger replied that he was ordered to hand them over to the king and immediately return back. And the Persians themselves must figure out the meaning of the “letter.” Darius conferred with his soldiers for a long time and finally said how he understood the message: the mouse lives in the earth, the frog lives in the water, the bird is like a horse, and arrows are the military courage of the Scythians. Thus, Darius decided, the Scythians give him their water and land and submit to the Persians, giving up their military courage.
But the Persian military leader Gobryas interpreted the “letter” differently: “If you, Persians, do not fly away like birds into the sky, or like mice do not hide in the ground, or like frogs do not gallop into the lakes, then you will not return back and will fall under the blows of our arrows.” ".
As you can see, subject writing can be interpreted in different ways. The history of Darius's war with the Scythians showed that Gobryas was right. The Persians were unable to defeat the elusive Scythians, who roamed the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, Darius left the Scythian lands with his army.
Writing itself, descriptive writing, began with drawings. Writing with drawings is called pictography (from the Latin pictus - picturesque and the Greek grapho - I write). In pictography, art and writing are inseparable, therefore rock paintings Archaeologists, ethnographers, art historians, and literary historians are involved. Everyone is interested in their own area. For a historian of writing, the information contained in the drawing is important. A pictogram usually means some life situation, for example, hunting, or animals and people, or various objects - a boat, a house, etc.
The first inscriptions were about household concerns - food, weapons, supplies - objects were simply depicted. Gradually, there is a violation of the principle of isomorphism (i.e., a reliable representation of the number of objects - how many vases there are, so many we draw). The image loses connection with the subject. Instead of 3 vases, there is now a vase and 3 dashes that indicate the number of vases, i.e. quantitative and qualitative information are given separately. The first scribes had to separate and understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative signs. Then iconicity develops, and its own grammar appears.
At the turn of the IV - III millennium BC. e. Pharaoh Narmer conquered Lower Egypt and ordered his victory to be immortalized. The relief design depicts this event. And in the upper right corner there is a pictogram that serves as a signature to the reliefs. Falcon holding a rope through his nostrils human head, which seems to emerge from a strip of earth with six stalks of papyrus. The falcon is a symbol of the victorious king; he holds on a leash the head of the defeated king of the North; the land with papyri is Lower Egypt, papyrus is its symbol. Its six stalks are six thousand captives, since the sign of papyrus means a thousand. But was it possible to convey the name of the king in a drawing? How do we know that his name was Narmer?
It turns out that at this time the Egyptians had already begun to identify signs from their drawings that denoted not the drawn object, but the sounds that made up its name. The drawing of a dung beetle meant three sounds KhPR, and the drawing of a basket meant two sounds NB. And although such sounds remained drawings, they had already become phonetic signs. The ancient Egyptian language had words with one-, two-, and three-letter syllables. And since the Egyptians did not write vowels, monosyllabic words represented one sound. When the Egyptians needed to write a name, they used single-letter hieroglyphs.
The transition from concrete to abstract objects that do not correspond to a visual image. Chinese characters arose from drawings (13th century BC). Until now, the hieroglyphs have changed little, but the grammar of the language has changed (modern Chinese can read texts written BC, recognize the symbols, but will not catch the meaning). The drawing is stylized, simplified, standardized.
Eventually, in all places on the globe, signs begin to reflect sounds. The signs were linked to the sound of the whole word. It was very difficult to use such a letter - it is an art. A very complex writing system, but it satisfied the ancients because... it could only be used by a limited caste of people for whom this knowledge was a means of subsistence.
The need to quickly write down complex and long texts led to the fact that the drawings were simplified and became conventional icons - hieroglyphs (from the Greek hieroglyphoi - sacred writing).
In the 12th-13th centuries. BC. in the Middle East - the time of the appearance of the Sinai inscriptions. This is a step towards a sharp reduction in the number of written characters. Signs were developed that denoted a syllable. Writing has become syllabic. For different words, the combination of consonant and vowel is different.
Thanks to the presence of such single-syllable signs denoting one sound, alphabet. The Phoenicians, having become acquainted with these letters, created their own alphabetic writing based on them, simplifying the signs of syllabic writing. Each sign of this writing was assigned an indifferent vowel. Arabs and Jews used a letter without vowels. There was a complex guessing system, which nevertheless gave constant failures. Later, a system of vowels appeared, but nevertheless, in everyday life, Jews and Arabs used writing without vowels.
The Greeks adopted the Phoenician system. Greek is an Indo-European language. The Greeks introduce signs for vowels - this is a revolution. The Greeks invented a complete writing system. All vowels were depicted. Later they began to depict stress (place and type), aspiration. We also introduced an image of prosody (analogous to notes), which is impossible in the case of Russian writing and therefore is not used by us.
Is it possible to answer the question: who, what person invented the writing system? Who was the first to use alphabetic writing? There is no answer to these questions. The emergence of writing was caused by the demands of the life of society and the state, the economic activity of people - and writing appeared. But alphabets were created later, in our era, new era educated people of their time. Thus, Cyril and Methodius created a letter for the Slavic languages. Mesrop Mashtots created an alphabetic letter for the Armenian language. Together with his students, Mashtots went to different countries study writing. It was “a real scientific, perhaps the world’s first linguistic expedition, which set as its goal the development of an alphabet,” wrote corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences D. A. Olderogge.
The peoples of the Far North and Siberia did not have a written language before the October Revolution. Now researchers from the Institute of Northern Peoples have created an alphabetical letter for them.
There were many illiterates in the Tajik Republic, since the Arabic script, which the Tajiks once used, is very complex. Now Tajiks write Tajik in Russian letters.
Writing systems are also being created in the countries of modern Africa.

FEDERAL EDUCATION AGENCY OF THE RF

"URAL STATE MINING UNIVERSITY"

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Origin and development of writing

Abstract on cultural studies

Teacher: Assoc. Prof. Zheleznyakova A.V.

Student: Elsukov N.D.

Group: RRM-09

Ekaterinburg-2010

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3

The origin of writing and the number system…..4

1. The first numbers of the ancient peoples……………………….4

   1. Mesopotamian figures……………………………...4

      Egyptian numerals……………………………..5

      Chinese numbers………………………………….5

Counting systems of ancient peoples………………...5

1. Roman……………………………………………………….5

   Number system in the Mayan tribe……………6

   Modern number system………………..6

The history of writing………………...6

Development of writing…………………………………...7

1. Types of writing…………………………………….10

   1. Knotted writing………………………....10

      Pictogram……………………………………11

      Ideogram………………………………………….13

      Hieroglyphs…………………………………………...15

      Alphabet………………………………………………………16

3 Writing and language……………………………………………..18

Conclusion………………………………………………………19

Literature……………………………………………………….20

Introduction

Initially, people did not have any writing. Therefore, it was quite difficult to transmit information over long distances. The famous legend (told by Herodotus) about the Persian king Darius I says that he once received a message from the Scythian nomads. The message included the following four items: a bird, a mouse, a frog and arrows. The messenger who delivered the message said that he was not ordered to tell him anything more, and with that he said goodbye to the king. The question arose of how to interpret this message of the Scythians. King Darius considered that the Scythians were putting themselves under his power and, as a sign of submission, they brought him earth, water and sky, for a mouse means earth, a frog means water, a bird means sky, and arrows mean that the Scythians are giving up resistance. However, one of the wise men objected to Darius. He interpreted the message of the Scythians completely differently: “If you, Persians, do not fly into the sky like birds, or burrow into the ground like mice, or jump into a swamp like frogs, then you will not return back, struck by these arrows.” As it turned out later, this sage was right.

Inscriptions are found on the walls of tombs, on shards, clay tablets, and parchments. Egyptian papyri sometimes reach 30 - 40 m in length. Entire libraries are found in the ruins of ancient palaces. During excavations in Nineveh, 25,000 cuneiform tablets were discovered belonging to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. These are collections of laws, reports of spies, decisions on judicial issues, medical prescriptions.

In our daily life, we constantly come across numbers, written symbols and signs: to determine quantity, indicate time, reveal the meaning of a text, document number, etc.

Let's consider each step in the development of writing separately.

Origins of writing and number systems

Writing appeared around 3300 BC. in Sumer, by 3000 BC. in Egypt, by 2000 BC in China. In all regions, this process followed the same pattern: drawing - pictogram - hieroglyph - alphabet (the latter appeared among the Phoenicians in the 1st millennium BC). Hieroglyphic writing determined the peculiarities of thinking of the peoples of the East, the ability to think in symbols. The hieroglyph does not convey the sound of a word, but conventionally depicts an object or is an abstract sign - a symbol of a concept. A complex hieroglyph consists of simpler elements endowed with their own meaning. Moreover, these values ​​can be much greater.

But the first number system occurred many decades ago, archaeological scientists discovered a camp of ancient people. In it they found a wolf bone, on which 30 thousand years ago some ancient hunter made fifty-five notches. It was clear that while making these notches, he was counting on his fingers. The pattern on the bone consisted of eleven groups, each with five notches. At the same time, he separated the first five groups from the rest with a long line.

First digits

The first written figures, about which we have reliable evidence, appeared in Egypt and Mesopotamia (M. - interfluve civilization) about 5000 years ago. Although these two cultures were very far from each other, their number systems are very similar, as if representing the same method: using notches on wood or stone to record the passing of days. Egyptian priests wrote on papyrus made from the stems of certain types of reeds, and in Mesopotamia they wrote on soft clay.

Mesopotamia figures

The first examples of writing appeared around the third millennium BC and are characterized by the use of stylized symbols to represent certain objects and ideas. In Mesopotamia, the sign (down arrow) meant one and could be repeated 9 times. The sign (left arrow) meant the number ten and could, in combination with units, depict numbers from 11 to 59. To depict 60, the unit sign was used, but in a different position. To indicate a zero, an empty space was simply left, more or less highlighted.

Egyptian numerals

The Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs, i.e. used drawings to represent an idea or object. These drawings depicted elements of the flora and fauna of the river. They also wrote numbers in hieroglyphs. There were special hieroglyphs to indicate tens, hundreds, thousands. Two Egyptian documents from around four thousand years ago have been found containing the oldest mathematical records yet discovered. They outlined the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians in the field of arithmetic and geometry

Chinese numbers

The origin of Chinese numerals is determined to be between 1500 and 1200 BC. They represented the numbers from one to five with the number of sticks depending on the number. Thus, two sticks corresponded to the number 2. To indicate the numbers six to nine, one horizontal stick was placed on the top sticks or top of the number. The new number system was distinctive and positional: each digit had a specific meaning according to its place in the series, expressing the number. For example, number 2614 was depicted as follows: two vertical sticks, one “T-type” shelf, a vertical stick and four vertical sticks.

Counting systems of Ancient peoples. Roman number system.

The ancient Romans invented a number system based on the use of letters to represent numbers. They used the letters in their system: I. V. L. C. D. M. Each letter had a different meaning, each number corresponded to the position of the letter in the record. In order to read a Roman numeral, you should follow five basic rules:

Letters are written from left to right, starting with the largest value XV(15) , DLV(555) ...

The letter I. X. C. and M. Can be repeated up to three times in a row.

Letters V.L.D.

can't happen again

the numbers 4,9, 40, 90, and 900 should be written by combining the letters IV, IX, XL, XC, CD, CM.

Moreover, the value of the left letter decreases the value of the right one. 449-CDXLIX

A horizontal line above a letter increases its value by 1000 times.

Mayan number system.

In Central America in the first millennium AD. The Mayans wrote any number using only three characters: a dot, a line, and an ellipse.

The dot meant one, the line meant five. The combination of both lines and dots was used to write any number up to nineteen. An ellipse under any of these numbers increases it by 20 times.

Positional, since each digit has a certain meaning according to the place occupied in the series, expressing the number: 2 means two units in the number 52 and twenty units in the number 25.

Additive, or addend, because the value of one number is equal to the sum of the values ​​of the digits that form it. So, the value 36 is equal to the sum of 30 + 6.

Decimal because every time one digit is moved one place to the left in the spelling of a number, its value increases ten times. Thus, the number 2, which has a value of two units, becomes twenty units in the number 26 because it moves one place to the left.

The history of the emergence of writing.

Myths of all civilizations tell about the divine origin of writing - people have always understood its value. And the very opportunity to write and read for a long time existed only for a select few, primarily priests and government officials. It could not be otherwise, because in order to master literacy, it was necessary to remember and learn to depict thousands of complex characters - hieroglyphs. When the Phoenicians, and after them the Greeks, created a sound-letter letter with an alphabet of several dozen simple icons, which everyone could master in a few weeks, perhaps the quietest and greatest revolution in the entire history of mankind took place. The ancient Babylonians knew a lot about the movement of celestial bodies. All the necessary observations could not be made by one person, even a brilliant one. Babylonian astronomy evolved over centuries, data was accumulated, refined, and passed on from generation to generation.

The information of the Babylonians allowed the Greeks to build the first scientific picture of the world and lay the foundations of natural science. All this could not have happened without writing.

The origin of writing in Rus', the time of its origin, its nature is one of the most controversial problems in Russian history. For a long time, the traditional point of view was dominant, according to which writing was brought to Rus' from Bulgaria in connection with the official adoption of Christianity in 988. But already in the middle of the last century, scientists became aware of certain facts, mainly of a literary nature, indicating the presence of Christianity and writing in Rus' long before official baptism. At the same time, the penetration of writing into Rus' is usually associated with its Christianization, which, according to most researchers, was not a one-time event. The monograph is devoted to the process of Christianization of Rus', a detailed examination of existing facts and legends, starting from the end of the 8th century.

Development of writing

The need to exchange information and preserve accumulated experience led to the emergence of writing about five thousand years ago. In the absence of constant connections between various centers of civilization in the prehistoric period of human development, the basis of the most ancient writing systems, however, was the same principle - the recording of concepts through drawings depicting (or symbolizing) them. It is logical that to convey, say, the concept of “bird”, a person will simply draw it. That is, on rock (papyrus, parchment, clay), he records a concept, and not the sounds by which this concept is conveyed. This is the principle of hieroglyphic writing adopted in Ancient Egypt and used in the Chinese language to this day. Its obvious advantage is its independence from pronunciation. Modern (literate) Chinese can easily understand texts written a couple of thousand years ago. Hieroglyphic writing unites China: the difference between the northern and southern dialects is very significant. At one time, the leader and teacher of the Chinese proletariat, Mao Zedong, who was originally from the South, needed a translator for agitation in Harbin and the northern provinces.

The disadvantage of the hieroglyph system is the difficulty of writing foreign words and neologisms, which in the modern world enter the language with incredible speed. In addition, hieroglyphic writing requires a large number of necessary symbols. Modern Chinese has more than 80 thousand characters, and no one knows exactly how many.

Syllabic (syllabic) writing can be considered more progressive. It often developed when trying to transfer the hieroglyphic system to another language environment. It would seem that the absence of a connection between hieroglyphs and pronunciation makes it easy to write, say, Russian text in Chinese characters. However, in practice it turns out that Russian words are declined, but Chinese ones are not; word formation in the Chinese language occurs according to a different principle. In addition, difficulties arise in conveying some concepts characteristic of a given language and the way of life of the people speaking it. The simplest way out is to write new words by using a series of hieroglyphs existing in the borrowed system (denoting specific words) and collectively conveying the sound of the word. My name, for example, is written in Chinese with five characters; approximately the same number is required to write it in Hebrew - a syllabary.

Thus, Japanese writing was developed from Chinese. The syllabic systems also include the mentioned Hebrew and Arabic. In the syllabic writing system, one sign conveys a syllable - the connection of one or two consonant sounds with one vowel, as a rule. Thus, syllabic systems can number up to a thousand or more characters. This kind of notation is not much simpler than hieroglyphic.

The need for a large number of literate people to conduct trade among the Phoenicians and study the Holy Scriptures among the ancient Jews led to the simplification of writing and the emergence in the Middle East of a system known today as Hebrew quadratic writing. It was used in the Aramaic language, which was then spoken in Lebanon (Phoenicia), Israel, Syria, up to Iraq (Mesopotamia), as well as in the Jewish languages ​​Hebrew and, later, Yiddish. In ancient Hebrew and Aramaic (now dead), a syllabic mark (silabium) denotes a consonant and an unknown vowel.

The West Semitic alphabet came to Europe on Phoenician merchant ships. Practical Greeks quickly appreciated its merits over Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform, but they did not just adopt it, like others, but took it as a basis for improvement. Since in Greek, as in other Indo-European languages, vowel sounds are used more often than in Semitic languages, the Greeks introduced vowel letters into the alphabet. Thus, the first phonemic letter is formed, where each sound is designated by a letter. The Hellenes moved on. All ancient peoples wrote from right to left (and in the Far East also from top to bottom), which is logical, if you imagine an ancient scribe taking a kalam in his right hand, naturally, he will start writing from the right. The Greeks soon began to use a method they called “as we plow, so we write,” that is, the first line is from right to left, then the imaginary bull turns around and the Greek writes from left to right. They noticed that when writing from left to right, the hand did not cover the written text and began to write only this way.

In ancient writings there were no distances between words, since there are no gaps in speech (ask an Israeli how he hears Russian speech, he will answer that we speak as if in one long word). Later, they tried to separate words in various ways; in Hebrew, as in many other related languages, special final forms of all letters were used. IN modern language, as rudiments, several such signs remain.

The Etruscans, competitors of the Greeks in the Western Mediterranean, adopted their alphabet and, slightly modifying it, adapted it to their language. They lived on the territory of modern Tuscany (in this word one can still hear an echo of the name of this strange people). The border of the Etruscan region with Latium passed along the Tiber River, where the Latins built Rome around 700 BC.

Lingva latina - the Latin language, thanks to the power of the Roman legions, which captured almost the entire Ecumene and instilled their culture there, formed the basis of a number of modern European languages, and in the 20th century became the basis for the creation of writings of many African and Asian peoples.

The legionnaires reached the upper rapids of the Nile in the south, in the north the Roman defensive rampart passed along the Scottish Highland, but they did not reach Moscow (the river). The mission of creating a written language for the Slavs was carried out much later by two Byzantine Greeks: the brothers Cyril and Methodius. can be called the first historically established font designers. If other European languages ​​simply borrowed the Latin alphabet and somehow adapted it to their pronunciation in a spontaneous way, then the holy fathers, descendants of the active and enterprising ancient Greeks, taking the Greek letter as a basis, set about inventing new letters. , conveying the sounds of the ancient Slavic language.

Types of writing

Writing, a set of written means of communication, including the concept of a system of graphics, alphabet and spelling of a language or group of languages ​​united by one system letters or one alphabet. In this sense, we can talk about Russian, English, Arabic, etc. writing. Each of them has a certain specificity of the system in graphic combinations, spellings and in the use of these elements for stylistic purposes, logical selection of parts of a statement, etc. One should distinguish from writing the written form of speech, which is not, is not simply speech enshrined in writing, but usually has specific lexical-semantic and grammatical features that distinguish it from oral speech.

Letter- a sign system for recording speech, which allows, with the help of descriptive (graphic) elements, to transmit speech information at a distance and consolidate it in time.

Knot writing

One of its first types was knotted writing. Quipu (in the language of the Quechua Indians - “knot”) is an original product of the Inca culture; these are woolen or cotton ropes to which rows of laces were tied. The number of laces on one rope reached up to a hundred, and knots of various shapes were tied onto them. The number and shape of nodes indicated numbers. The nodes farthest from the ropes corresponded to units, tens were located a little closer, hundreds were located even closer, then thousands. With the help of these knots, reminiscent of counting knuckles, any number was expressed, and the color of the cord designated a particular object. Brown symbolized potatoes, yellow – gold, red – warriors, etc. The khipu allowed officials to convey various information about taxes, the number of warriors in a particular province, designating people who went to war, the number of dead, born or died, and much more. The information was deciphered by special interpreters of kipu - kipu-kamayokuna. Chief among them was the personal secretary of the Supreme Ruler of the Incas, the Great Inca, who provided him with summary information. The Spaniards who encountered the quipus were shocked by the speed and accuracy with which they were given the necessary information. Having picked up the kipu, kamayokuna immediately began to read the cords and knots. The reader's voice could barely keep up with the movements of his eyes and hands.

Pictogram

Pictogram is one of the types of prewriting, which is a pictorial letter, or painting - an image of objects, events and actions using conventional signs. For example, a sign depicting a leg can mean “walk”, “stand”, “bring”. Pictographic writing with hieroglyphic elements, used by the Aztecs, has been known since the 14th century. There was no specific system for the arrangement of pictograms: they could follow both horizontally and vertically, and using the boustrophedon method (the opposite direction of adjacent “lines,” i.e., series of pictograms). The main systems of Aztec writing: signs to convey the phonetic appearance of the word, for which the so-called rebus method was used (for example, to write the name Itzcoatl, an itz-tli arrow was depicted above a coatl snake); hieroglyphic signs conveying certain concepts; actual phonetic signs, especially for conveying the sound of affixes. By the time of the Spanish conquest, which interrupted the development of Aztec writing, all these systems existed in parallel, their use was not regulated. The material for writing was leather or paper strips folded into a screen.

Instead of images, arbitrary graphic symbols were also used. This writing was used in economic records, where the number of concepts is limited by the content of the letter itself, and in ritual records as an auxiliary tool. The earliest records date back to 3000 BC. In ancient Egypt, there were verbal - syllabic pictograms that denoted not only concepts, but also purely sound elements of a word or its part. Some types of cuneiform - small wedge-shaped characters - developed from Sumerian writing.

Each icon of such a letter consisted of wedges in various combinations and denoted a sound, syllable, or word and was written from left to right on clay tablets. The cuneiform of Mesopotamia is the most studied and deciphered.

Sumerian and Babylonian-Assyrian cultures differed in many ways from ancient Egyptian ones. It is enough to look at the Egyptian hieroglyphic or hieratic texts and compare them with any cuneiform system to feel the depth of the difference between the two cultural worlds.

Writing in Greek culture of the XXII-XII centuries. played a limited role. Like many peoples of the world, the inhabitants of Hellas, first of all, began to make pictorial notes, known already in the second half of the 3rd millennium. Each sign of this pictographic writing denoted an entire concept. The Cretans created some signs, albeit a few, under the influence of Egyptian hierographic writing, which arose back in the 4th millennium. Gradually, the shapes of the signs were simplified, and some began to denote only syllables. Such a syllabic (linear) letter, which had already developed by 1700 BC. e., called letter A, which still remains unsolved.

After 1500 BC e. in Hellas, a more convenient form of writing was developed - syllabary B. It included about half of the characters of syllabary A, several dozen new characters, as well as some characters of the oldest picture writing. The counting system, as before, was based on decimal notation. Records in syllabic writing were still made from left to right, however, the rules of writing became more strict: words separated by a special sign or space were written along horizontal lines, individual texts were provided with headings and subheadings. Texts were drawn on clay tablets, scratched on stone, written with a brush or paint, or ink on vessels.

Achaean writing was accessible only to educated specialists. He was known to servants in the royal palaces and a certain layer of wealthy citizens. Sumerian pictograms also gave rise to hieroglyphs.

Ideogram

An ideogram is a written sign that corresponds not to a speech sound, but to a whole word or morpheme. Writing using ideograms - ideography - is a transitional stage between pictography and writing. The simplest, closest to pictography, is the writing of the ancient inhabitants of Mexico and Yucatan - the Aztecs and Mayans, which are almost pictograms. On the contrary, the great systems of ideographic writing of antiquity - Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian cuneiform, as well as the Chinese writing system attested for over four thousand years - deviate far from pictography, already representing a transition from ideographic writing to sound writing.

One thing is characteristic: all systems of ideographic writing make it possible to identify in them the gradual development of two features. And what is especially important is that the same trends are repeated in the history of the most diverse and historically unrelated systems of ideographic writing. And in Chinese, and in ancient Egyptian, and in Sumerian writing, a gradual change in the pictogram is equally observed, its transformation into a conventional outline, incomprehensible to those who are not part of the tradition of this written culture. And in the same way, expanding the stock of signs at its disposal, Chinese, ancient Egyptian, and Sumerian writing create a huge wealth of symbolic ideograms that convey completely abstract concepts and complex combinations of meanings. From this enrichment and simplification of the signs of ideographic writing, its third main property follows - the signs of ideographic writing no longer correspond to whole, indecomposable statements outside their verbal expression, but to the meanings of individual words outside their sound. For it is clear: the meaning of a conventional sign, transmitted by tradition to an entire collective, must be defined and delimited from the meanings of other signs.

And the boundaries of these meanings, naturally, coincide with the boundaries of the system of acoustic-articulatory signs of spoken speech that already exists in the consciousness of a certain linguistic community.

The main properties of ideographic writing explain its inherent advantages and disadvantages. Since the sound of words and their sound form do not receive any expression in ideographic writing, it is clear that such writing can unite not only dialects that are close to each other, but also completely alien languages, under one condition, of course: if they have a common meaning of words, and therefore, in the presence of the unity of culture underlying such a community. For example, the Chinese writing system is used by the Japanese language, which is alien in its structure; the Sumerian writing system was used by the Babylonian-Assyrian language, which is equally alien. But this advantage of ideographic writing is largely imaginary. True, it seems to create the possibility of interhuman (and even international) communication without the mediation of speech, since it serves as a sign of a word not spoken, but thought. But this is precisely why ideographic writing is not able to convey all the countless shades of meaning created every moment by life, living speech. Lacking a sufficient number of signs, ideography, in order to create a new expression for each new meaning, will naturally have to resort to the use of known signs in figurative meaning. But in this way the very basis of ideographic writing is destroyed; By using ideograms of specific objects to denote abstract concepts, ideographic writing creates a wide field for ambiguous outlines. And finally, ideographic writing is completely unable to convey shades of meaning associated with changes in the grammatical structure of a phrase. Moreover, it does not have an expression for the grammatical categories of the words depicted.

Hieroglyphs

The basis of ancient Egyptian writing was hieroglyphs (from the Greek “hieros” - “sacred” and “glyph” - “carved”) - figured signs denoting entire concepts or individual syllables and sounds of speech, the name “hieroglyph” originally meant “sacred, carved writing ". The main writing material was made from papyrus, a tropical aquatic plant similar to reeds. From the cut stems of papyrus, the core was isolated, dissected into thin long strips, laid out in two layers - lengthwise and crosswise, moistened with Nile water, leveled, compacted with blows of a wooden hammer and polished with an ivory tool. The resulting sheet did not wrinkle at the folds when folded and when unrolled it became smooth again. The sheets were combined into scrolls up to 40 meters long. Hieroglyphic inscriptions were included in paintings and reliefs. They were written on them from right to left with a thin reed stick. A new paragraph was started with red paint (hence the expression “ Red line"), and all the rest of the text was black. The ancient Egyptians considered the god Thoth to be the creator of writing. As the moon god, Thoth is the viceroy of Ra; as time - he divided time into days and months, kept chronology and wrote chronicles; as the god of wisdom, he created writing and arithmetic, which he taught to people. He is the author of sacred books, the patron of scientists, scribes, archives, and libraries. Thoth was usually depicted as a man with the head of an ibis.

During the New Kingdom, color drawings appeared on scrolls, such as in the Book of the Dead.

Initially, the Chinese made their notes on skull shells and animal bones; later on bamboo planks and silk. Bound tablets were the first books. Hieroglyphic writing has serious disadvantages: the large number of characters in the system (from several hundred to many thousands) and the difficulty of mastering reading. According to the calculations of Chinese scientists, only in the oldest inscriptions of the 14th - 11th centuries BC. There are about 2000 different hieroglyphs. This was an already developed writing system.

Alphabet

All the types of writing described above could not withstand the competition of the alphabet. The Phoenicians, who kept permanent trade records, needed something else, a simple and convenient letter. They came up with an alphabet in which each sign - a letter - means only one specific speech sound. They come from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 easy-to-write letters. They are all consonants, because in the Phoenician language consonants played a major role. To read a word, a Phoenician only had to see its backbone, which consisted of consonants.

The letters in the Phoenician alphabet were arranged in a certain order. This order was also borrowed by the Greeks, but in the Greek language, unlike Phoenician, vowel sounds played a large role.

Greek writing was the source for the development of all Western alphabets, the first of which was Latin.

For a long time there was an opinion that writing came to Rus' along with Christianity, with church books and prayers. A talented linguist, Kirill, when creating the Slavic letter, took the Greek alphabet, consisting of 24 letters, as a basis, supplemented it with hissing letters characteristic of Slavic languages ​​(zh, sch, sh, h) and several other letters. Some of them have been preserved in the modern alphabet - b , ь, ъ, ы, others have long gone out of use - yat, yus, izhitsa, fita. The Slavic alphabet originally consisted of 43 letters, similar in writing to Greek. Each of them had its own name: A - “az”, B - “beeches” (their combination formed the word “alphabet”), C - “lead”, G - “verb”, D - “good” and so on. The letters on the letter denoted not only sounds, but also numbers. “A” - number 1, “B” - 2, “P” - 100. In Rus' only in the 18th century. Arabic numerals replaced “letter” ones.

As is known, of the Slavic languages, the Church Slavonic language was the first to receive literary use. For some time, along with the Cyrillic alphabet, another Slavic alphabet was in use - the Glagolitic alphabet. It had the same composition of letters, but with a more complex, ornate spelling. Apparently, this feature predetermined the future fate of the Glagolitic alphabet: by the 13th century. it has almost completely disappeared.

The graphics of the Cyrillic alphabet underwent changes, as a result of which letters that were unnecessary for conveying the sounds of modern Russian speech were eliminated. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters.

In the middle of the first millennium AD, the Turkic-speaking peoples already used their own writing system, called runic writing. The first information about runic inscriptions appears in Russia at the end of the 18th century. Russian and foreign scientists copied and published some examples of ancient Turkic runic inscriptions. According to recent research, runic writing originated before our era, possibly in Saka times. In the III-V centuries AD, there were two versions of runic writing - Hunnic and Eastern, which existed in the territory of Zhetysu and Mongolia. In the VI-VII centuries. on the basis of the latter, ancient Turkic writing developed, called Orkhon-Yenisei. The Hunnic runic writing served as the basis for the development of the Bulgar and Khazar writing, as well as the writing of the Kangars and Kipchaks. The main material for writing among the Turkic-speaking peoples was wooden tablets. This is what the Kipchak proverbs say: “I wrote, I wrote, I wrote on five trees,” “I wrote a large inscription on the top of a tall tree.” These sayings also indicate the widespread use of writing among the Kipchaks and other Turkic-speaking peoples. For example, the riddle “Raising my eyes, I read endlessly,” meaning the sky and stars, could have been invented by a people for whom reading was a normal phenomenon. This riddle was widespread among the Kipchaks. Along with the use of the Sogdian language, the Turks used the Sogdian alphabet to convey their own speech.

Writing and language

Writing develops and evolves, but, nevertheless, it is not worth comparing and evaluating which writing is better. Firstly, as we have seen,

different types of writing may have different approaches to one or another linguistic system. Verbal writing is more convenient for languages ​​with minor inflection. Syllabics are suitable for languages ​​with a simple syllable structure (then there are few syllables and written characters).

Behind a writing system are not just the sounds of a language, but history and culture. This is why small reforms of graphics and spelling are so difficult. Of course, they are carried out for the convenience of writers and readers, but it is primarily educated native speakers who are accustomed to certain graphics and spelling who suffer from this. Many Russian writers did not accept the writing reforms of 1917-1918. and in emigration they continued to publish books in the old spelling (Ivan Alekseevich Bunin insisted on this, in particular).

So we can hardly expect in the near future a wholesale transition of all languages ​​to alphabetic writing (for example, to the Latin alphabet). To preserve tradition and culture, many peoples are willing to endure some inconveniences.

The British practically do not allow any graphic reforms, which is why their once alphabetic writing can only be considered alphabetic with a big stretch. Indeed, how do letters and sounds relate in English word knight - . But do not consider the English letter hieroglyphic! All these questions, one way or another, are taken into account by the theory of writing, which consists of two parts. The connection between written signs and units of language is studied by grammatology (in 1952, this term was introduced by the American linguist Ignace Jay Gelb, who defined this area as a separate science). The actual writing of signs is done by paleography and epigraphy (if we are talking about inscriptions carved on solid material). For example, grammatological knowledge can help if you need to create a written language for an unliterate people, and information about the wedge-shaped shape of signs, their origin and method of application relates to paleography. Some cultures attach special significance to the shape of signs. In China, calligraphy (the ability to write beautifully) is considered an art: there are many characters, they are complex, and careless handwriting will make the text unreadable. On the contrary, someone who writes ugly in Russian is unlikely to suffer particularly from this: what is written in letters can almost always be made out.

Conclusion

The basis of any ancient culture is writing. The birthplace of writing is rightfully the Ancient East. Its emergence was associated with the accumulation of knowledge, which was no longer possible to keep in memory, the growth of cultural ties between people, and then the needs of states. The invention of writing ensured the accumulation of knowledge and its reliable transmission to descendants. Various peoples of the Ancient East developed and improved writing in different ways, finally creating the first types of alphabetic writing. The Phoenician alphabetic letter, later revised by the Greeks, formed the basis of our modern alphabet.

Writing develops and evolves, but, nevertheless, it is somewhat incorrect to compare and evaluate which writing is the best or better. Firstly, as described above, Various types letters may have different approaches to one or another linguistic system. Verbal writing is more convenient for languages ​​with minor inflection. Syllabics are suitable for languages ​​with a simple syllable structure (then there are few syllables and written characters). Very often, changes in writing began when writing was transplanted into a new, unsuitable language, as was the case with the Phoenician script, borrowed by the Greeks.

Secondly, behind the writing system there are not only the sounds of the language, but history and culture. This is why even small reforms of graphics and spelling are so difficult. It goes without saying that they are carried out for the convenience of writing and reading consumers, but it is primarily educated native speakers who are accustomed to certain, perhaps outdated, graphics and spelling who suffer from this.

Literature

B.S.E. volume 19, pp. 571-576;

Verzhbitskaya A. Culturology. Cognition. M., 1996;

Zykova M. Big book of questions and answers;

Istrin V.A. The emergence of writing;

Novoseltseva A.P. History of Russia from ancient times to the end of the seventeenth century;

Reformatsky A.A. Introduction to linguistics. M., 1967;

Modern scientists consider writing one of the characteristic features of civilization. The ancients considered it a divine gift. One way or another, it was writing that became an important step in the transfer of accumulated experience. In our review of 10 ancient writing systems. Some are still used today, while other scientists have not been able to fully decipher them.

1. Braille

This is the only tactile writing system on this list. Braille was invented in 1821 by blind Frenchman Louis Braille, who was inspired by “night writing,” a code of raised dots used by the French military. Up to this point, Braille had been able to read books with raised letters, but he also wanted to write books. Braille eventually invented his own writing system, which used just six dots to represent a letter (night writing used 12 dots). During Braille's lifetime, this system did not gain much popularity, but after his death it became a means of written communication for the blind and visually impaired. Today, Braille has been adapted into a huge number of languages ​​around the world.

2. Cyrillic

In the 9th century AD, the Greek brothers Methodius and Cyril invented two alphabets, Glagolitic and Cyrillic, as a writing system for the Old Church Slavonic language. The Cyrillic alphabet, which was derived from the Glagolitic alphabet and the Greek alphabet, eventually became the preferred system for writing Slavic languages. Cyrillic is used today in the writing of many Slavic languages ​​(Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Belarusian and Serbian), as well as a number of non-Slavic languages ​​that have come under the influence of Soviet Union. Throughout history, the Cyrillic alphabet has been adapted to write more than 50 languages.

3. Cuneiform

Cuneiform is known as the earliest known writing system in the world. It first appeared in the 34th century BC. among the Sumerians (who lived in the territory of modern southern Iraq). Cuneiform was adapted to write several languages ​​(including Akkadian, Hittite and Hurrian), and later the Ugaritic and Old Persian alphabets were based on it. For more than 3,000 years, cuneiform was very common in the Middle East, but it was gradually replaced by the Aramaic alphabet. Cuneiform finally disappeared in 100 AD.

4. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs are believed to have originated shortly after Sumerian cuneiform, around 3200 BC. Along with the well-known hieroglyphs, there are two other ancient Egyptian writing systems: hieratic (used primarily for religious purposes) and vernacular (for most other purposes). This writing system served as inspiration for the creation of the first alphabet.

5. Chinese writing

Chinese writing is not only famous for being used by a huge number of people, but also for being one of the oldest continuously used writing systems in the world. It originated in the 2nd millennium BC and is used to this day. Initially, symbols were pictograms that showed similarities with what the symbol meant. Each pictogram represented a whole word. Chinese characters have been adapted into other languages ​​due to China's enormous influence in East Asia. Chinese characters were adopted by the Koreans and Japanese (the meaning of the symbols), as well as the Vietnamese (the sound or meaning of the symbols). In the 20th century, Chinese writing was divided into two main forms: traditional and simplified in order to increase the country's literacy rate.

6. Brahmi

Numerous writing systems used in South Asia are descended from Brahmi. Over the next millennium, Brahmi divided into dozens of regional systems, which began to be associated with the languages ​​of their respective regions. The southern group of these scripts spread throughout Southeast Asia, while the northern group spread to Tibet. Today, the Brahmi script is used in many Asian countries (especially India), and is also used for religious purposes in areas where Buddhism is common.

7. Arabic writing

Due to the large number of people speaking Arabic, as well as the widespread prevalence of Islam, the Arabic alphabet has become the second most commonly used alphabet in the world. The Arabic script is used mainly in North Africa, Western and Central Asia. The alphabet originated around 400 AD. (200 years before the rise of Islam), but the spread of Islam and the writing of the Koran led to major changes in the Arabic writing system.

The Greek alphabet became with a huge step forward in the development of alphabets, especially since vowels were identified separately for the first time. The Greek alphabet has been around since 800 BC. to this day, and over its long history it has been used to write Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Gaulish and Albanian. They tried to use Greek writing back in Mycenaean Greece, but the Greek alphabet was the first successful attempt, which was already implemented in Ancient Greece. The Greek alphabet had a huge influence on other writing systems; it was on its basis that the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet arose.

The Latin alphabet is the most widely used alphabet in history. The Latin alphabet, which emerged as a variant of the Greek alphabet around 700 BC, quickly spread first across Europe and then throughout the world. The Latin alphabet spread following the expansion of the Roman Empire into Western Europe, and then with the spread of Christianity in the Middle Ages - to Central and Northern Europe. Some Slavic languages ​​also began to use this alphabet with the adoption of Catholicism. European colonization then brought the Latin alphabet to the Americas, Africa, Oceania and Asia.

9. Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician writing

Proto-Sinaitic writing was the first alphabet, and as such it is effectively the parent of almost all alphabetic writing systems that came after it. It originated in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula around 1900 BC. and was inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs. Phoenician writing is a direct descendant of Proto-Sinaitic and differs little from it. It was widely distributed by Phoenician merchants throughout the Mediterranean, and came to be used as the alphabet of several languages.

People have always strived for knowledge of the secret. , which set out complex and mysterious rituals, is the key to communicating with the other world. True, many of these books were never read by anyone.