[PDF] The Origins Of Writing eBook

Author : Charles Halton
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 39,86 MB
Release : 2018
Category : History
ISBN : 110705205X

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This anthology translates and discusses texts authored by women of ancient Mesopotamia.

Author : Steven Roger Fischer
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 429 pages
File Size : 34,42 MB
Release : 2020-09-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1861895887

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From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers an investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world. Illustrated with numerous examples, this book offers a global overview in a format that everyone can follow. Steven Roger Fischer also reveals his own discoveries made since the early 1980s, making it a useful reference for students and specialists as well as a delightful read for lovers of the written word everywhere.

Author : Wayne M. Senner
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 24,42 MB
Release : 1991-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780803291676

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This collection of 12 essays outlines what is now known about the origins and development of writing. The topics discussed include such precursors to writing as the tokens used for record-keeping in the Middle East, as well as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics.The alphabet is treated from its invention to its use in Arabic, Greek and Latin. Also presented are the writing systems of China and Middle America and two European systems, runes and ogham, that have been superseded by the Latin alphabet. An introduction surveys the subject and explores myths and theories on the invention of writing.

Author : Dominique Charpin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 39,33 MB
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 0674049683

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Shows how hundreds of thousands of clay tablets testify to the history of an ancient society that communicated broadly through letters to gods, insightful commentary, and sales receipts. This book includes many passages, offered in translation, that allow readers an illuminating glimpse into the lives of Babylonians.

Author : R. Campbell Thompson
Publisher : Legare Street Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 36,8 MB
Release : 2022-10-26
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9781015427921

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author : University of Chicago. Oriental Institute
Publisher : Oriental Institute Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 35,86 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Cuneiform writing
ISBN : 9781885923769

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This unique exhibit is the result of collaborative efforts of more than twenty authors and loans from five museums. It focuses on the independent invention of writing in at least four different places in the Old world and Mesoamerica with the earliest texts of Uruk, Mesopotamia (5,300 BC) shown in the United States for the first time. Visitors to the exhibit and readers of this catalog can see and compare the parallel pathways by which writing came into being and was used by the earliest kingdoms of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Maya world.

Author : Marc-Alain Ouaknin
Publisher :
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 29,70 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Art
ISBN :

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Traces the origins of the alphabet beginning with the first pictograms of 5,000 years ago, describing the changes the alphabet has gone through in different countries and cultures.

Author : Silvia Ferrara
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 30,2 MB
Release : 2022-03-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0374601631

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In this exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance—published all around the world—a trailblazing Italian scholar sifts through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. A code-cracking tour around the globe, The Greatest Invention chronicles a previously uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research, and a faint, fleeting glimpse of writing’s future.

Author : Peter T. Daniels
Publisher :
Page : 970 pages
File Size : 49,59 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0195079930

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Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form. The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following sections: the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation. Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry. Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection.