The history of writing reveals some of the most profound ideas and values we humans ponder. The Hittite world that inspires my fiction used the cuneiform writing system. I often say cuneiform tablets look like a lot of birds walked on them. It looks very confusing to our alphabet-trained eyes.
Cuneiform within the History of Writing
However, in the history of writing overall, scribes used this elaborate system, cuneiform, for a longer stretch than alphabets have thus far matched. Moreover, it was universal across the ancient Near East. Even Egypt, which had its own different writing system, had scribes who wrote and read cuneiform and the Akkadian language that was the language of international communication.
Much later in human history, Latin would function in a similar way. Scribes in various distinct linguistic cultures, including the Hittites, adapted cuneiform to their own languages.
Big Change as Resistance in the History of Writing
That more or less sums up the language situation through the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in this big swath of the world. Then along came different writing systems and the increasing use of vernaculars. The question is why.
The historian Marc Van De Mieroop argues this process came as a form of resistance. It arrived at this moment in time as an assertion of intellectual independence when military might had taken away political freedom. His post in Ancient Near East Today, “Before and After Babel” is fascinating and nuanced enough that I won’t summarize it further. If you’re interested in languages and their relationship to historical events and politics, you will find this article worthwhile.
Further Reading
If you’d like to read more about communication between Bronze Age kings in the ancient Near East, you might enjoy my post “Beyond Letters: Royal Visits between Great Kings.”
Thanks for the book reference, Judith. Nova on PBS had a presentation about how writing and indeed reading was influenced by the physical means on which appeared. That is, clay, wall paintings, vellum, parchment, and finally paper. I find all of this–the histories of language within cultures–quite interesting.
It is intriguing how differently styles of writing develop because of the physical limitations or freedoms of the materials used. With keyboards today we feel that connection much less, I think. What a brush can do with ink is so different than a stylus in clay.
Thanks for sharing this Judith. I love language, and this is the sort of thing that fascinates me.
Language and writing are so central to humanity. This big transition intrigued me. I hadn’t thought of it in these terms before.
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