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writing in egypt and Mesopotamian
history of writting in mesopotamia, egypt & chaina
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Imagine you are sitting down, you are one of the few people who can read and write. You are a scribe. Your job is to write and record daily events, trades between people and other things to. This writing is called cuneiform. It was one of the first to be found and it came from Mesopotamia. Now you might be asking what is cuneiform writing? How else did Mesopotamians use cuneiform? Who could become a scribe? How? Cuneiform writing is very important in how it contributes to writing today. It is also filled with amazing facts and history about Mesopotamia.
Cuneiform was one of the first writings to be found, it began in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. 3500 BCE was a very long time but that is just when cuneiform began which was writings with symbols. Before that it was just pictures that represented words like, water was two squiggly lines then it became three sticks with arrows that each pointed a certain way. Then, overtime, writing pictures for certain words became hard. That is when writing with symbols became more frequent ( "The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution | EDSITEment.", 2013 ). Cuneiform was written with a stylus, which was a stick of reed, they would then write on a clay tablet that was damp so that the stylus would easily carve symbols, after they were done writing, the clay tablet would be stuck out in the sun ( "Harry Ransom CenterThe University of Texas at Austin." , 2013 ).
Cuneiform was very important in Mesopotamia. It was used for recording daily events, trades between people, different things about the sky they would observe, also literature. They would record all of this and they could also transfer different types of information ( "Writing." 2013 ). Scribes are the p...
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... other civilizations took ideas from them and they carried it out to our modern day records. Scribes were kind of like our modern day authors, but keeping records instead of writing books. Next time you are writing or even reading, think about were writing started from, like cuneiform and Mesopotamia.
Works Cited
"Harry Ransom CenterThe University of Texas at Austin." Harry Ransom Center RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.
"How Writing Changed the World." LiveScience.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
"The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution | EDSITEment." The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution | EDSITEment. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.
"The Flow of History." FC7: The Birth of Writing and Its Impact -. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
"Writing." Writing. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
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In chapter one of History begins at Sumer, Kramer states how the “Sumerian school was a direct outgrowth of the invention and development of the cuneiform system” (p.3) Essentially, the Sumerian’s were the first complex society to introduce a form of writing. It is a known fact that in modern America the people do not communicate writing by forms and variations of pictographs, but with an alphabetical system. The alphabet that is used today has evolved from what the ancient Sumerians had invented at the end of the third millennium B.C. However, the alphabet is only a stepping-stone to one of the many connections Kramer states is similar between modern times and the ancient Sumerians. According to History begins at Sumer, their writing system was a bridge to their school system. The original goal of the Sumerian school was to train the scribes. Yet, the Sumerian school was also the center of creative writing. The Sumerian school therefore, in a sense, ...
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In every society and culture writing is very important by which it allows us to transmit ideas or knowledge for others to see. Writing allows us to look back at information from centuries ago and understand what it was like. According to chapter 12 “The two indisputably independent inventions of writing were achieved by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia somewhat before 3000 B.C. and by Mexican Indians before 600 B.C. Egyptian writing of 3000 B.C. and Chinese writing (by 1300 B.C.) may also have arisen independently” (Diamonds, pg. 218). Other cultures may have adopted writing by ideas inspired by theses writing systems. Diamonds also points out that Sumerian Cuneiform is one of the oldest writing systems. One way the writing system was developed was by using clay tablets to write on by using pointy objects to scratch the surface. He also describes three basic strategies in writing that were used such as logograms, syllables, and letters that are in the alphabet. The alphabet that we use today was developed due to blue print copying. He continued to describe the...
To start out, the Sumerians invented cuneiform, which had a major impact on the future. It was invented 5,000 years ago (Doc. 1). They used it to keep records about their crops, business dealings, and occasionally love letters (OI). They also used cuneiform to write myths (OI). Cuneiform was written on clay tablets, then baked
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The Old Persian language appears in royal inscriptions, written in a specially adapted version of cuneiform. Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-3000 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE. The name comes from the Latin word cuneus for 'wedge ' owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing. In cuneiform, a carefully cut writing implement known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to produce wedge-like impressions that represent word-signs (pictographs) and, later, phonograms or `word-concepts ' (closer to a modern day understanding of a `word '). All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations used cuneiform (the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians and others) until it was abandoned in favour of the alphabetic script at some point after 100 BCE. Under Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great, the Persian Empire eventually became the largest empire in human history up until that point, ruling and administrating over most of the then known
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Gilgamesh is introduced as knowing all things and countries including mysteries and secrets that went on a long journey and had his story engraved on stone. This gives us a little information on the writing technique in Sumeria. Sumerian art was complex. Clay was the Sumerians' most widely used material. Sumerian available because of the invention of cuneiform writing before 3000 B.C. The characters consist of wedge-like strokes, impressed on clay tablets. This system of writing developed before the last centuries of the 4th millennium B.C. in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valley, probably by the Sumerians The history of the script is strikingly like that of the Egyptian hieroglyphic. This must have been the technique that Gilgamesh uses in order to transcribe his story onto these clay tablets. It was reinforced in the story by mentioning it at the beginning and end of the Epic.
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... helped the architecture to have accurate measurements . Another civilization that also developed a system of writing was China. The written language could be easily to read and understand, but when they spoke it it was difficult to understand. This civilization had a big advantage with the system of writing because all parts of china everyone could learn the language even if they already spoke a different language. This helped make a great civilization because it unifies a large and diverse land and this helped to control it easier. One disadvantage it has is that the writing system has a lot of things to memorize. So if you were a wealthy kid and went to a good school you could memorize the major part of the language, but if you were in the lower class and went to a cheap school then you had trouble learning the language because they didn’t teach the whole language
Before writing even existed, ancient civilizations would etch pictures in clay in order to record things. These stones were used for recording and papyrus was used soon after. These inventions brought great progress in the time period they came into existence but had many negative effects. The process of making clay stones was a long one and wasn’t always available. They were usually very large and not easy to transport so communication was limited. One of the earliest sign of writing and a newspaper was the Romans, Acta Diurna. It included the rules of the day and was carved into stone daily. Papyrus was only available in certain areas and was also a long process to make. Papyrus was able to withstand dry climates but if br...