M20 Midterm

Sumerian King List

(Partly) mythological record of kings, first known record keeping of history. Texts that become a record of memory.

Palenque

-A Mayan city state, much smaller than Copan, location of the Temple of the Inscriptions, where the sarcophagus of the great Maya ruler Pacal (Lord Shield) was found - gives a detailed dynastic history -One of the greatest cities of the ancient maya where monumental texts were found in Cholan languages

Writing systems require:

-A set of defined symbols (signs, characters, etc.) -A set of rules understood and shared by a community -A language (usually spoken) whose constructions are able to be interpreted by those elements and rules -A physical means of representing the symbols by application on a permanent medium

Copan

-Archeological site of Mayan civilization, was occupied for 2000 years -One of the greatest cities of the ancient maya where monumental texts were found in Cholan languages

Coptic

-As time progressed, hieroglyphs became Coptic, which was the final stage of Egyptian hieroglyphs in which vowels were used. Coptic is written more or less in Greek letters, so pronunciation can be deciphered from it. (Egyptian). -32 letters in alphabet, 24 from Greek, 7 from Ancient Egypt. -Language of the Egyptian Orthodox Christian church, replaced by Arabic in 8th-10th centuries. -300 CE-1800 CE

Compare languages

-Cuneiform: mixed - alphabetic and syllabic, polyphonic (50-100 signs) -Hieroglyphic - logo-syllabic - do not contain vowels - 1000 -Maya - logo-syllabic, combined phonography and logography - does have some vowels - mostly syllabic - 800? 100? -Chinese - logographic (4000 signs), syllabic If there are over 100 signs its logo-syllabic

Dresden codex

-Days connected by astrological details, illustrations and descriptions of animals, gods, and goddesses allowed for decipherment of the Mayan date system, with physical rotation linking numerals together -3/4 of the surviving codices are in Yucatec, although Cholan influence can be detected in the Dresden Codex -Marked the beginning of Mayan decipherment -Eric Thompson - created a classification of over 800 Maya glyphs but was wrong

What do we expect in the development of a writing system?

-Decreasing complexity/number of signs -Increasing representation of sounds -Fixed order and script What does this look like in terms of writing? -Move from logograms to phonograms -Standardization and economization of phonograms -Conventionalization of logo-phonetic system

Demotic

-Demotic script was the second type of cursive script that emerged from hieroglyphs and was for common use by the people (popular writings) -Later development of hieratic -700 BCE-500 CE

Sumerian

-First civilization in the region of Mesopotamia -One of the first languages used with cuneiform -The first clay tablets were likely written by Sumerians -Some scholars believe writing was the result of a conscious search by an unknown Sumerian individual

Complex tokens

-Handmade clay shapes, had more detail etched in the clay -Forms consisted of new geometric shapes and some naturalist forms, markings occurred on all types of tokens -Represented objects, used to mark what was being counted, record keeping -Specify commodity -Complex tokens were developed from simple tokens, but both were found together -Tokens sometimes used in funerary contexts

Simple tokens

-Handmade clay shapes, used for counting -Forms consisted mostly of geometric shapes, usually have a smooth face and markings were rare -Specify an object

Be able to describe two consequences of the invention of writing, according to Coulmas

-Interdependence of the development of writing and modern civilization -Social problem solving - writing is a collectively created tool and a means of production -Writing is closely connected to or even enforces the development of logical reasoning, the distinction of myth from history, and the emergence of complex social institutions and scientific thought - not deterministic but note their concurrence (Goody) -Writing serves as a means of extending the power of people over nature and their fellow human beings -Writing is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of higher forms of social organization, and once it is widely used it fulfills a number of functions -Social divisions - creates a divide between those who can read and those who cannot, social class of scribes

Be able to describe some of the functions of writing, according to Coulmas.

-Mnemonic function - extending the human memory and passing on information to the next generation -Distancing function - Expanding the communicative range, enables communication over an distance in space or time -Social control function - writing has the potential for regulating social conduct, the notions of law and right, of standard and correctness, are closely linked with writing -Aesthetic function - literature, calligraphy, etc.

Ideogram

-More abstract relationship between sign and meaning, sign does not represent something concrete and there is more ambiguity, requiring more signs to clarify the meaning -Very difficult to represent time or tense -Very difficult to represent nature of action (active, passive) -Takes more time to write, makes it difficult to write in mass quantities

Be able to give a brief description of the stages of decipherment of the Maya glyphs

-Numbers were the first part of the Mayan writing system to be deciphered by scholars during the 19th century -The next major step in the decipherment of Mayan glyphs was the realization that they were partially phonetic (this idea proposed by Yuri Knorosov and produced a series of decipherments) -Through the Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan and the Mayan "alphabet" (key to decipherment in 20th century) and the Dresden Codex -Mixed character of the writing system (combining phonography and logography) was an obstacle in deciphering further -The work of dozens of scholars after Knorosov's first published decipherment has yielded the syllabic chart, which is still in the process of change

What were the main functions of writing in early Mesopotamia?

-One function of writing in early Mesopotamia was for rulers to record information such as historical events, deities and religion, mythological stories, and dedications to rulers. They were also used for more practical every day purposes such as markers for land, accounting, administrative/governmental records, business transactions, legal rights, etc. -Sometimes argued that writing was derived from accountancy

Logographic signs

-Pictograms/Logograms -Ideograms -Signs that stand for a word/object

Phonetic signs

-Rebus principle -Syllabic writing -Alphabetic writing -Signs that stand for a sound

Behistun inscription

-Rosetta Stone of Cuneiform included Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian. -Rawlinson was able to identify in the Behistun inscriptions the names of people ruled by Darius, mentioned in the Greek histories of the Persian empire, allowing him to attribute values to many more sides in Old Persian. Rawlinson was then able to completely translate the portion of the Behistun inscription in Old Persian.

Hieroglyphs

-Sacred carvings -Miniatures of real things depicted, images of the animals and the people -Mainly found on temple walls and other types of monumental architecture -3000-300 BCE

Diego de Landas

-Spanish inquisitor, wrote Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan which proved to be the key to deciphering -Created the "Landa alphabet" - interpretation of the Mayan alphabet that is a mixture of right and wrong interpretations -Irony that we owe almost all our direct knowledge of the ancient Maya to Spanish inquisitors who were also responsible for eradicating (burning) almost all Mayan writing and many of their customs

Rosetta stone

-The Rosetta stone was a rock found to be inscribed with the same text in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. -Discovered in Egypt -The decipherment of and translation of the Rosetta Stone was thus instrumental in the decipherment of hieroglyphs, as it contained critical information such as names that were key in deciphering the scripts.

What role did the Rosetta stone play in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs?

-The Rosetta stone was a rock found to be inscribed with the same text in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. -Earliest work on the stone began with the Demotic text - allowed one to work backwards from the Greek text with the aid of Coptic - recognition of 3rd personal pronoun in Demotic, recognition of common nouns "temple" and "king" -Thomas Young attempts to match demotic signs and words to hieroglyphic signs, still thinks that hieroglyphs are mainly logograms, begins the process of recognizing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of alphabetic signs and ideograms, recognizes the words for "Egypt" and "king" in the hieroglyphic text -Jean Champollion begins the process of recognizing that the hieroglyphic signs had a phonetic value, similar to the alphabetic principle -The cartouches on the Rosetta Stone also helped in the decipherment

What does it mean to say that Chinese characters have both semantic and phonetic components?

-The combination of a character indicating the meaning of a word with a character indicating its pronunciation -Example: the character for female person is combined with the sound value ma to create a new character meaning mother

Cuneiform

-The early writing of Mesopotamia -Thomas Hyde coined the name cuneiform "wedge-shape" -Discovered at Persepolis -Invented by Enmerker and the Lord of Aratta -Script not a language - many different languages represent graphically by the cuneiform writing system (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Persian) -Carsten Niebuhr - copies some of the inscriptions (ca. 1770) -Georg Grotefund - begins identifying kings and introductory phrases in the inscriptions; recognition of word-divider

Maya Chocolate Cup

-The glyphs on the cup labeled the owner of the cup and its contents -Fitting that Landa's "alphabet" written down in the 1560s should in the late 20th century help to confirm the accuracy of Landa's account of Maya civilization

Oracle bones

-The one instance since 1899 that reliable early Chinese writing has been discovered, the beginning of Chinese writing -Old turtle shells and ox scapulae -Chinese signs found scratched on the surface, recorded fortune telling of kings -The Shang kings prepared turtle shells and ox scapulae for divination purposes by drilling and chiseling concavities in them in such a way that when heat was applied to the shell by the diviner cracks would appear -Many of the signs on the oracle bones are recognizable antecedents of modern Chinese characters

The Murals of Bonampak

-The second great post-war Maya archaelogical discovery by two American adventurers -Shows life among the Classic Maya in the late 8th century just before the Maya civilization collapsed -Murals show a story of a sccessful battle and the victory celebrations

Determinative

-The sign does not represent anything phonetic, only a category of meaning (semantic) -Another category hieroglyphs can be classified by is determinatives/logograms. Determinatives are when logograms are added to the end of phonograms to indicated a word's meaning, and to discriminate where two or more meanings are possible.

David Stuart

-The young prodigy that worked on deciphering Mayan glyphs -Focused on 2 glyphs that were already deciphered and he showed that many substitutions counted for the same substitution (same phonetic value) (Mayan as polyphony)

Lord Shield

-Was a king of Palenque (Mayan city state), responsible for the construction of Palenque's most notable surviving inscriptions and architecture -Named Pacal (means shield)

Henry Rawlinson

-Worked with the Behistun inscriptions, working to decipher Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian -Hung off the side of the cliff to copy it -Generally credited with the decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform

Principles of Decipherment

1) Context - place the text in time and place, identify personal names or other historically significant features of the text 2) Identifying the sign system - what kind of writing system is it (logographic, syllabic, alphabetic), how many signs are there 3) Work with the grammar - begin identifying personal names, proper nouns, titles, numbers - frequently appearing features in the text

Give two example of the rebus principle

1) Egyptian hieroglyphs are full of rebuses, for example the "sun" sign ( O, the god Re), that forms the first symbol in the hieroglyphic spelling of Ramesses. 2) In a Sumerian tablet of an early period we find the word reimburse, shown by a reed, because "reimburse" and "reed" shared the same sound 'gi' in Sumerian.

Classical Mayan Phase

200-900 CE, most of the 5000 texts date back to this period

Boustrophedon

A kind of bi-directional text mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. Instead of left-to-right or right-to-left, alternate lines must be read in opposite directions. Common way of writing in stone in Ancient Greece.

Dzib

A structure at a Mayan archaeological site Means in Mayan "The House of Mysterious Writing"

Shang dynasty

First recorded dynasty, period of the oracle bones, 4500 signs (most not identified), oldest Chinese script

Phonetic complement

Hieroglyphs can be classified into 5 categories. One of these categories is phonetic complements. Phonetic complementing is the addition of a biconsonantal sign to a word in order to emphasize or confirm the pronunciation of the word.

Narmer palette

In the slate pallete of King Narmer, from the early dynastic period, hieroglyphs are already used phonetically, employing the rebus principle

Ankh

Means "life" in Egyptian

Semantic signs

Non-phonetic sign, only represents a category into which the sign falls

Hieratic

One of the two different types of cursive scripts that emerged from hieroglyphs. Hieratic script dates back to the very beginning of the invention of hieroglyphs, and at first was used as administrative and business script, although it later became priestly script. (priestly writings). -Written on papyrus scrolls, texts -3000-300 BCE

Polyphony

One sign with several different pronunciations

Jean Champollion

Primary decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphics, realized that the writings had historical information, not just religious. Established that hieratic is a form of hieroglyphic writing, begins the process of recognizing that the hieroglyphic signs had a phonetic value similar to the alphabetic principle.

Zhou Dynasty

Second dynasty, period of the Great Seal Script

Logogram

Sign that represents a word or phrase =semantic signs

Syllabic writing

Signs represents a syllable, a combination of consonants and vowels Key difference between ideographic and syllabic writing is the representation of sounds and not entire words

Cuneiform symbols

Stars - indicating gods House King Sag (head) Ki

Great Seal Script

Style of the Zhou period, found in bronze inscriptions

Philae Obelisk

The "key to further progress" on the decipherment of hieroglyphs/the Rosetta Stone. The base block inscription was in Greek, the column inscription in hieroglyphic script. In the Greek the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra were mentioned, and one of the cartouches was almost identical to one form of the cartouche of Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone. Contains hieroglyphs of certain names with the Greek transliteration of those same names at the base of the obelisk.

What role did the Dresden Codex play in the decipherment of Maya glyphs?

The Dresden Codex is an "almanac for divination", naming each god and goddess with a glyph above their portrait and linking dates to other dates with astronomical calculations. Thus information about the gods and goddesses as well as dates and other references to time can be extracted from the Dresden Codex, and calculations can be made to better understand Mayan time as well as the glyphs. From the Dresden Codex the 260-day count was discovered, which is a vital number to the Mayans.

Pristine script

Used to refer to the 5 so called pristine or independent scripts -Cuneiform (ca 3500 BC) -Hieroglyphic (3300 BC) -Chinese (ca 1500 BC) -Mayan (300 BC)

Homophony

Variant signs for a single sound, for instance thirteen glyphs for the pure vowel u and six glyphs for the syllable na

Code of Hammurabi

Well-preserved Babylonian law code of Mesopotamia, one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length that was preserved. Used for propaganda. Hammurabi - king of Babylon

Rebus principle

When the pictographic symbol represents not the idea it depicts but the sound associated with the idea - sounds can be made visible in a systematic way and abstract concepts symbolized

The Phonetic Principle

Writing is defined as the graphic marks that are used to indicate a part of speech, or a part of spoken language, the ability to correlate the mark to something known from the world of spoken language