"Earliest alphabet"
Alex
ClockWFT heeft geschreven in bericht <19991129194823...@ng-fm1.aol.com>...
>I just read a small article in the LA times about the "discovery" of an ancient
>inscription on a rock in southern Egypt that was said to be probably the oldest
>so far uncovered. As such it calls into question the heretofore assumption that
>the alphabet originated in Sumera. The Sumerian inscriptions so far found had
>been dates to around 16-17)) bc, the recent find in Egypt has been dated to
>around 1900-2000 bc. My question is this: how can any craving in rock be dated
>except if it is "associated" with other datable finds (there was no mentiuon of
>such other finds in relation to the inscription found in s. Egypt)?
This is from the BBC's website, but I think that it's very badly written. At the end,
they forget their own article which put the oldest writing at 3400 BC in Egypt, at
the time of "King Scorpio" (that was before this guy came along with these
things in Harappa in Pakistan which might be writing, or not).
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle%5Feast/newsid%5F521000/521235.stm
"
Oldest alphabet found in Egypt
US scientists believe they have found the earliest surviving alphabet in ancient Egyptian
limestone inscriptions.
The letters in a Semitic language, carved in stone cliffs west of the Nile, were found by
Yale University Egyptologist, Dr John Darnell.
He says they are nearly 4,000 years old, dating from around 1800 to 1900 BC.
Dr Darnell and his wife Deborah first found the letters in 1993, carved into soft limestone
cliffs in a valley called Wadi el-Hol, beside an ancient road that linked Thebes and Abydos,
west of present-day Luxor.
This summer the Darnells returned to Wadi el-Hol to research the inscriptions further,
and Dr Darnell will present his findings next week at the annual meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature in Boston.
More democratic Alphabetic writing emerged as a simpler and more democratic way of recording
information than Egyptian hieroglyphics.
[ image: The first Semitic alphabet was developed from hieroglyphs]
Instead of having to learn the hundreds of pictures used in
Egyptian hieroglyphics, writers could learn to communicate
much more quickly with 30 or less symbols to represent sounds.
The letters are in a Semitic language, but Dr Darnell says they show
a strong Egyptian influence. He believes the letters may have been invented
as a simplified version of an existing form of "cursive" or joined-up Egyptian
pictographs, commonly used in ancient Egypt in graffiti.
Mercenaries
A number of experts agree that these inscriptions are the earliest alphabetic
writing yet discovered and their location has forced a rethink on the origins of writing.
Up to now it has been believed that alphabetic writing was developed around
1600 BC - up to 300 years later than the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions - by Semitic
people living in the Sinai Peninsula and further north in Syria and Palestine.
Scholars had thought that these languages - known as Proto-Sinaitic
and Proto-Canaanite - had been developed from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
But this new evidence has prompted the theory that the development took
place in Egypt itself, during the period of the Middle Kingdom.
Dr Darnell believes that scribes among foreign mercenaries serving with the Egyptian
army developed the simplified writing - initially through the work of hieroglyphic scribes
who simplified the pictograms into a rudimentary alphabet for use by Semitic
speakers.
This is well before the probable time of the Biblical story of Joseph being delivered into slavery in
Egypt, so predating the traditional seeds of a Semitic presence in Egypt.
Greek origins
So far, scholars who have studied the inscriptions have not managed to translate them, but they have
succeeded in deciphering some letters.
M is formed of a undulating line deriving from the hieroglyph for water, very similar to the later Semitic
letter for M.
Sumerian cuneiform was long thought to be the oldest writing, but its claim is now disputed
gradually transforms into the letter A, and a house develops into the Semitic B, or bayt.
A and B were later developed by the Phoenicians and latter-day Canaanites before being
passed to the Greeks between 1200 and 900 BC.
From the Greek words for A and B - alpha and beta - we derive the word alphabet.
The earliest primitive writing, the cuneiform developed by Sumerians in the Tigris and
Euphrates Valley of present-day Iraq, remained entirely pictographic until about 1400 BC.
The Sumerians have generally been credited with the first invention of writing, around 3200 BC.
But fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years, found at Harappa in Pakistan, may have trumped the
Sumerians' claim.
"
dltjxx
>>I just read a small article in the LA times about the "discovery" of
>>an ancient inscription on a rock in southern Egypt that was said to
>>be probably the oldest so far uncovered. As such it calls into
>>question the heretofore assumption that the alphabet originated in
>>Sumera. The Sumerian inscriptions so far found had been dates to
>>around 16-17)) bc, the recent find in Egypt has been dated to around
>>1900-2000 bc. My question is this: how can any craving in rock be
>>dated except if it is "associated" with other datable finds (there
>>was no mentiuon of
>>such other finds in relation to the inscription found in s. Egypt)?
"Alex" <vand...@yahoo.com> writes:
>This is from the BBC's website, but I think that it's very badly
>written. At the end, they forget their own article which put the
>oldest writing at 3400 BC in Egypt, at the time of "King Scorpio"
>(that was before this guy came along with these
>things in Harappa in Pakistan which might be writing, or not).
A few weeks ago, I posted an article about the Sinai finds, but it
differed somewhat from the BBC version. IIRC, it quoted several other
archaeologists other than the Darnells, did not attribute the writing
to "scribes" amongst the mercenaries, and excluded the background of
the Greek alphabet (and of course the extraneous BBC commentary).
Deborah
>http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle%5Feast/newsid%5F52
Peter T. Daniels
>
> ClockWFT heeft geschreven in bericht <19991129194823...@ng-fm1.aol.com>...
> >I just read a small article in the LA times about the "discovery" of an ancient
> >inscription on a rock in southern Egypt that was said to be probably the oldest
> >so far uncovered. As such it calls into question the heretofore assumption that
> >the alphabet originated in Sumera. The Sumerian inscriptions so far found had
> >been dates to around 16-17)) bc, the recent find in Egypt has been dated to
> >around 1900-2000 bc. My question is this: how can any craving in rock be dated
> >except if it is "associated" with other datable finds (there was no mentiuon of
> >such other finds in relation to the inscription found in s. Egypt)?
This is very confused. It's not southern Egypt, it's two inscriptions,
it looks as though it's the earliest materials in *a forerunner of the
alphabet*, not "the earliest writing," no one has ever suggested the
alphabet originated in Sumer, the earliest proto-cuneiform is ca. 3200
BCE, the Wadi el-Hol items are from 1900-1800, the dating has not been
explained in the popular press, and I have not yet heard what was
presented in several papers in Boston two weeks ago.
> This is from the BBC's website, but I think that it's very badly written. At the end,
> they forget their own article which put the oldest writing at 3400 BC in Egypt, at
> the time of "King Scorpio" (that was before this guy came along with these
> things in Harappa in Pakistan which might be writing, or not).
The BBC story is no less clear than the New York Times story, and the
bit about the earlier Egyptian material is covered by "Sumerian
cuneiform was long thought to be the oldest writing, but its claim is
now disputed," after which several sentences appear to have been
omitted; the Harappa things are mentioned in the last line (but there's
no reason to think of them as "writing" in any meaningful sense of the
word).
> http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle%5Feast/newsid%5F521000/521235.stm
>
> "
> Oldest alphabet found in Egypt
>
> US scientists believe they have found the earliest surviving alphabet in ancient Egyptian
> limestone inscriptions.
>
> The letters in a Semitic language, carved in stone cliffs west of the Nile, were found by
> Yale University Egyptologist, Dr John Darnell.
Actually, since they haven't been read, there are no grounds for saying
they are Semitic.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net