Reviewing and working out 'technicalities'

I've been looking at images, what there is and whether they're protected by copyright or not.

The image on the left (Kwamikagami 2005) is a script termed Proto-Sinaitic. 'Proto' suggests an early version: half way between hieroglyphics and a linear alphabet, and 'Sinaitic', that evidence of it was found in the Sinai. It was found during archaeological work at a former turquoise mine at Serabit, in the high mountains of the Sinai. The letters are pictorial, and represent the first sound of the word for the image. Being pictorial helped users to remember them. (The word is 'Ba'alat', the name of a god.)

I've also been trying other layouts and made a change to this color scheme, heading and organisation. I've inserted some in-text links but so far haven't found a video link I want to insert. One of the BBC references in the second post is an interesting podcast though.

With this post, my 'research' has been more technical in nature - ie getting more of a handle on copying images, checking copyright, inserting links, reviewing Harvard referencing, etc - than subject-based.

Next, I want to check databases and broaden my research. If there's time I'd like to play around with the appearance of the blog and see if I can find some relevant videos, but that may be a bit later.

Reference:

Kwamikagami 2005, viewed 4 April 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad

And a couple of texts . . .

Checked the local library for texts using Writing history as search phrase and found two texts with relevant material. (Tried Alphabets and Alphabet as subject search phrases, but the first book mentioned here did not come up despite having Alphabets in its title! And the second one came up in a search on Alphabet but not Alphabets!)

The first one, Writing; The Story of Alphabets and Scripts discussed influences on the development of scripts and how the purpose it was used for affected its spread. It also discussed how things like writing materials eg reeds in Mesopotamia, and visual tastes, eg like those of the Egyptians, affected the form of the letters in a language’s alphabet.

It had interesting information but there seemed to be gaps in the sequence of the development of alphabets, compared with other material I've read.

The other book, The Alphabet links changes in writing more clearly for me. It makes the point that the strength of the Phoenicians as travellers and traders essentially marketed their alphabet to most of the then known world in a very effective fashion and no doubt lead to its being more readily adopted and adapted by other cultures, to the extent that there is only one major alphabetic script today that cannot be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet. This is actually disputed in more recent writings that I came across in wikipedia. The script referred to is the Korean Hangul system which was invented from scratch in the mid-1400s AD. While that researcher proposes 5 characters are derived from Phoenician, his findings are disputed.


References:

Jean, G 1987, Writing; The Story of Alphabets and Scripts, New Horizons, London
Sacks, D 2003, The Alphabet, Arrow Books, London

Building on understanding

Small clay tablet (measuring approximately 2cm x7cm) shows the Ugaritic alphabet (Benner 2007), which some claim to be the world's first linear alphabet. Ugarit was a Bronze Age city on the Mediterranean coast in current day Syria. This small tablet now resides in the National Museum in Damascus.

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As Wikipedia offers information on a wide range of aspects of this topic, I’ve spent quite a bit of time there reading over that information to consolidate my understanding of the references to aspects like geographical location, time in history and kinds of writing.

This has included considering the following:

• The History of Writing systems from pictographic proto-writing to Cuneiform Script to alphabets to non-alphabet scripts including the difference between Cuneiform and alphabet-based writing. And what is an alphabet? If it just covers consonant sounds, is it a true alphabet? (The Greeks claim theirs was the first true alphabet whereas some scholars say the Phoenican and Ugaritic alphabets, which came into use around the same time, were the first alphabets and the Greek alphabet developed from these.) Abjads (no vowels) and Abugidas (consonants with vowels indicated by marks on the letters, like Arabic is sometimes written), what are they?

• First uses of writing and why that broadened over time. Graffiti (‘I was here’), trading and wars have all played parts.

• The Phoenicians and where they traded. Some geographical references could be ambiguous, like the Erythraean Sea. Some have taken it to be the Red Sea but on a medieval map shown on Wikipedia it’s shown as the Arabian Sea (along the coast from Socotra off Yemen to the Gulf of Oman). Another reference suggests it was the Persian Gulf.

• Round the time of the Phoenicians and Ugarit, there’s mention of Sea Peoples. Scholars weren’t sure whether they might have contributed to the spread of particular types of writing. The Genographic Project has done work on answering this question.

• What the differences in names for different areas of the eastern Mediterranean refer to eg Canaan vs Phoenicia.

• The connections between the writing that evolved and the nature of the language spoken with respect to the need to make vowels clear vs no real need for vowels in an alphabet.

• The Brahmi script which was ancestral to most of the scripts of South, South East and Central Asia (eg Tibetan and Khotanese) and its relationship to Aramaic script which was brought to the Indus Valley by the invasion of Darius the Great, a Persian, in the sixth century BC.

• The development of later alphabets and writing scripts and how they were influenced by or used what was already known. Eg The alphabetic order of Japanese kana is believed to have been influenced by the Brahmi script although the letters are unrelated.

Reflection

It was quite time-consuming trying to gain a clear understanding of the various terms mentioned. Was Ugarit part of Phoenicia so if there’s reference to Phoenician alphabet does that include the Ugarit alphabet? Are those terms interchangeable or different? Etc.

References

In Our Time: The Alphabet 2003, [radio program], BBC Radio 4, 18 December, viewed 13 April 2010, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054950
Gnomon 2004, The Development of the Western Alphabet, viewed 13 April 2010, www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2451890
Ugaritic 2010, viewed 17 April 2010, http://ancientscripts.com/ugaritic.html
Alphabets 1998, viewed 13 April 2010, www.omniglot.com/writing/alphabets.htm
Pryst, J n.d., Phoenicia, viewed 17 April 2010, http://www.ancientopedia.com/phoenicia/
Goldwasser, O 2010, How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs, Biblical Archaeology Review 36:02 Mar/Apr 2010, viewed 20 April 2010, www.bib-arch.org/bar/article.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=36&Issue=2&ArticleID=6

Benner J 2007, The Ugarit Alphabet, Ancient Hebrew Research Centre, viewed 13 April 2010, http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/22_alphabet.html

Next

I plan to look at other sources to compare what they say with what’s found on Wikipedia and to search for other related sources.