Geoff Emberling
Autor(a) de Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond
About the Author
Image credit: Geoff Emberling [credit: University of Chicago Service League]
Obras por Geoff Emberling
Associated Works
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World) (2014) — Contribuidor — 11 exemplares
European Cartographers and the Ottoman World, 1500-1750: Maps from the Collection of O.J. Sopranos (2007) — Prefácio — 10 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
Membros
Críticas
Listas
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 7
- Also by
- 4
- Membros
- 64
- Popularidade
- #264,968
- Avaliação
- 3.9
- Críticas
- 1
- ISBN
- 7
The pieces on cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the early alphabet are quite good, and really do focus on the invention or origin of the systems. Something I suspect is little appreciated is that from what's usually spoken of as the "first writing" in the late 4th millennium BC it took centuries until either hieroglyphs or cuneiform was used to write connected text with complete sentences - earlier writing consisted solely of isolated phrases, such as names, or stereotyped records where the reader had to supply details like verbs from context. The "invention of writing" was thus a very drawn-out process if one by writing understands something functionally like the modern form.
The essays on Hieratic, Demotic, Coptic and Anatolian hieroglyphs (aka Hieroglyphic Luwian/Hittite) are decent, but give a vague impression of mostly being included out of a sense of completeness. Hieratic separates from hieroglyphs very early on, but Coptic - a derivative of the Greek alphabet and younger than the Latin one - is surely very far from any origin of writing.… (mais)