The First Writing : the end of Prehistory

Cuneiform

The first writing were cuneiform marks pressed into clay tablets in about 3300 BC in Sumer in the Fertile Crescent. They were used to remember who had paid their taxes to the king and temples .Pictures of wheat, cows, goats, sheep , fish etc were followed by numbers. Little by little the pictures pressed into the clay tablets were reduced to about 600 'wedge' letters. Lists of kings and their ancestors, laws, poems and prayers were then written in cuneiform.

Hieroglyphs

The Egyptians first began painting their 'sacred letters' or hieroglyphs in about 3100BC .They believed that writing was invented by their god, Thoth. Scribes were trained and employed to write on papyrus or to carve in stone. The hieroglyphs could represent a thing (pictogram) , a sound (phonogram) or they could be a clue as to the type of word that was to follow (a determinant).

The Development of Writing

The Phoenicians (a trading people on the Mediterranean coast - today called Lebanon) simplified cuneiform to an alphabet of 30 letters. This then developed into the Hebrew, Arabic , Greek and Latin alphabets we use today. Hieroglyphs led nowhere, however. When the Romans occupied Egypt the Egyptian gods were gradually forgotten , along with their sacred letters. Only when Champollion studied the Rosetta Stone , found in Egypt at the end of the 18th century, were the secrets of hieroglyphs revealed again.