The invention of writing was an important part of the development of Sumer and Egypt. There are many similarities and differences to the writings of each of these civilizations.
The Sumerians developed a writing called cuneiform. Cuneiform is the oldest written language in existence. Each picture represents a living or nonliving thing.
Cuneiform was written on clay tablets with a wedge-shaped instrument called a stylus. Henry Creswicke Rawlinson was the first person to decipher the meanings of cuneiform. He did so in 1846. Cuneiform eventually spread throughout the region and was adopted by many other early civilizations.
The Egyptians developed a writing that they named hieroglyphics. The word hieroglyphic means ?sacred inscriptions? because they were often written on the walls of temples. Hieroglyphics were created about 5000 years ago. There are not any vowels, only consonants. There is also no punctuation.
In 1799, the Rosetta Stone was discovered. The Rosetta Stone was the secret to discovering the meanings of hieroglyphics.
A giant copy of the Rosetta stone, by Joseph Kosut...
English: The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. ...
The demotic language scripts on the Rosetta Stone,...On the Rosetta Stone there were three sections of print, each saying the same thing but in different languages. At the top, the paragraph was written in hieroglyphics. Second, it was written in Demotic. Lastly the paragraph was written in Ancient Greek. By reading the ancient Greek word and names, the other paragraphs could be deciphered. Twenty-three years after it?s discovery, Jean-FranVois Champollion figured out what the hieroglyphics meant. Hieroglyphics are pictures that represent a letter.
In both civilizations, mostly only scribes knew how to read and write. Being a scribe was a very honorable profession. People who were to become scribes went to school for many years starting at a young age. The profession of being a scribe was passed down through families; if a boy?s father was a scribe, he would become one also.
Because children needed to...