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Monday, February 08, 2016

Welcome!

Welcome to Book Ratings Weekly. We are glad you are here! Unfortunately, this website was created on the February 8, 2016, and is still under construction. Check back later and hopefully there will be more reviews on this site. While you are here, you might learn something about the history of humanity's literature.


Sumer: The Birthplace of Writing

Schøyen Collection MS 3029. Sumerian inscription on a creamy stone plaque, 9,2x9,2x1,2 cm, 6+6 columns, 120 compartments of archaic monumental cuneiform script by an expert scribe. The image is a detail, showing about half of one face of the plaque. The text is a list of "gifts from the High and Mighty of Adab to the High Priestess, on the occasion of her election to the temple".

At around 3200 B.C.E., the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia started using cuneiform script, as seen in the picture above. You can recognize the script by wedge-shaped marked on clay tablets — in fact, itself means "wedge shaped." It emerged in the 4th millennium B.C.E. as set of pictograms and developed into a more symbol-based script with less characters that earlier in its history.

Evolution of the cuneiform sign SAG "head", 3000–1000 BCE

Stages:

  1. shows the pictogram as it was drawn around 3000 BCE
  2. shows the rotated pictogram as written around 2800 BCE
  3. shows the abstracted glyph in archaic monumental inscriptions, from c. 2600 BCE
  4. is the sign as written in clay, contemporary to stage 3
  5. represents the late 3rd millennium
  6. represents Old Assyrian ductus of the early 2nd millennium, as adopted into Hittite
  7. is the simplified sign as written by Assyrian scribes in the early 1st millennium, and until the script's extinction.

China: Asian Writing System

Ox scapula with oracle bone inscription

The Chinese writing system developed more than 4,000 years ago. The oldest remaining copies exist from the Shang dynasty, 1500 B.C.E. — 1400 B.C.E. Like cuneiform, Chinese characters are stylized pictograms that looked less and less like their original forms over time. (See pictures below.) Chinese characters have been adapted into a variety of languages, including Japanese and Korean.


possible evolution of the sinogram rì (or kanji hon)
Evolution of the sinogram xiàng
Evolution of the sinogram 山



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