First writings
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First signs
The writing was invented for the needs for the administration. It acts at the beginning, in Mésopotamie, of a very rudimentary system, comprising only figures and ideograms, kinds of small drawings being used to indicate objects, beings animated or ideas. In Mésopotamie and Elam (Iran), the first signs are traced or printed on kinds of clay balls containing of the tokens of different forms. Each token undoubtedly represented an object or a collection of objects. One could thus keep to remember transactions or administrative procedures. It is undoubtedly to avoid having to break the bubble with each checking which one printed on his surface the shape of the tokens that it contained.
Then, the system will be simplified and one will be satisfied to print or trace the signs on a piece of clay in form with flattened bubble or parallelepiped: they are the first shelves.
Signs ideographic and syllabic
This writing evolved to the syllabism when the Sumerian ones had the idea to use the signs for their phonetic value. One could thus note particles which did not have a simple semantic value (pronouns, adverbs, etc) and break up complex or long words into syllables.
The shape of the signs evolved throughout the history of the Middle East. As it is difficult to plot curves on clay with a stylet, one schematized the initial drawings in a series of small segments which took the shape of nails, the head marked by the depression of the stylet and the tail, more or less long, by the shrinking of the stylet of clay. As one also has, perhaps to write more quickly, the signs of a quarter of turn towards the left at the 3rd front millenium J makes swivel. - C., the direct memory of the original drawing was often lost and the signs became more abstract.
The wedge-shaped writing
The wedge-shaped writing was used first of all to write the language of the Sumerian ones, which is undoubtedly the inventors. Thereafter, much of other languages will use it: the éblaïte, in the area of Alep in Syria of north; the Hittite one in Anatolia, the hourrite in Mésopotamie of North, the ougaritique one on the Phoenician coast, etc But the language akkadienne, written into wedge-shaped, will remain the principal language of the Middle East, left language of diplomacy, used even by the kings of Egypt for their diplomatic relations with Babylonia, Assyrie or it Anatolia.
Other writings
The Egyptian writing was deciphered thanks to a stone out of black basalt found in Rosette (Rachid) in 1799 by an officer of the army of Napoleon Bonaparte during the countryside of Egypt. It comprised the same text written in three languages, Greek, hieroglyphic Egyptian and demotic Egyptian.
The Greek text was quickly translated: it was about a decree of a Pharaon. Older studies had already made it possible to discover some principles of this writing (use of ideogram, syllables, cartridges, etc) but without arriving at a satisfactory deciphering. It is Champollion which had the idea to compare the royal names in the cartridges with the names of known kings, and to nowadays seek systematic parallels between the Egyptian language old and the Coptic, still used in Egypt, and fascinating for assumption that the two languages were narrowly related.
Alphabets
It is in Phénicie, one of principal zones of exchange of the Middle East, which appear for the first time, as from the 14th front century J. - C., of many texts written with a written form based on the division of the syllables in consonants and vowels. One can thus break up the syllables into simpler plus signs and much fewer (about thirty instead of some three hundred signs the wedge-shaped writing). The list of these signs or letters constitutes what we call “alphabet”, according to the name of the first two letters of the alphabet Greek, alpha and beta.
The invention of the principle of the alphabet is undoubtedly older, but one does not know yet in which area it appeared for the first time (the Sinai or Egypt). The first widely diffused alphabet was invented at the 14th century with Ougarit, with wedge-shaped signs. It was abandoned at the end of the 13th century and it is an alphabet in cursive writing adopted in other Phoenician cities, in particular in Byblos, at the 13th century, which will be re-used later to write the Greek and Latin.
Typology of the principal Mesopotamian texts
Close relation-Eastern civilizations used the writing for the needs for the administration and the government, but also to record the most important texts of their culture. It is in Mésopotamie that was preserved at larger variety of texts, because of the solidity of the support used, the clay, which resisted time well. We thus have tens of thousands of administrative shelves, letters, legal texts (contracts, files of instructions of lawsuit, judgments, collections of laws), religious texts (mythological accounts, ritual prayers, regulations), epic texts, royal inscriptions describing the important facts of the king, predict of all kinds, texts scientific (dictionaries, astronomical, mathematical, etc), epic, poetic texts and of wisdom, etc