A History of Science (Vol. 1-5). Edward Huntington Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ that seemingly could not be due to chance. And then, when a settlement of the dispute seemed almost hopeless, it was shown through the Egyptian excavations that characters even more closely resembling those in dispute had been in use all about the shores of the Mediterranean, quite independently of either Egyptian or Assyrian writings, from periods so ancient as to be virtually prehistoric.

      Coupled with this disconcerting discovery are the revelations brought to light by the excavations at the sites of Knossos and other long-buried cities of the island of Crete.(2) These excavations, which are still in progress, show that the art of writing was known and practised independently in Crete before that cataclysmic overthrow of the early Greek civilization which archaeologists are accustomed to ascribe to the hypothetical invasion of the Dorians. The significance of this is that the art of writing was known in Europe long before the advent of the mythical Kadmus. But since the early Cretan scripts are not to be identified with the scripts used in Greece in historical times, whereas the latter are undoubtedly of lineal descent from the Phoenician alphabet, the validity of the Kadmus legend, in a modified form, must still be admitted.

      As has just been suggested, the new knowledge, particularly that which related to the great antiquity of characters similar to the Phoenician alphabetical signs, is somewhat disconcerting. Its general trend, however, is quite in the same direction with most of the new archaeological knowledge of recent decades—that is to say, it tends to emphasize the idea that human civilization in most of its important elaborations is vastly older than has hitherto been supposed. It may be added, however, that no definite clews are as yet available that enable us to fix even an approximate date for the origin of the Phoenician alphabet. The signs, to which reference has been made, may well have been in existence for thousands of years, utilized merely as property marks, symbols for counting and the like, before the idea of setting them aside as phonetic symbols was ever conceived. Nothing is more certain, in the judgment of the present-day investigator, than that man learned to write by slow and painful stages. It is probable that the conception of such an analysis of speech sounds as would make the idea of an alphabet possible came at a very late stage of social evolution, and as the culminating achievement of a long series of improvements in the art of writing. The precise steps that marked this path of intellectual development can for the most part be known only by inference; yet it is probable that the main chapters of the story may be reproduced with essential accuracy.

      FIRST STEPS

      For the very first chapters of the story we must go back in imagination to the prehistoric period. Even barbaric man feels the need of self-expression, and strives to make his ideas manifest to other men by pictorial signs. The cave-dwellers scratched pictures of men and animals on the surface of a reindeer horn or mammoth tusk as mementos of his prowess. The American Indian does essentially the same thing to-day, making pictures that crudely record his successes in war and the chase. The Northern Indian had got no farther than this when the white man discovered America; but the Aztecs of the Southwest and the Maya people of Yucatan had carried their picture-making to a much higher state of elaboration.(3) They had developed systems of pictographs or hieroglyphics that would doubtless in the course of generations have been elaborated into alphabetical systems, had not the Europeans cut off the civilization of which they were the highest exponents.

      What the Aztec and Maya were striving towards in the sixteenth century A.D., various Oriental nations had attained at least five or six thousand years earlier. In Egypt at the time of the pyramid-builders, and in Babylonia at the same epoch, the people had developed systems of writing that enabled them not merely to present a limited range of ideas pictorially, but to express in full elaboration and with finer shades of meaning all the ideas that pertain to highly cultured existence. The man of that time made records of military achievements, recorded the transactions of every-day business life, and gave expression to his moral and spiritual aspirations in a way strangely comparable to the manner of our own time. He had perfected highly elaborate systems of writing.

      EGYPTIAN WRITING

      Of the two ancient systems of writing just referred to as being in vogue at the so-called dawnings of history, the more picturesque and suggestive was the hieroglyphic system of the Egyptians. This is a curiously conglomerate system of writing, made up in part of symbols reminiscent of the crudest stages of picture-writing, in part of symbols having the phonetic value of syllables, and in part of true alphabetical letters. In a word, the Egyptian writing represents in itself the elements of the various stages through which the art of writing has developed.(4) We must conceive that new features were from time to time added to it, while the old features, curiously enough, were not given up.

      Here, for example, in the midst of unintelligible lines and pot-hooks, are various pictures that are instantly recognizable as representations of hawks, lions, ibises, and the like. It can hardly be questioned that when these pictures were first used calligraphically they were meant to represent the idea of a bird or animal. In other words, the first stage of picture-writing did not go beyond the mere representation of an eagle by the picture of an eagle. But this, obviously, would confine the presentation of ideas within very narrow limits. In due course some inventive genius conceived the thought of symbolizing a picture. To him the outline of an eagle might represent not merely an actual bird, but the thought of strength, of courage, or of swift progress. Such a use of symbols obviously extends the range of utility of a nascent art of writing. Then in due course some wonderful psychologist—or perhaps the joint efforts of many generations of psychologists—made the astounding discovery that the human voice, which seems to flow on in an unbroken stream of endlessly varied modulations and intonations, may really be analyzed into a comparatively limited number of component sounds—into a few hundreds of syllables. That wonderful idea conceived, it was only a matter of time until it would occur to some other enterprising genius that by selecting an arbitrary symbol to represent each one of these elementary sounds it would be possible to make a written record of the words of human speech which could be reproduced—rephonated—by some one who had never heard the words and did not know in advance what this written record contained. This, of course, is what every child learns to do now in the primer class, but we may feel assured that such an idea never occurred to any human being until the peculiar forms of pictographic writing just referred to had been practised for many centuries. Yet, as we have said, some genius of prehistoric Egypt conceived the idea and put it into practical execution, and the hieroglyphic writing of which the Egyptians were in full possession at the very beginning of what we term the historical period made use of this phonetic system along with the ideographic system already described.

      So fond were the Egyptians of their pictorial symbols used ideographically that they clung to them persistently throughout the entire period of Egyptian history. They used symbols as phonetic equivalents very frequently, but they never learned to depend upon them exclusively. The scribe always interspersed his phonetic signs with some other signs intended as graphic aids. After spelling a word out in full, he added a picture, sometimes even two or three pictures, representative of the individual thing, or at least of the type of thing to which the word belongs. Two or three illustrations will make this clear.

      Thus qeften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey is added as a determinative; second, qenu, cavalry, after being spelled, is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third, temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added; and fourth, tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the plural number.

      It must not be supposed, however, that it was a mere whim which led the Egyptians to the use of this system of determinatives. There was sound reason back of it. It amounted to no more than the expedient we adopt when we spell "to," "two," or "too," in indication of a single sound with three different meanings. The Egyptian language abounds in words having more than one meaning, and in writing these it is obvious that some means of distinction is desirable. The same thing occurs even more frequently in the Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese adopt a more clumsy expedient, supplying a different symbol СКАЧАТЬ