Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond

Writing, the ability to make language visible and permanent, is one of humanity's greatest inventions. This book presents current perspectives on the origins and development of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, providing an overview of each writing system and its uses. Essays on writing in China and Mesoamerica complete coverage of the four pristine writing systems - inventions of writing in which there was no previous exposure to texts. The authors explore what writing is, and is not, and sections of the text are devoted to Anatolian hieroglyphs of Anatolia, and to the development of the alphabet in the Sinai Peninsula in the second millennium BC and its spread to Phoenicia where it spawned the Greek and Latin alphabets. This richly illustrated volume, issued in conjunction with an exhibit at the Oriental Institute, provides a current perspective on, and appreciation of, an invention that changed the course of history.

Table of Contents

Visible Language: The Earliest Writing Systems, Christopher Woods
Iconography of Protoliterate Seals, Oya Topçuoglu
The Earliest Mesopotamian Writing, Christopher Woods
Adaptation of Cuneiform to Write Akkadian, Andrea R. Seri
The Rise and Fall of Cuneiform Script in Hittite Anatolia, Theo van den Hout
The Conception and Development of the Egyptian Writing System, Elise V. MacArthur
The Earliest Egyptian Writing, Andréas Stauder
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing, Janet H. Johnson
Hieratic, Kathryn E. Bandy
Demotic, Janet H. Johnson
Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs, François Gaudard
Coptic, T. G. Wilfong
Invention and Development of the Alphabet, Joseph Lam
The Beginnings of Writing in China, Edward L. Shaughnessy
The Development of Maya Writing, Joel Palka
Anatolian Hieroglyphic Writing, Ilya Yakubovich