Write Like an Egyptian

For the Rosetta Stone project I was in the African cultures group. Fittingly enough for a project emulating the famous stone, we decided to write out our message in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics... and because that's virtually the only written language of ancient Africa that has been translated into English, so we had no choice in the matter. Now, I'm not trying to make this project sound miserable, it really ended up being a lot of fun! It was really cool to see just what challenges played into the translation of ancient texts. Follow after the jump to find out for yourself!

Would You Like Some Cyanide with that?

So I know that Professor Burton wants us to start to transition our posts into our new unit on printing, but I had another idea I really wanted to post about. In class on Tuesday we brushed on the topic of how the development of writing systems granted access to the languages of other cultures by means of translation and an easier structure for teaching that language, which led to a larger dissemination of these languages. This greater understanding of other languages led to a very significant tactical change - the beginning of intelligence gathering and espionage between civilizations. This idea particularly piqued my interest because as a Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic major this is one of the career fields I'm interested in going into, (and I think it would be kinda cool to talk about ancient spies).

Palm Fronds

"Oh, and bring something to write on!" How many times have you heard that phrase? Did you ever think to bring something other than paper? Of course not! That's what paper is for! Not once did it even cross my mind to bring a clay tablet or an animal skin, but originally, that's what people wrote on! People used the resources that they had at hand. And for India, that meant palm fronds.

By some estimates, palm leaf books originated in India around fifteenth century BC. Tree leaves were used to record important documents like Buddhist scriptures, law, biographical information, and Sanskrit literature. 

Palm leaves are flattened, dried and smoothed in preparation to make a book. Letters are inscribed by using a needle-like instrument that cuts into the surface. The writing is not all that visible before it is covered over with soot or pigment mixed with oil. They can then be illustrated (some with intricate paintings) and strung together. Two holes are bored though the center of the leaves to bind the book together with a cord. ChinaView shows the process of creating a palm leaf book with a series of pictures. (I highly recommend it!)

Colombia University is trying to identify this text.

Unfortunately, these beautiful books decay rapidly. We have very few surviving copies of palm frond books and those that we have really aren't all that old. Some of them remain untranslated. Colombia University has requested help online to identify and translate an old text written on palm fronds. Even today it is hard to translate some of these old languages because they simply are no longer in use. We lament the loss of these wonderfully crafted texts. I suppose that palm book making has been abandoned because of their short shelf life and the difficulty of making them.

What does the future hold? With the advent of e-books, printed books have become increasingly less popular. Now you can carry around an entire library in your bag! I patiently wait for the day that museums will put my text books on display and everyone will marvel over the fact that we wrote on paper. The day is ever near that the phrase "Oh, and bring something to write on" will no longer refer to paper.

To Write or Not to Write

So for this post I'm going to deviate a little bit from the civilization I've been covering, but I think it's appropriate given what we've been talking about in class. (But the writing that I'm talking about was written in reformed Egyptian so its kinda almost related)

Today in class we touched briefly on the characteristics of the civilizations that some of us have been studying that did not have written languages. It's difficult to determine why they didn't develop such a system, but the effects of that lack of development are blatantly obvious. We know very little about those without a writing system, and their societies do no appear as advanced as their writing counterparts, (In most cases, barring the Incas who appear to be an exception to the rule). The Book of Mormon gives a perfect example of the different paths civilizations might take depending on their development  (or use) of a written language. Keep reading after the jump to find out more!

Writing System? Really?

Japanese writing system is pretty unique and interesting. It uses multiple systems for writing Japanese.

Kanji	Hiragana	Katakana	Rōmaji	English
私	わたし	ワタシ	watashi	I, me
金魚	きんぎょ	キンギョ	kingyo	goldfish
煙草 or 莨	たばこ	タバコ	tabako	tobacco, cigarette
東京	とうきょう	トウキョウ	tōkyō	Tokyo, literally meaning "eastern capital"

The first characters that the Japanese used for writing were originally from China. The Kanji, are the characters that first came from China. The Japanese began using these characters between the 3rd and the 5th century. Using someone else's language to describe write things when you are speaking a different language is not that easy and so the Japanese have changed what they use for their writing system quite a bit.


From the original Kanji, which was not the same language as Japanese is what has come to describe the different aspects of the Japanese language specifically verbs, nouns, and adjectives. (Isn't it weird to think that there is a specific word out there that describes the word verbs, nouns and adjectives in most languages?) The Hiragana is used to describe things that are not included in the original Kanji. Word that are difficult to describe and just are obscure in Kanji are written in Hiragana. Katakana are word that are being translated from another language. For example names or elements are described with Katakana.

While the Japanese did take their language from the Chinese originally(Chinese language post) the Japanese did not decide to use the same amount of characters to be included in their written language from the Kanji. They only use around 1850 characters.

The Japanese did not have a real piece of literature for quite some time. When the did they wrote the, "Man'yōgana was initially used to record poetry, as in the Man'yōshū (万葉集^?)."

The Man'yoshu is translated to mean, the collection of ten thousand leaves, this is the oldest volume of poetry in Japan. It is quite and extensive collection of poems and contains 4500 poems in 20 volumes. The Japanese writing techniques are a unique blend of Chinese characters while at the same time having plenty of things that are used only in their language. Something to look at is how much your own written language is composed of many other languages from around the world.