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A Supervisor's Advice to a Young Scribe
A Supervisor's Advice to a Young Scribe is a Sumerian composition relating a dialogue between an elder scribe and a young graduate from his school. The piece is dated to the Old Babylonian Period (c. 2000-1600 BCE) and, although originally...
Definition
Bai Juyi
Bai Juyi (l. 772-846) was one of the greatest poets of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) along with Li Po (l. 701-762) and Du Fu (l. 712-770). He was a government official who got in trouble with authorities a number of times for not following the...
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How Korea crafted a better alphabet - History of Writing Systems #11 (Featural Alphabet)
The Korean alphabet is better than yours. Meet the king who invented it and watch him work his linguistic magic in this chapter in the history of writing. You wake up in another palace. This time you're in Korea. The first face to greet...
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Writing the Declaration of Independence
A painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris showing Thomas Jefferson (right), Benjamin Franklin (left), and John Adams drafting the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776. (Virginia Historical Society, Library of Congress)
Video
What's hiding inside Maya glyphs - History of Writing Systems #6 (Syllabary)
Maya glyphs aren't just Mesoamerican eye candy. They're a working writing system! Unlike the thousands of logograms encountered in your journey so far, the Maya syllabary lets you combine a very limited number of syllables into a block...
Definition
Linear A Script
Linear A script was used by the Minoan civilization centred on Crete during the Bronze Age. Used from around 1850 to around 1450 BCE, the script has never been deciphered. Artefacts bearing Linear A script, most commonly clay tablets, have...
Video
The day the Greeks invented vowels - History of Writing Systems #8 (The Alphabet)
Your vowels were invented in Greece, giving birth to the first "true" alphabet. Watch as your new toga-clad friend turns your consonant abjad into a consonant-vowel alphabet. It's such a useful mapping of letters to sounds that neighbor...
Video
Semitic's vowel-smuggling consonants - History of Writing Systems #9 (Pointing & Matres Lectionis)
Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic evolved a unique way to write vowels... with consonants! See how in this episode of Thoth's Pill: an Animated History of Writing. You're back in the ancient Middle East, where seemingly everyone's...
Article
Cuneiform Lexical Lists
Lexical lists are compilations of cuneiform signs and word readings written on clay tablets throughout Mesopotamia. From the late 4th millennium BCE up to the 1st century CE, scribal communities copied, modified, and passed on these cuneiform...
Definition
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by ancient Egyptians to represent their language. Because of their pictorial elegance, Herodotus and other important Greeks believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were something...