Writings from Ancient Egypt

Product Information

A previously unknown script was discovered in 2015 in Georgia, over the Grakliani Hill just below a temple's collapsed altar to a fertility goddess from the seventh century BCE. These inscriptions differ from those at other temples at Grakliani, which show animals, people, or decorative elements. [57] [58] The script bears no resemblance to any alphabet currently known, although its letters are conjectured to be related to ancient Greek and Aramaic. [57] The inscription appears to be the oldest native alphabet to be discovered in the whole Caucasus region, [59] In comparison, the earliest Armenian and Georgian script date from the fifth century CE, just after the respective cultures converted to Christianity. By September 2015, an area of 31 by 3 inches of the inscription had been excavated. [57] Parke, Catherine Neal (2002), Biography: Writing Lives, New York and London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-93892-9

By the 14th century a rebirth, or renaissance, had emerged in Western Europe, leading to a temporary revival of the importance of Greek, and a slow revival of Latin as a significant literary language. A similar though smaller emergence occurred in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. At the same time Arabic and Persian began a slow decline in importance as the Islamic Golden Age ended. The revival of literacy development in Western Europe led to many innovations in the Latin alphabet and the diversification of the alphabet to codify the phonologies of the various languages. Writing was long thought to have been invented in a single civilization, a theory named " monogenesis". [13] Scholars believed that all writing originated in ancient Sumer (in Mesopotamia) and spread over the world from there via a process of cultural diffusion. [13] According to this theory, the concept of representing language by written marks, though not necessarily the specifics of how such a system worked, was passed on by traders or merchants traveling between geographical regions. [a] [14]Only a single poetic hymn in the Demotic script has been preserved. [136] However, there are many surviving examples of Late-Period Egyptian hymns written in hieroglyphs on temple walls. [137]

Examples of the "teaching" genre include the Maxims of Ptahhotep, Instructions of Kagemni, Teaching for King Merykare, Instructions of Amenemhat, Instruction of Hardjedef, Loyalist Teaching, and Instructions of Amenemope. [88] Teaching texts that have survived from the Middle Kingdom were written on papyrus manuscripts. [89] No educational ostraca from the Middle Kingdom have survived. [89] The earliest schoolboy's wooden writing board, with a copy of a teaching text (i.e. Ptahhotep), dates to the Eighteenth dynasty. [89] Ptahhotep and Kagemni are both found on the Prisse Papyrus, which was written during the Twelfth dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. [90] The entire Loyalist Teaching survives only in manuscripts from the New Kingdom, although the entire first half is preserved on a Middle Kingdom biographical stone stela commemorating the Twelfth dynasty official Sehetepibre. [91] Merykare, Amenemhat, and Hardjedef are genuine Middle Kingdom works, but only survive in later New Kingdom copies. [92] Amenemope is a New Kingdom compilation. [93] Narrative tales and stories [ edit ] The Westcar Papyrus, although written in hieratic during the Fifteenth to Seventeenth dynasties, contains the Tale of the Court of King Cheops, which is written in a phase of Middle Egyptian that is dated to the Twelfth dynasty. [94] Hieratic was used alongside hieroglyphs for writing in Old and Middle Egyptian, becoming the dominant form of writing in Late Egyptian. [36] By the New Kingdom and throughout the rest of ancient Egyptian history, Middle Egyptian became a classical language that was usually reserved for reading and writing in hieroglyphs [37] and the spoken language for more exalted forms of literature, such as historical records, commemorative autobiographies, hymns, and funerary spells. [38] However, Middle Kingdom literature written in Middle Egyptian was also rewritten in hieratic during later periods. [39] Literary functions: social, religious and educational [ edit ] Seated statue of an Egyptian scribe holding a papyrus document in his lap, found in the western cemetery at Giza, Fifth dynasty of Egypt (25th to 24th centuries BC) The earliest uses of writing in Sumer were to document agricultural produce and create contracts, but soon writing became used for purposes of finances, religion, government, and law. These uses supported the spread of these social activities, their associated knowledge, and the extension of centralized power. [2] Writing then became the basis of knowledge institutions such as libraries, schools, universities and scientific and disciplinary research. These uses were accompanied by the proliferation of genres, which typically initially contained markers or reminders of the social situations and uses, but the social meaning and implications of genres often became more implicit as the social functions of these genres became more recognizable in themselves, as in the examples of money, currency, financial instruments, and now digital currency.Greek is in turn the source for all the modern scripts of Europe. The most widespread descendant of Greek is the Latin script, named for the Latins, a central Italian people who came to dominate Europe with the rise of Rome. The Romans learned writing in about the 5th century BCE from the Etruscan civilization, who used one of a number of Italic scripts derived from the western Greeks. Due to the cultural dominance of the Roman state, the other Old Italic scripts have not survived in any great quantity, and the Etruscan language is mostly lost. Fischer-Elfert, Hans-W. (2003), "Representations of the Past in the New Kingdom Literature", in Tait, John W. (ed.), 'Never Had the Like Occurred': Egypt's View of Its Past, London: University College London, Institute of Archaeology, an imprint of Cavendish Publishing Limited, pp. 119–138, ISBN 1-84472-007-1

The "instructions" or "teaching" genre, as well as the genre of "reflective discourses", can be grouped in the larger corpus of wisdom literature found in the ancient Near East. [81] The genre is didactic in nature and is thought to have formed part of the Middle Kingdom scribal education syllabus. [82] However, teaching texts often incorporate narrative elements that can instruct as well as entertain. [82] Parkinson asserts that there is evidence that teaching texts were not created primarily for use in scribal education, but for ideological purposes. [83] For example, Adolf Erman (1854–1937) writes that the fictional instruction given by Amenemhat I (r. 1991–1962 BC) to his sons "...far exceeds the bounds of school philosophy, and there is nothing whatever to do with school in a great warning his children to be loyal to the king". [84] While narrative literature, embodied in works such as The Eloquent Peasant, emphasize the individual hero who challenges society and its accepted ideologies, the teaching texts instead stress the need to comply with society's accepted dogmas. [85] The earliest confirmed evidence of the Chinese script yet discovered is the body of inscriptions on oracle bones and bronze from the late Shang dynasty. The earliest of these is dated to around 1200 BCE. [49] [50] During the reign of Akhenaten (r. 1353–1336 BC), the Great Hymn to the Aten—preserved in tombs of Amarna, including the tomb of Ay—was written to the Aten, the sun-disk deity given exclusive patronage during his reign. [134] Simpson compares this composition's wording and sequence of ideas to those of Psalm 104. [135]

Curriculum

Narrative tales and stories are most often found on papyri, but partial and sometimes complete texts are found on ostraca. For example, Sinuhe is found on five papyri composed during the Twelfth and Thirteenth dynasties. [106] This text was later copied numerous times on ostraca during the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties, with one ostraca containing the complete text on both sides. [106] Laments, discourses, dialogues, and prophecies [ edit ] Breasted, James Henry (1962), Ancient Records of Egypt: Vol. I, The First to the Seventeenth Dynasties, & Vol. II, the Eighteenth Dynasty, New York: Russell & Russell, ISBN 0-8462-0134-8 Extensive bureaucracies arose in the ancient Near East [2] and China [88] [89] which relied on the formation of literate classes to be scribes and bureaucrats. In the Ancient Near East this was carried out through the formation of scribal schools, [90] while in China this led to a series of written imperial examinations based on classic texts which in effect regulated education over millennia. [91] Literacy remained associated with rise in the government bureaucracy, and printing as it emerged was tightly controlled by the government, with vernacular texts only emerging later and then being limited in their range up through the early twentieth century and the fall of the Ching dynasty. [92] In ancient Greece and Rome, class distinctions of citizen and slave, wealthy and poor limited education and participation. In Medieval and early modern Europe church dominance of education, both before and for a time after the reformation, expressed the importance of religion in the control of the state and state bureaucracies. [93] Brewer, Douglas J.; Teeter, Emily (1999), Egypt and the Egyptians, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-44518-3