Fun History VI: History of Writing Quiz

Answer: Thoth

In Socrates's story Thoth approached the king of Egypt seeking his royal blessing for his invention. The king said to Thoth, "You, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe them a power of the opposite to that which they really possess. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant." Bearing in mind how long ago they were written, some might consider those words to have quite a contemporary sound.

Answer: Egypt

The earliest Egyptian writings date from 3100BC. Those of the Indus Valley date from 2500BC; those of Crete from 1900BC and those of China from 1200BC.

Answer: Carsten Niebuhr

Carsten Niebuhr (1733-1815) was a Dane who travelled extensively throughout the Near East and had an intense interest in ancient writings. There had been many attempts to decipher cuneiform since the discovery of Persepolis in 1618 but no progress was made until the 1770s. Niebuhr found that many of the inscriptions were duplicated and this enabled him to check one set of readings up against another. By careful comparison he was able to distinguish three different scripts.

He also was able to isloate the simplest signs. Decipherment proper began some time after 1800 and owed a great deal to Niebuhr's work.

Answer: William Banks

William Banks sent this copy possibly realising that a breakthrough might occur if he did. Banks himself excavated the obelisk at Philae and took it back to England where it remains and can still be seen at Kingston Lacy in Dorset. The copied inscription did in fact provide Champollion with a crucial clue.

Answer: Pictographic

These early pictographic signs at Uruk developed later, at about 2500 BC, into abstract cuneiform signs and were by 2500 BC, in widespread use for Sumerian writing. Later they developed still further into the cuneiform script used by Babylon and Assyria.

Answer: Thomas Hyde

Thomas Hyde was the Regius Professor of Hebrew and Laudian professor of Arabic at Oxford in 1770. However, he had nothing to do with any kind of decipherment of cuneiform as he never believed that the script had anything to do with writing. Rather, he considered that it was simply meant to be either ornamental, or, incredibly, the tracks of birds walking across the wet clay.

It could not be writing, Hyde said, because the same characters never seemed to be repeated. He did, however, give the script its name: in his opinion the patterns were 'wedge-like', or, 'ductali pyramidales seu Cuneiformes', cuneus being Latin for wedge.

Hence cuneiform.

Answer: Babylonian

Trilingual scripts found together at Persepolis contained Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite. Today, Elamite is thought to be unrelated to any other known language whereas Babylonian is related to Hebrew, Aramaic and other Semitic languages.

Answer: 24

Rune, in Old Norse, means 'letter', 'text' or 'inscription'. This word in Old Germanic also means 'mystery' or 'secret'. The origin of the earliest Runic alphabet is unknown. In Elder Futhark and Gothic Runes for example, we have 24 letters that have been decipered and are readable. Runes have been found dating back as far as the second century AD. Anglo-Saxon Futhorc had up to 33 letters. Younger Futhork or 'Normal Runes' evolved over many years and stabilized at about 800AD. Throughout the Viking Age it was the main alphabet of the Scandinavian countries but by 1200AD, due to conversion to Christianity, it was largely replaced by the Latin alphabet.
Ango-Saxon Runes: most inscriptions of these are to be found on jewellery, weapons, stones, etc. Very little has survived by way of manuscripts. It had only 16 letters.
Elder Futhark is generally thought to be the oldest version of the Runic alphabet and was used by in Europe by the Germanic peoples who lived there.

Answer: sexagesimal

We still use this system that the Babylonians devised five millennia ago. Based on multiples of 60: there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 360 degrees in a circle. Babylonians used the number 60 as their basic number. They used it much as we today group numbers into tens and they always used fractions with 60 in the denominator. This is the sexagesimal system.

Answer: Sejong

King Sejong (1397-1450) invented a 28 letter alphabet and introduced it in 1443-4. For more than a thousand years the Koreans had used Chinese charcaters and, in fact, many still do. Sejong's alphabet, called Hangul, was met with resistence right from the start.

However, in 1949 North Korea adopted the Hangul alphabet exclusively whilst South Korea still tend to use a mixture of Chinese and Hangul characters.