The Educator (Volume 45) - IAMPETH

14
The earliest known records in the
form of writing are the inscriptions
on tablets of baked clay, which were
excavated from the ruins of the ancient
Chaldean city of Nippur. Such
tablets were probably in use about
6000 B. C. This form of writmg is
known as Cuneiform writing. It appears
to have been originally inscribed
upon a vegetable substance
called "likhuse," but the abundant
clay of the country afforded material
whose convenience and permanence
brought it into general use. Upon
this the characters were impressed
by a reed or square-shaped stylus;
the clay-books being afterwards
baked or sun dried. For inscriptions
on metal or stone a chisel was used.
This system of writing originated
in Babylonia at a remote and unknown
date. It was invented by a
primitive race of people called Sumerians
who developed it from a
crude form of picture writing. It
was adopted by the Semetic Babylonians
about 4500 B. C. Cuneiform
writing was taken over by the Assyrians
and Egyptians and was in
use until the first century before the
Christian Era.
Each sign employed consists of a
wedge or a combination of wedges
wi-itten from left to right. The
wedge points to the right, downward
or aslant, and sometimes two wedges
are joined to form an angle. Cuneiform
writing is difficult to translate,
because a character may represent
a whole syllable or a word. This
system, therefore, is extremely difficult.
Picture writing is one of the earliest
form of writing. In a study of
the cave man we find him as a signmaker.
His prehistoric remains supply
evidence of artistic capacity in a
remote past and set before us in
vigorous, rapid outline, what his life
must have been, on fragments of
bone, horn, schist, and other materials.
Very simple pictures are drawn
upon birch bark indicating by their
order the subjects in a series of songchants
with sufficient precision to
enable the singer to recall the theme
of each in his recitation. An account
can be kept of sales or purchases by
representing in a perpendicular stroke
the number of each series by a picture
of the animals or objects to
which the series refers. Thus, three
strokes followed by the picture of a
deer indicates that the hunter has
brought three deer for sale.
Indication of man's presence remains
rare, since only pictographs
on some durable material, or specimens
of the fictile art, would survive
the action of time. To those
yielded by the bare carvers already
History of Handwriting
OTTIE CRADDOCK
A composite report of a study
made by a group of students at
Farmville State Teachers College.
referred to are to be added rock
carvings in Denmark, and figures on
limestone cliffs of the Maritime Alps.
Picture writing was one important
way of communicating among the
Indians. The heroic deeds of the
warriors were inscribed upon the
walls of his tepee. Everyone would
then know how much recognition to
give him. The pigments were minerals
in argon, mixed with water, and
applied with a stick.
The Calendar of the Indians relates
to us narratives extending over
many years. A particular calendar
of the Dakotas represents the period
from 1799 to 1870. The narrative
is written in a spiral form, beginning
in the center and reading outward.
The first entry in this calender
consists of three rows of lines
indicating that in 1799 thirty Dakotas
were killed by the Crows. The
story of this tribe unfolds in order.
The Dakotas stole horses with shoes;
Good penmanship is always
legible, otherwise it fails of its
main purpose. When writing,
take thought for the reader.
Clara H. Morris.
—
they stole horses with curly tufted
hair; they had a medicine dance and
went to war, as shown by the pipe
stem ornamented by feathers; Crow
Indians killed eight Dakotas; a Dakota
killed another Indian, as he was
about to shoot an eagle; and so on
through the years. Thus we see that
the Indians could do quite a bit of
writing in pictures only.
The Indians had no way to send
written messages. This disadvantage
was greatly overcome by the
use of signals. The great distance
of the open country required signals
of several kinds. Perhaps there was
an enemy in the offing; perhaps there
were wild horses and the distant
tribe must be given information. The
signals were given by the watcher,
who stood erect on a hill, with his
face toward the camp, holding his
blanket with an end in each hand,
his arms being stretched out, right
and left, on a line with his shoulders.
Most American Indian tongues may
be called "holophrastic," from the
practice of compressing a whole sentence
into a word. The length of
the sentence is sometimes very remarkable.
As an example may be
given the Micmac "Yaleoolemaktawepokwase"
meaning, "I am walking
about carrying a beautiful black umbrella
over my head."
In comparatively recent times the
Dakota Indians invented a chronological
table or winter court, wherein
each year is recorded by a picture of
some important event which befell
during that year. In these pictures a
considerable amount of symbolism
was necessary. A black upright stroke
indicated that a Dakota Indian was
killed. A rough outline of the head
and body spotted with blotches indicated
that in that year the tribe
suffered from smallpox. Sometimes
in referring to persons, the symbol
is of the nature of a rebus. Thus
Red Jacket, an Indian chief, was
killed in the year of 1807-8. This
fact was recorded by a red coat with
two arrows in it, and blood dripping.
The Rosetta Stone gave to the
world the key to the translation of
the long lost ancient Egyptian language
and made possible the extensive
modern study of the history of
the Nile Valley and its people,
through ancient literature. The stone
is inscribed with a decree of the
Egyptian priesthood, which had assembled
at Memphis in 195 B. C. This
decree, issued in honor of Ptolemy V.
Epiphanes (205-181 B. C), was written
in hieroglyphics, or picture writing,
and in Greek; also in demotic, a
simplified form of Egyptian writing.
Scholars were able to decipher the
Egyptian texts by comparing them
with the Greek. In this way, they
found the clue to the hidden characters
of the language of the ancients.
Chief honor for the discovery of the
clue is due Francois Champollion, a
French Egyptologist.
The Rosetta Stone, now in the
British Museum, is composed of black
basalt. It was found near Rosetta,
Egypt, in 1799 by a French officer
of Napoleon's engineering corps.
Parts have been broken away, and
at present it is three feet nine inches
in height, eleven inches in thickness,
and two feet four and one-half inches
in breadth.
Hieroglyphics applied by the
Greeks to the symbols carved by the
Egyptians on their monuments. Presumably
the Egyptian hieroglyphics
were originally pure picture-writing,
but the gap between that and the
combination of ideograms with phonetic
symbols must be bridged by
imagination, for the earliest inscriptions
extant, which date perhaps
from 5000 B.C., contain both forms.
Some of the symbols yield their