Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

3.1
3.1
WRITING AS A KEY
FACTOR IN THE LEVEL
OF DEVELOPMENT OF
CIVILISATIONS AND
STAT E S
The creation of a writing system is generally regarded as one of
the greatest achievements of civilisation, and is therefore a determining feature of
a people’s culture. The most important function of written language is its capacity
to preserve in the memory of new generations the achievements and deeds of their
ancestors. Writing systems have emerged in parallel with state entities; after all, a state
cannot exist without a writing system, as it is fundamental to ensuring the functioning
of a range of state and legal institutions.
For example, in ancient Egypt, a writing system (in the form of Egyptian
hieroglyphics) emerged at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, the time when
a unified kingdom developed here. Even earlier, at the end of the 4th and beginning
of the 3rd millennium BC, the creation of writing systems began in Mesopotamia, in
the earliest Sumerian states, first in the form of pictograms, and then in cuneiform.
Both these early writing systems consisted of determinative signs and symbols,
initially representing words and later, syllables.
Later, at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, a Semitic alphabetic script was
created, most probably in Phoenicia, representing the sounds, rather than the
semantic meaning of words. This was a true revolution in the history of mankind,
as a system consisting of just over twenty signs now had replaced cumbersome
hieroglyphs and cuneiform comprising hundreds of graphically complicated signs.
Owing to the unique features of Semitic languages, the original alphabet conveyed
only consonantal sounds (however, later, it did include some vowel sounds as well).
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