Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part iii | cultural and spiritual development
According to scholars, the most ancient inscription made using an alphabet is a
Phoenician inscription from around 1000 BC on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram of
Byblos. The inscription was made on the orders of his son and contained a curse on
anyone who should try to open the sarcophagus. The final part of it reads: ‘…if a king
from among kings or a governor from among governors, or commander (of an army),
should come up against Byblos and uncover this coffin, may the scepter of his rule be
broken, may the throne of his kingship be overturned, and may peace flee Byblos, and
(as for) him, may his writings be effaced (from) before Byblos.’
Still later, probably in the early 1st millennium BC, the Semitic alphabet was
adopted by the Greeks, who refined it considerably, adding letters for vowels to
convey both the sounds and written forms of words more accurately.
It was these two writing systems – the Semitic, through Aramaic, and Greek – that
were the basis of the local, pre-Arabic writing systems of Central Asia. It should be
noted that at a certain time, presumably from the beginning of the 1st century AD
to the 8th century AD, the Chinese hieroglyphic script was becoming widespread
in Central Asia and that it had emerged independently as part of the evolution of
this great civilisation of the Far East. It is well known that in the first half of the 8th
century AD, Sogdia even minted coins with a double legend in Sogdian and Chinese.
Going back a little, we should note that Central Asia was not one of the regions
where writing first appeared. We cannot trace the early stages of the development
of writing on its territory – from primitive forms of writing, so-called object- and
picture-based writing (using pictograms and ideograms), to logosyllabic systems,
syllabaries and, ultimately, alphabetic scripts. Images on ceramics from the 2nd
millennium BC from South Turkmenistan include separate groups of symbols,
which are so systematic and consistent, and follow a particular order in combination
with drawings, that these may well be rudiments of pictographic writing. To date,
no specimens of Egyptian hieroglyphs have been found in Central Asia, nor any of
cuneiform – the main type of writing used in the Achaemenid state and hence in
many ancient countries of the Near and Middle East.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, some travellers and
local historians reported having seen cuneiform inscriptions in the extreme south of
Central Asia. These reports have not been corroborated by contemporary academic
evidence; however, the existence of such inscriptions in Central Asia and the
familiarity of the population of the region with cuneiform should not be completely
ruled out, as Central Asia was part of the Achaemenid state for almost 200 years
(from the mid-6th century BC to 330 BC). However, at that time, cuneiform was
used by the Achaemenid kings for particularly solemn occasions, such as recording
military victories on rock inscriptions. An example is the Behistun inscription of
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