WRITING. — The invention of writing occupies an eminent place in the development of human civilization: through it, man succeeded in materially fixing language, thus initiating historical documentation.
The origins of writing are connected with pictography (attested from the end of the Paleolithic), consisting in the figurative representation of objects, mostly animate ones, with a magical-evocative purpose. The mnemonic systems consisting either of variously colored and knotted cords (e.g., the Peruvian quippos) or of small sticks with notches and incised lines are also regarded as precursors of writing.
I. IDEOGRAPHIC AND SYLLABIC WRITING. — Proper writing came into existence only when pictographic signs, more or less stylized, acquired phonetic value through the ideographic stage, consisting in linking the sound of a word to a given figurative sign (ideogram).
Verbs of action were expressed by ideograms depicting the action in progress, whereas for certain words symbolic analogy was employed (e.g., a star indicated the word “night”). By this process writing remained at a rudimentary stage, still incapable of expressing abstract ideas and grammatical notations (endings, prepositions, pronouns, etc.). The difficulty was overcome by using the ideogram with phonetic value independently of its ideographic meaning, so as to express other words or parts of other words (a writing system in the form of a rebus). The ideogram thus became solely a phonogram, giving rise to ideographic-polyliteral writing (through a process of simplification, some writing systems came to use only biliteral signs, and thus developed into syllabic writing), with the phonetic element increasingly predominating at the expense of the ideographic one. The fundamental characteristic of ideographic and syllabic writing systems is the considerable number of sound-signs.
Among ideographic writing systems, the one that, owing to the abundance of its sources, provides a gradual documentation of its historical development is Egyptian hieroglyphic writing: through the process of acrophony, it also reached the formation of 24 monoconsonantal signs, used, in order to avoid ambiguity in reading (amphibology), as phonetic complements to ideograms. Other notable ideographic writing systems are: a) Chinese, which did not even reach the syllabic stage until it was transmitted to the Japanese; b) Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform, in which the ideograms, because of the material on which they were traced (clay), assumed the schematic linear form of small wedges variously arranged; c) Hittite hieroglyphs (not entirely deciphered); d) Cretan writing systems (undeciphered); e) American writing systems (Maya and Aztec). The Cypriot and Indian devandigari writing systems were exclusively syllabic.
II. ALPHABETIC SCRIPTS. – The transition from ideographic and syllabic systems to the single-letter alphabetic system, which represents the final evolutionary phase of writing in the direction of simplification, has been explained in various ways because of the lack of precise documentation (v. ALFABETO). The process was in all probability acrophonic (the reduction of the phonetic value of the ideogram to the initial consonant alone), whereas its specific derivation has been variously traced to Egyptian writing (hieratic and demotic), Cypriot writing, and Assyro-Babylonian cuneiforms, without any positive result being reached. The signs of the Sinaitic scripts (discovered by the Egyptologist F. Petrie in the ancient mines of the Sinai Peninsula and dating from approximately 1500 B.C.) are regarded by many as prototypes of the Semitic alphabet; however, the writing expressed by these signs (approximately 25) remains undeciphered. In any case, the small number of signs is significant. It is nevertheless probable that the alphabetic writing system arose in a Semitic milieu before the Sinaitic inscriptions, around the eighteenth century B.C.
The Semitic alphabets may be reduced to two groups: a) North Semitic, comprising the Canaanite and Aramaic alphabets. The former include Phoenician and ancient Hebrew; the latter include Northern Arabic, Palmyrene, and square Hebrew.
Of fundamental importance was the alphabet disseminated by the Phoenicians, which gave rise to the Punic and Greek alphabets; from the latter there in turn derived Coptic, the Slavic group (Glagolitic and Cyrillic), and the Western group (Etruscan, Italic, and Latin);
b) South Semitic, comprising the South Arabian alphabet, which gave rise to the Ethiopic alphabet.
For the scripts derived from the Greek and Latin alphabets, V. PALEOGRAFIA.
III. MATERIAL AND GRAPHIC FORM. - Every form of writing presupposes two essential elements: the writing material and the graphic form. The material varied according to the character of the writing, contingent availability, and the period. Thus, for monumental (epigraphic) writings intended to survive for a long time, stone and metals were used; for writings of lesser extent, papyrus (v.), ostraca (potsherds), parchment (v.), wax tablets (v.), and paper (v.). Each material had a corresponding instrument (v. STRUMENTI SCRITTORI). The invention of printing marked the gradual replacement of writing by mechanical systems.
As regards graphic form, three fundamental patterns may be distinguished: a) vertical sinistrorsal writing, that is, from top to bottom and from right to left (e.g., Chinese writing and, in some cases, Egyptian hieroglyphic writing); b) horizontal sinistrorsal writing (common to the writing systems of the Semitic languages); c) horizontal dextrorsal writing (common to the writing systems of the Indo-European languages), derived from sinistrorsal writing through the boustrophedon stage (one sinistrorsal line alternating with one dextrorsal line).
The need to simplify and accelerate writing has at all times led to the formation of cursive and tachygraphic systems.
SCRITTURA PRIVATA, SCRITTURA PUBBLICA, ecc. V. DOCUMENTO.