SCRIPTURE. - The invention of writing occupies a most eminent place in the development of human civilization: by means of it man succeeded in fixing language materially, thus giving rise to 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 living beings, with a magical-evocative intent. Also considered as precursors of writing are mnemonic systems consisting either of variously colored and knotted cords (e.g., the Peruvian quippos) or of small sticks with notches and incised lines.
I. IDEOGRAPHIC AND SYLLABIC WRITING
True writing properly so called came about only when pictographic signs, more or less stylized, acquired phonetic value through the phase of the ideographic, which consisted in binding to a given figured sign (ideogram) the sound of a word.
Action verbs were expressed with ideograms that depicted the action in progress, while for certain words symbolic analogy was resorted to (for example, a star indicated the word "night"). With this procedure writing remained in a rudimentary phase, still powerless to express 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 be able to express other words or parts of other words (a system of writing 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 scripts came to use only biliteral signs, and hence to syllabic writing) with an ever greater preponderance of the phonetic element at the expense of the ideographic one. A fundamental characteristic of ideographic and syllabic scripts is the considerable number of sign-sounds.
Among the ideographic scripts, the one that by the abundance of its sources offers a gradual documentation of its historical development is Egyptian hieroglyphic: it also arrived, through the process of acrophony, at the formation of 24 monoconsonantal signs, used, in order to avoid ambiguity of reading (amphibology), as phonetic complements to the ideograms. Other notable ideographic scripts are: a) the Chinese, which did not even reach the syllabic stage until it passed to the Japanese; b) the Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform, in which the ideograms, because of the material on which they were traced (clay), took the schematic linear form of small wedges variously arranged; c) the Hittite hieroglyphs (not entirely deciphered); d) the Cretan scripts (undeciphered); e) the American scripts (Maya and Aztec). Purely syllabic were the Cypriot script and the Indian Devanagari.
II. ALPHABETIC WRITING
The transition from ideographic and syllabic systems to the monophonic alphabetic system, which represents the final evolutionary phase of writing in the direction of simplification, has been explained in various ways owing to the lack of precise documentation (v. ALFABETO). The process was in all likelihood the acrophonic one (reduction of the phonetic value of the ideogram to the initial consonant alone), while the specific derivation has been variously deduced from Egyptian writing (hieratic and demotic), from Cypriot writing, from Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform, without any positive result being reached. The signs of the Sinaitic writings (discovered by the Egyptologist F. Petrie in the ancient mines of the Sinai peninsula and dating to about 1500 B.C.) are considered by many to be prototypes of the Semitic alphabet; however, the writing expressed by these signs (about 25) remains undeciphered. In any case, the small number of signs is significant. It is nevertheless likely that the system of alphabetic writing arose in a Semitic milieu prior to the Sinaitic inscriptions, around the 18th century B.C.
The Semitic alphabets can be reduced to two groups: a) North Semitic, comprising the Canaanite and Aramaic alphabets. To the former belong Phoenician and ancient Hebrew, to the latter North Arabian, Palmyrene and square Hebrew.
Of fundamental importance was the alphabet spread by the Phoenicians, which gave rise to the Punic and Greek alphabets: from the latter 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 origin to the Ethiopic alphabet.
For the writings derived from the Greek and Latin alphabets v. PALEOGRAFIA.
III. MATERIAL AND ARRANGEMENT
Every writing presupposes two substantial elements: the writing material and the graphic arrangement. The material varied according to the character of the writing, contingent availabilities and the times. Thus for monumental (epigraphic) writings intended to survive for a long time, stone and metals were used; for writings of smaller bulk, papyrus (v.), ostraca (sherds of vessels), parchment (v.), wax tablets (v.), paper (v.). To each material there corresponded a relative instrument (v. STRUMENTI SCRITTORI). The invention of printing marked the gradual replacement of writing with mechanical systems.
As for the graphic arrangement, three fundamental schemes are noted: a) vertical sinistrorse writing, that is, from top to bottom and from right toward left (e.g., Chinese writing and in some cases Egyptian hieroglyphic); b) horizontal sinistrorse (common to the writings of the Semitic languages); c) horizontal dextrorse (common to the writings of the Indo-European languages), derived from the sinistrorse through the boustrophedon phase (one sinistrorse line and one dextrorse line alternating).
The necessity of simplifying and accelerating writing has led in every age to the formation of cursive and tachygraphic systems.
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SCRITTURA PRIVATA, SCRITTURA PUBBLICA, ecc. v. DOCUMENTO.