In first writing system {pre-cuneiform}, styluses indented clay.
Reed pens drew pictures that represented words or sounds on clay tablets {cuneiform writing}, to record trade and taxes. Pre-cuneiform developed into a system with 200 to 300 simplified sideways pictures.
Egyptian mdju netjer or words of the gods {hieroglyph, script} {hieroglyphics, script} {hieroglyphic script} developed as idealized or sketched picture ideograms, referring to animal characteristics and human gestures. Hieroglyphs face rightward in columns, to read down, or lines, to read right to left. Greeks called it hiera grammata (sacred letters) or ta hieroglyphica (sacred carved letters). Book of the Dead used cursive hieroglyphic script.
Hieroglyphs {phonogram, sound} can stand for sounds.
Phonogram series rebuses can be for concepts, opinions, beliefs, commands, requests, and logical relations. Rebuses can have extra end signs {determinative, rebus} to indicate rebus-series subject.
Cursive script {hieratic script} derived from cursive hieroglyphic script. After -600, it was only for religious documents, because demonic script replaced it.
Cuneiform writing came from Sumer.
Cursive script {demotic script} derived from hieratic script. Rosetta Stone has demotic, hieroglyphic, and Greek.
When Ptolemies ruled, script {Coptic script} was like Greek alphabet.
He lived 1809 to 1852. He invented a printing and writing system using six dots, in two vertical lines of three raised dots each, to represent 63 characters and allow blind people to read by touch {Braille} [1821 to 1829].
He lived 1895 to 1980 and invented sound recorder {sonograph} [1945].
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Date Modified: 2022.0225