![]() It is to be viewed as starting from the Middle Bronze Age and continuing into the Late Bronze Age, with all modifications. To begin with, I state that, unlike what sometimes is claimed, the use of cuneiform in Canaan was long and continuous. ![]() The conclusion of the chapter will evaluate the spread of literacy and the scope of cuneiform writing in Canaan. I will show what cuneiform inscribed artifacts can tell us about the way cuneiform literacy was achieved in Canaan. The purpose of my paper is to discuss cuneiform learning and writing as a reflection of literacy in Bronze Age Canaan. Visual evidence reveals Cuneiform was their model parent script for a long period. In either scenario, these early alphabets were different abstract iterations depicting, partially or fully, the overall look and feel of a small subset of the Cuneiform symbols, employing one or more processes including elimination, enclosing, flipping, rotating, mirroring, shrinking, or extending. The author further believes that the two scripts started either as independent scripts over a relatively short time period or as one script splitting into multiple ones over a relatively long period, to replace and visually preserve, at the same time, a predominant, concurrently-used older writing system: namely the Akkadian Cuneiform script. In this paper, which primarily emphasize shapes and scripts functional characteristics analysis, the author concludes that there is no solid evidence that Proto-Sinaitic was the parent script of the Phoenician and Musnad scripts. According to these scholars, Proto-Sinaitic was derived from the Egyptian Hieroglyphs writing system between 18th-15th Century BCE and was in use for centuries before the rise of the two major ancient alphabets in the adjacent greater Arabian Peninsula, Phoenician (13th Century BCE), and Musnad (9th-7th Century BCE). ![]() ![]() This presumed script was attested by Western scholars in the early 20th Century following the discovery in 1905-06 of a few, very short graffiti inscriptions at “Serabit el-Khadim” in the Sinai Peninsula and the subsequent discovery in 1999 of a few similar ones at “Wadi el-Hol” in the middle of Egypt. Scholars trace the roots of most historical and modern alphabets in the Near East and Europe, including Arabic and Latin, to a single obscure script, namely the Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite script. This is especially true in a time when pictographic notation systems like Emojis have evolved, which apparently close a gap left by our alphabetic phonocentric writing systems. Evaluating the differences between modern and ancient writing also helps us to understand today's systems of communication in a more comprehensive way. Thus, the workshop explores the specific epistemic potential of cuneiform writing. Finally, the papers investigate the communicative contexts in which early cuneiform was used (e.g. in lexical lists), and the phenomenon of 'ontological'/'etymological' writing. The same focus is applied to the shape of graphemes, sign order (e.g. It tackles questions such as how various sign functions serve specific needs, especially with respect to efficient information processing in the context of distinctive cultural practices. The workshop investigates the first millennium of the history of cuneiform writing. It always possesses various sign functions such as syllabograms, determinatives, or logograms. Furthermore, although it becomes increasingly glottographic, cuneiform never turns into a writing system that solely communicates spoken language. This may be the first example of the ongoing exploration of the communicative potential of cuneiform writing in various contexts such as epistemic and/or religious practices. Already in the earliest stratum of writing (Uruk IV), lexical lists were found. ![]() While cuneiform signs first appeared in administrative contexts, they soon became more than a notation system supporting bureaucratic practices. However, this criticism does not affect cuneiform writing to the same extent since its signs function in a more complex way. It is exactly this quality that Jacques Derrida criticized as phono-and logocentric writing would be much more than just a servant of spoken words. Modern (Western) systems are mainly a medium to store and record spoken language. Most of today's writing systems owe their existence to this epochal innovation in Mesopotamia (and other places). General abstract Looking back from today, probably the most influential legacy of ancient Mesopotamia was the invention of writing at the eve of the 4th millennium BCE. ![]()
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