Key Pages:

Home

Are there fundamental differences between societies that have writing and those that do not?  To what degree does the prevalence of literacy in a society with writing affect our understanding of the first question (i.e. is a society with 1% literacy different from a society with 90% literacy, and how so)?  Aside from the effect it might or might not have had within the society producing writing, how does writing affect our ability as outsiders to understand another culture?  I'd like to consider these questions both on a really broad theoretical level and as they apply to early Egypt.  What kinds of written records do we have from early Egypt and how do these both expand and limit our understanding of the period from the Predynastic through the Early Dynastic?

return to Discussion

Posted at Feb 10/2010 10:10PM:
Julie Pridham: Primarily in response to the last question- the evidence of writing during this period is limited. Certainly the ivory and bone tags and vessels with painted "labels" from Tomb U-j indicate that writing was used in some sort of administrative way to designate ownership or perhaps specific contents and measurements. However, we do not have a clear idea of what exactly the tags say, which limits what we can learn about the development of the writing language. In appearance, it would seem that knowledge of the written language was limited to those within the administration or scribal trade. Throughout Egyptian history literacy rates were very low compared to our own modern standards.

However, I'm interested to know the prevalence of general knowledge of the written language throughout history- that is to say, how much of the written language could non-literate citizens recognize? I ask this because Trigger mentions that in Merimda special vessels “supported by four modeled human feet” were found which date to the Amratian/Naqada I cultures (Trigger, pg. 23). This reminded me of the “Footed Bowl” (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/02/afe/ho_10.176.113.htm) currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which also dates to roughly the Naqada I/Naqada II period. In the museum’s description, and in several publications about the piece, the bowl is described as a three-dimensional hieroglyph for the word w’b. If this is true and isn’t just an effect of Egyptologists projecting backward, then it would seem to indicate that the craftsmen had some knowledge of the inspiration for the vessel, at the very least in the sense that someone commissioned it. And if the bowl does actually represent the hieroglyph for w’b, wouldn’t it then indicate that the written word was already in use? This might be a “chicken or egg” situation, but it could impact the way we address the beginning of written language in Egypt.

Posted at Feb 11/2010 09:17PM:
Oren Siegel: I think the role of language and writing in the emergence of the Egyptian state is particularly intriguing, not to mention all but impossible to pin down with certainty given the limited evidence. As Bard notes in the conclusion of her chapter, the Egyptian state was significantly larger, both geographically and in terms of population size, than other “contemporary Near Eastern polities” (p. 82). Common cultural ties, whether in the form of language, social organization, material culture, and certainly writing, must have been integral in the formation of a relatively cohesive state. In addition to being an invaluable administrative tool for managing the increasingly complex Early Dynastic economy, I feel like there is at least a limited degree of symbolism inherent in hieroglyphic writing that virtually all Ancient Egyptians could have appreciated (even if they couldn’t necessarily read it). Additionally, a writing system that was fully intelligible to a limited few may have further reinforced distinctions in social class.

More broadly, I have some more general questions about literacy in the Ancient World in general—what evidence is given in support of figures of precise literacy rates? Beyond the context in which archaeologists discover written sources and the complexities of the Egyptian writing system, how can we confidently arrive at anything other than generalizations?

Posted at Feb 11/2010 10:12PM:
Anqi Zhang: In a sense, there are some fundamental differences between societies that have writing and those that do not. For many people, the "real history" of a certain country or country started from the first written historical documents. Writing enables the past experience and memory of a society to be preserved and the accumulation of experience gives rise to some more generalized and proved systems of knowledge such as philosophy, science, art and technology. Societies with writing systems tend to develop more smoothly and faster into more sophisticated civilizations. However, linguistically speaking, languages without a writing systems are by no means more primitive or naive than the languages with a writing tradition. Those languages are equally equipped with the adequate phonological, syntactical and semantic systems to enable the learning of modern technology, though they may not have the necessary terminology vocabulary yet. Societies without writing traditions still have their own belief and traditions,by sagas, oral traditions or paintings. However, the memory of a given individual may be a little too limited to absorb all the wisdom of the past, so perhaps that's why societies without writing systems tend to be more primitive and we know that there are tribes in Africa, who don't have writing systems, preserve in a lot of ways the old way of living as people from thousands of years ago.

However,the prevalence of literacy does matter to the first question. In a society where only a few people are literate, most of the common people don't have access to the past wisdom or knowledge and so they may not be able to use it to solve many daily problems and therefore most of the people would still be living in a relatively primitive way.It seemed to be a universal fact for ancient civilizations that the literacy rate was all relatively low and literacy was a privilege of the nobles. A society with a higher literacy rate is more equipped to advance faster in science or technology in a sense that the wisdom of the common people can also be preserved and their solutions or devices to solve the problems of agriculture or other fields of life may turn into documented science more easily and the task of advancing science is not so heavily loaded on just a few elites. From what we have discussed in class, there doesn't seem to be a fundamental change in the Egyptian society slightly before or after the invention of writing. Old Kingdom is still within the Naqada culture and it's part of it. The way that people lived back then in Egypt, at least for the commoners,might not have change much in terms of material culture. But about their thoughts and beliefs? Would there be a greater sense of social hierarchy after the invention of writing? Would inscripted words affect the way people commemorate important events or leaders?

Writings allow us to have a direct contact with the more abstract thoughts of a certain culture. For example, when people talk about ancient China, they may immediately think of the ancient clothes, porcelain, palaces, temples or monuments. Although these material things do constitute a large part of what ancient China was like, there seemed to be something missing, namely the essence of the culture, the central beliefs, morals and value system of the ancient Chinese society. Writings allow us to have direct understanding of what the ancient thought and believed. This is something that is really a little too abstract to be deductible from mere material archaeological evidence in a sense in my opinion.

As for the final question, as Julia has pointed out above, the written evidence from early Egypt is very limited. Professor Bestock also mentioned in class that there was no attempt to write a full sentence in this stage of the written language, so there is really the writing of the thoughts that can communicate to us directly intellectually from this period. But perhaps, as a very vague guess, the choice of certain symbols to represent certain concepts, such as some sacred birds for royalty or plants for other concepts may convey to us some basic attitude or feelings that the ancient Egyptian people in this period had towards these everyday phenomena.

Posted at Feb 12/2010 12:03AM:

katherine Davis: In response to the first question about a fundamental difference between literate and non-literate societies and the third question, I think perhaps the most relevant distinction is not so much in the societies themselves, but in what information about those societies we can access and how we can access it. The lure of writing from an outsider’s perspective is that it seems to offer the perfect window into the society, particularly to aspects and nuances that the material record cannot fully supply. And while texts can and do convey a wealth of information, the issue is rarely as simple as that. Any particular piece of writing must be contextualized, in terms of author, audience, and purpose. Writing is not a direct, all-access pass to the mind of an ancient Egyptian. Personal, political, social, linguistic, and religious reasons all affect what is written and how it is written. As Baines discussed briefly in the article on early Egyptian art and writing, modes of expression are often restricted in terms of content and audience—an issue which continues throughout Egyptian history.

Specifically for early Egyptian writing, accessing such complex information is extremely difficult, because the writing is so basic. The labels, like the ones from U-j, appear to be administrative in function because they seem to indicate ownership, specific contents or amounts but even that is not always entirely clear. Certainly the presence of material goods indicates some ability by a leader to requisition materials (regardless of whether it can be seem as actually taxation at this time or not), but the funerary context makes me wonder if the use of the label could have been more ritualistic than administrative—a sort of precursor to the tomb scenes and inscriptions of later periods.