The rise, zenith and fall of writing systems.

The rise, zenith and fall of writing systems. STEPHEN HOUSTON (ed.). The first writing: script invention ashistory and process, xviii+418 pages, 123 illustrations, 2 tables. Firstpaperback edition 2008 (first published in hardback in 2004, reprintedin 2005). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 978-0-521-83861-0hardback 59 [pounds sterling] & $105; 978-0-521-72826-3 paperback17.99 [pounds sterling] & $32.95. JOHN BAINES, JOHN BENNET & STEPHEN HOUSTON (ed.). Thedisappearance of writing systems: perspectives on literacy andcommunication, xviii+380 pages, 61 illustrations, 8 tables. 2008.London: Equinox; 978-1-84553-013-6 hardback 65 [pounds sterling]. JOHN BAINES. Visual & written culture in Ancient Egypt.xviii+420 pages, 52 illustrations, 2 tables. 2007. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press; 978-0-19-815250-7 hardback 75 [pounds sterling]. Uniting all three books under review is one central theme, writing,but there is an interesting divergence in their focus on this topic. Thefirst two are cross-cultural in their treatment, the third is anin-depth look at the phenomenon as it pertains to a single culture.While The first writing casts its net widely, yet loosely, concentratingon the emergence of writing in chosen regions around the world, Thedisappearance of writing systems, no less global in its range, takes upthe long-neglected study of the opposite end of the developmentalspectrum, the decline and fall of writing systems. Visual and writtenculture in ancient Egypt, on the other hand, covers the entire sweep ofwritten history and culture, but in the framework of a single casestudy. The two books dealing with the beginning and end of a writingtradition overlap to an extent in the writing systems discussed and inthe authors (John Baines and Jerrold Cooper on Egypt and Mesopotamiarespectively, Elizabeth Boone and Stephen Houston on northern andsouthern Mesoamerica) chosen to discuss them. Thus, one can expect themto have benefited greatly from an ongoing exchange of perspectives. Thisis all the more important, given that the study of writing from atypological and developmental perspective is relatively new, in a fieldlong dominated by Ignace Gelb's A study of writing (1952) and by ageneral tendency to treat the subject from a heavily Eurocentric andNear Eastern standpoint, with one overriding theme, the origin anddevelopment of the alphabet. Gelb's monograph was an attempt toapply ideas honed in connection with Ancient Near Eastern scripts towriting systems in general, but suffered from the author's (oftengrave) unfamiliarity with systems outside his focal area and from hisinability to avoid cultural bias in his analysis of, for example, theChinese and Maya systems. Most works on the general subject of writingtend even today to pay far more attention to the traditional fieldsploughed intensively for most of the twentieth century, and the yield ofsuch fields has, accordingly, for the most part nurtured only regionalspecialists. It is, however, fair to say that, beginning around 1980, there hasbeen a concerted effort to adjust focus and look further afield. Thishas involved, among other things, inviting specialists with expertise inEast Asian, American and African writing systems to contribute to thediscussion. Recent international conferences devoted to the study ofwriting in comparative perspective, two in the USA and UK, the productsof which are the edited volumes presented here, and no fewer than threein China, have steadily enhanced our understanding of the nature andvariability of this most far-reaching of communication systems. The first writing So, just how balanced is the coverage offered by these studies? InThe first writing, one chapter each is devoted to the origins ofcuneiform and Egyptian writing, one to the decipherment of theProto-Elamite script of south-western Iran, two to the Shang system, twoto Mesoamerican systems, and, somewhat curiously, given that it ishardly to be regarded as a pristine script, one to Germanic runes. Thetwo chapters on Mesoamerica focus on different areas (Yucatan andCentral Mexico) with quite distinct types of graphic communication, someof which have more to do with iconography and notation than withwriting, whereas the two on Shang China discuss one and the same scriptand period. It is difficult to understand the reason for this overlap(and for the disappointingly limited depth of Francoise Bottero'scontribution on the characteristics and building blocks of Shangwriting), especially when one considers the fact that other regions areleft completely unrepresented. This is particularly serious with regardto Africa, which has received precious little attention to date. It isalso surprising that the controversial invention of the Cherokeesyllabary of North America failed to make it into the volume. Itsmonolingual Cherokee inventor was aware of the existence of the Englishwriting system but unfamiliar with its principles and with the languageit represents--thus a prime instance of stimulus diffusion. This scriptsurely has more relevance to the topic of the volume than runes, awell-studied alphabet derived from a similar alphabet. And, if aEuropean alphabet had to be included, then the Ogam script of InsularCeltic would have provided more evidence for innovation in form andusage, not least in its biplanar occurrence along, and straddling, theedge of a stone. There is no clear pattern to the coverage, nor to theorder of chapters in the volume, which jumps back and forthgeographically and chronologically. There are a few surprises in The first writing. One is surely theintroductory statement by the editor (p. 13) that 'Seers ratherthan technocrats may have been the more likely creators ofscripts', a conclusion that may reasonably, but not necessarilycorrectly, be drawn with respect to Shang writing, given its closeassociation with oracles and ancestor worship, but is hardly valid inthe case of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Proto-Elamite and runic scripts.Another surprise is the lack of adequate discussion of the origins ofcuneiform, one of the two earliest systems of writing (the other beingEgyptian) ever to have developed, and for this reason crucial to anunderstanding of the paths leading to writing. The author of the chapteron 'Babylonian beginnings: the origin of the cuneiform writingsystem', Jerrold Cooper, an excellent Sumerologist, exhibits onlycursory familiarity with the earliest Mesopotamian system known asproto-cuneiform. It is unfortunate that Robert Englund, the author ofthe masterful chapter on Proto-Elamite but also the world's leadingexpert on proto-cuneiform, did not co-write this section. The keycontroversy surrounding the origins of writing in Mesopotamia centres onthe Sumerian Question, specifically the debate as to whether writingevolved in a monolingual (Sumerian) or in a multiethnic, multilingualenvironment, such as has been characteristic of Iraq throughout history.Englund has found no evidence for Sumerian in the proto-cuneiformrecord, but his well-considered and highly informed position is a loneone in Assyriology, not because there is widespread familiarity withproto-cuneiform and good evidence for the counter-position, but becausehis findings are perceived as a threat to the decades-old status quo. Itwould, thus, have been instructive and helpful in sharpening ourunderstanding of the arguments and evidence, as viewed from each side ofthe debate, if Cooper had provided us with a detailed exposition of whythe consensus opinionis should be maintained. Regrettably, all he has tosay on this is buried in footnote 26 (pp. 97-8): 'This[Englund's point that the pictorial forms of proto-cuneiform signslack an obvious relationship to Sumerian words they represent in latertimes] is a strong argument to contend with (see also Englund in thisvolume), but wrong, I think'. No reason why it might be wrong isgiven, thus generating more frustration than enlightenment. The disappearance of writing systems In contrast to the latter work, The disappearance of writingsystems is arranged in a rough but consistent chronological progressionand is considerably more ambitious both in its geographical scope and inits presentation. While the book is heavily slanted towards EastMediterranean and Near Eastern systems, which make up the bulk of thecase studies, we are, nevertheless, provided with a battery ofinstructive and impressive discussions of the decline of scripts: (1)Mediterranean: Linear A, early Italian (pre-Roman to Roman) scripts; (2)Near Eastern: Hieroglyphic Luwian, cuneiform Elamite, Babyloniancuneiform, Egyptian, Arabian scripts; (3) African: Meroitic; (4) Southand Central Asian: Kharosti; (5) East Asian: Manchu; (6) Mesoamerican: Maya, CentralMexican writing and iconography; and (6) one South American non-scriptused in state administration: the Andean khipu (or quipu). Especially thought-provoking is Richard Salomon's chapter onKharosti, in which he reviews what he sees as the three basic types ofenvironment conducive to script loss: (a) 'civilizationalshifts', occurring when a 'radically different culture isadopted or imposed'--his examples being Egyptian and cuneiform; (b)'a general collapse of the society'--exemplified by Mayan,'Cretan Linear B' (sic, presumably Minoan Linear A, ratherthan Mycenaean Linear B) and the Indus Valley script; and, to a farlesser extent, (c) dynastic change or decline--represented byHieroglyphic Luwian, Kharosti and Old Persian. Unfortunately, thesetypes, or at least the assignment of specific instances of script changeand disappearance to them, are often anything but clearcut. Where, forexample, do we draw the line between the adoption or imposition of aradically different culture (without undergoing conquest) on the onehand, and the same in the aftermath of conquest on the other? Is theshift from Egyptian to Coptic writing really more an instance of theadoption of a radically different culture than the shift of hieroglyphicto alphabetic Mayan in the face of Spanish domination? In both instancesthe shift took place over time and after the imposition of foreign(Ptolemaic Greek, then imperial Roman, vs. Spanish) rule. Moreover, isthe disappearance of Hieroglyphic Luwian more an instance of simpledynastic change or decline than of the 'destruction by theAssyrians of the states, or perhaps more specifically the dynastieswhich used it' (Hawkins, p. 41)? As for the Indus Valley system,the jury is still out on the question of whether we are dealing with acase of writing (rather than iconography), and thus its value in thediscussion of types is limited. The complex nature of the relationshipof scribal elites to ruling and religious elites and of these tocultural policy and change has yet to be properly assessed in acoordinated fashion, although this volume does indeed go a long waytowards providing the groundwork for such an analysis. While bothcomparative volumes are more interested in the origins and disappearanceof writing as a process (thus the subtitle of the first volume), itshould not be forgotten that we are still very much in the dark withrespect to the onset of the earliest stage of writing, which may havebeen as much an event as a process. That is, the basic structure of awriting system may well have been the result of a conscious event ofinvention, as myth often suggests. We just do not know in many cases. Welack evidence for this earliest stage in China and Mesoamerica, and itis debatable whether we have enough evidence to decide the matter inregard to Mesopotamia and Egypt. It would have been useful to have had adiscussion of known instances of script invention (e.g. the Cherokeescript again) and of script repression. By the same token, it would havebeen advisable to include at least one instance of the discarding of awriting system as the result of internal policy--that is, as apolitically driven event, as in the case of the Arabic-based OttomanTurkish script in the early twentieth century, touched on only brieflyin Baines' summary chapter. The replacement of the Ottoman scriptwith a Latin-based one effectively cut off Turkish society from itsliterary and religious heritage, since the average Turk is now unable toread texts of the pre-Ataturk era, and most such works have never beentransposed into the new script. The Egyptian context One of the primary contributors to both volumes, John Baines, isalso the author of Visual & written culture in Ancient Egypt, ahandsome and well-balanced assessment of the nature and contexts ofwriting in, and the impact of writing on, Egyptian society and culture.Although the cover and title page fail to announce it, this excellenttome is for the most part a collection of republished essays. Addressedto non-Egyptologists, most predate 1990, but one, Chapter 6 entitled'Orality and literacy', has never appeared in print before.Although there have only been minimal adjustments made to harmonise thecollection and to bring the information up to date, the essays providevaluable glimpses into virtually all major aspects of writing inEgyptian culture down into the Graeco-Roman period. Of great interest tolinguistic comparativists and anthropologists will be the chapter oncolour terminology and classification. The volume as a whole,complemented by Baines' incisive articles in the first two works,is compelling reading for all those interested in the transformations inthe phenomenon of writing over a span of three millennia within a singleculture. Summing up, all three books are important and indispensiblecontributions to the still-fledgling study of writing and can be highlyrecommended to all. Gordon Whittaker, Linguistische Anthropologie und Altamerikanistik,Seminar fir Romanische Philologie, Universitat Gottingen, Humboldtallee19, 37073 Gottingen, Germany (Email: gwhitta@gwdg.de)