People...
We hit a topic which required either that George was with us or more research. George wasn't
there so I did the research! It is only outline but should give you some idea of the situation.
George can correct me as and if necessary
The question was about the antiquity of writing - context being Moses and the first five books Moses (1600-1300BC depending on dating you accept) and a modern perception that there was
little or no writing at that period - this is just a brief note lifted and summarised from several
articles on writing and scripts which shows that writing is far older than that. I hope you find it
helpful
EGYPT - HIEROGLYPHS and PAPYRUS
Egyptologists refer to Egyptian writing as hieroglyphs , today it is seen as one of the world's
earliest known writing system. The hieroglyphic script was partly syllabic, partly ideographic.
Then came 'Hieratic' which is a cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphs and was first used during
the First Dynasty (c. 2925 BC – c. 2775 BC). Then the term Demotic (in the context of Egypt)
came to refer to both the script and the language that followed the Late Ancient Egyptian stage,
i.e. from around 2000BC until its marginalization by the Greek Koine in the early centuries AD .
After the conquest of Amr ibn al-A'as in the 7th century AD, the Coptic language survived as a
spoken language into the Middle Ages . Today, it continues to be the liturgical language of the
Christian minority.
For many years, the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during
excavations at Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar) in the 1890s , which has been dated to
c.3200 BC . However recent archaeological findings reveal that symbols on Gerzean pottery,
c.4000 BC, resemble the traditional hieroglyph forms Also in 1998 a German archaeological team
under Gunter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab uncovered tomb U-j which
belonged to a Predynastic ruler, and they recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with
proto-hieroglyphics dating to circa 33rd century BC
Beginning from around 2700 BC , Egyptians used pictograms to represent vocal sounds -- both
vowel and consonant vocalizations. By 2000 BC, 26 pictograms were being used to represent
24 (known) main vocal sounds. The world's oldest known alphabet (c. 1800 BC ) is only an abjad
(consonantal) system and was derived from these uniliteral signs as well as other Egyptian
hieroglyphs
The hieroglyphic script finally fell out of use around the 4th century AD (most recent datable script
is AD396). Attempts to decipher it began after the 15th century and were aided by the discovery
of the Rosetta Stone (around 200BC – has the same text in 3 languages - Hieroglyphic, Demotic
Egyptian and Greek)
As an example of the available Literature
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c. 1800 BC : Story of Sinuhe (about 4000 words in translation) and Ipuwer papyrus
(about 6350 words in translation)
c. 1600 BC : Westcar Papyrus (3 stories - may be more than 1000 years old when
written down in this papyrus - about 2800 words in translation)
c. 1600 BC: Edwin Smith Papyrus (may be as early as 1750 - 22 pages of medical
text)
c. 1600 BC : Eberus Papyrus ( extensive medical text of 110 pages - dated varyingly
1650 to 1300 but probably before 1350)
I stopped there in searching - for with even the early date for Moses we have a papyrus of 20 odd
pages, and for the late date one of more than 110 pages. I believe that preparation and use of
papyrus was still at this period restricted to the Pharoahs. If so; it is part of God's provision that
Moses was bought up in the Pharoanic household adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. I am not
saying that Moses wrote in Hieroglyphic - although he could have - merely that papyrus scripts
long enough for the books of the Pentateuch existed in his time.
----------------------------The texts found in Canaan of the Mosiac period are either different hieroglyph scripts similar to
Egyptian, or a cuneiform script similar to those of Babylonian origin, or a Canaanite linear script
thought to be the precursor of both Hebrew and Greek ( it is thought to be a Semitic version of
Phoenician) and a couple of other different scripts *** NB. Semitic here refers to descendents of
Shem, not merely Hebrews1
What is or is not ‘Canaanite’? Within the general group of the NW Semitic languages and
dialects is biblical Hebrew and the W Semitic (The Tel el Amarna tablets can correctly be termed
‘S Canaanite’) along with Moabite and Phoenician. Separate but related are Aramaic and Ya’udic.
Between these two groups comes Ugaritic. Some think that Ugaritic is Canaanite to be classed
with Hebrew, etc. Ugaritic itself betrays historical development linguistically, and thus the Ugaritic
of the 14th/13th centuries BC is closer to Hebrew than is the archaic language of the great epics.
Hence it is possible to view NW Semitic as including S Canaanite (Hebrew, etc.), N Canaanite
(Ugaritic) and Aramaic.
----------------------------As it is quite reasonable that the Semitic origin of Israel (Abraham came from Ur) might lead to a
Babylonian based script then I looked at Cuneiform. Biblical Hebrew Script is clearly derived from
a 'cut into stone' or 'drawn onto clay' alphabet. (see Job 19:23-24)
BABYLON CUNEIFORM and TABLETS
The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Created by the
Sumerians in the late 4th millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs.
Over time, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract.
Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed called a
stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name
cuneiform, "wedge-writing" Cuneiform pictograms were drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns
with a pen made from a sharpened reed stylus.
Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, or they could be recycled
if permanence was not needed. Many of the tablets found by archaeologists were preserved
because they were baked when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept.
Cunieform was first used by the Babylonians and later on was adapted and used by the
Assyrians. Invented by the Babylonians to record the Sumerian language, cuneiform was
1
In Genesis 10:21-31 Shem is described as the father of Aram, Asshur, and others: the Biblical
ancestors of the Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews, etc.,
all of whose languages are closely related; the language family containing them was therefore
named Semitic by linguists. However, the Canaanites and Amorites also spoke a language
belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics despite being
described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See Sons of Noah). Shem is also described in Genesis as
the father of the Elamites and the descendants of Lud, whose languages were not Semitic. (by
contrast; anti-Semitic almost always means anti-Jewish)
subsequently adopted by the Akkadians, Elamites, Hittites and Assyrians to write their own
languages and was widely used in Mesopotamia for about 3000 years (from about 3000BC) ,
though the syllabic nature of the script as it was refined by the Sumerians was unintuitive to the
Semitic speakers.
Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian
script. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary, together with
logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both
a syllabic and logographic meaning. When the cuneiform script was adapted to writing the Hittite
language, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings was added to the script, with the result that
we no longer know the pronunciations of many Hittite words conventionally written by logograms.
The complexity of the system prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the
script. Old Persian was written in a subset of simplified cuneiform characters, that formed a
simple, semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together
with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" and "king." The Ugaritic (a
city in Canaan) language was written using the Ugaritic alphabet, a standard Semitic style
alphabet (an abjad - consonants only) written using the cuneiform method.
-----------------------------------Written Hebrew as we know it is more difficult - the earliest known text is just pre-exilic (say about
620BC certainly after 800BC) and even that is described as 'paleo-hebrew script' - even Christian
resources doubt the existence of written Hebrew as we now know it much before that time. So we
do not know what Moses wrote in. I would guess a cuneiform script rather than hieroglyphics - but
we must remember that he was brought up in Egypt - we just do not know.
However, what is beyond dispute is that writing in the area of the Middle East had existed for at
least 1000 years before Moses - if not nearly 2000 years; and that extensive writings on papyrus
were known at least 400 years before Moses
Just to put it into context:
Earliest pictograms are Sumerian Cuneiform (3400BC although stylised shapes for manufactured
articles on Sumerian Pottery go back to 6000BC and for farm produce to 9000BC)
Earliest Hieroglyphs in Egypt are around 3300BC although some proto-hieroglyphs are known
from about 4000BC
Formalised Chinese script dates from around 221BC but the Earliest Chinese pictograms are
from around 1600BC
Mayan and American pictographical scenes may date back about 1500 years to say AD400
(certainly later than Moronai's gold sheets!!) (see Mormonism)
Written Sanskrit was in well established form when the earliest of the Vedas - the RigVeda - was
written between 1500-1300BC -consisting of more than 1000 hymns in 10 books (mandalas) little
is known about the development of the written language but a book of that length implies the
probability of several cenuries of development = Note, it is thought that indo spoken languages
are the root-source of most, if not all, of our european spoken languages