home Cosmetics When did writing appear in the ancient world? The most ancient writing on Earth

When did writing appear in the ancient world? The most ancient writing on Earth

The Black Book of Prayers of Maria Sforza. 1466-1476 Miniaturist Philippe Maceroles. The book was created in Bruges for the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bald. Black paper, gold, silver

Writing, as already mentioned, is one of the main signs of the emergence of civilization, demonstrating general level cultural development. Writing can only arise in a society that has “grown up” to the awareness of the need to store information in a form that is not subject to distortion - in contrast to oral speech. The first written monuments are the inscriptions of the owners of objects on seals, dedications to the gods, financial reports of the first government officials. Later ones are chronicles and memorial inscriptions of kings and noble people.

School notebook. Egypt. Wood paint

Writing is not only a sign of civilization in general. This is, first of all, an indicator of the level of independence of a culture. Using a borrowed script, a people forms a single civilizational space with another people or peoples and is subject to their cultural influence. If, for some time, its own writing system dominates, it means that civilization arose separately, albeit later, and was subject to external influence. The unity of the writing system allows us to outline the boundaries of civilization. Thus, the Western European civilization of the Middle Ages can be called Latin. All nations Western Europe Then the Latin alphabet was in use, which they still use to this day. Moreover, in the Middle Ages the spread of the alphabet was accompanied by the spread of Latin as a language of literature and official documents. In ancient times, in the Middle East, a similar common writing system was Mesopotamian cuneiform for a long time, and then the Aramaic script, which was born in Syria, spread even more widely. Moreover, the latter also spread along with the language.

With the advent of writing, ancient people began to “speak” to the researcher with living voices. Many elements of a bygone reality, which one could only guess about, are now clearly and literally spelled out in the sources. History begins to be told, and the presentation created by contemporaries falls into the hands of a modern specialist without distortion. The importance of written monuments for the study of history is so great that the era preceding its emergence is often called prehistory.

Cuneiform inscription from the palace of Darius I. Persepolis. VI century BC e.

But the appearance of writing in no way diminishes the importance of material monuments and the work of an archaeologist. Yes, the interpretation of many archaeological finds is facilitated by the existence of written data. But the most ancient written monuments themselves became known only thanks to archaeologists. The earliest manuscripts from European libraries and archives date back only to the 3rd-4th centuries, although they are often copies of older ones. A huge mass of the most ancient written monuments comes from the so-called epigraphy - the science of inscriptions on stone and various objects, in other words, about inscriptions made with an unconventional tool on unconventional writing material. Many of them have survived to this day and did not need to be searched, but most were still discovered by archaeologists in different parts of the globe. As a result of archaeological excavations, scientists found clay tablets from Western Asia, as well as papyri from Egypt, manuscripts on ox skin (parchment) dating back to the new era.

Pictograms and symbols of the Apache Indians. XIX century

It was thanks to archaeological finds that the history of ancient civilizations was recreated.

The manuscripts from the turn of the new era found by archaeologists, among other things, proved the unconditional authenticity of those monuments of ancient Greek and Roman literature that were preserved in copies of the Middle Ages. It has now been established as a reliable fact - in ancient centers civilization, the written tradition has not been interrupted since the end of the 4th millennium BC. e.

Man, of course, long before the advent of writing, felt the need to preserve information. Over the centuries, in one way or another, the tribe accumulated so much necessary information that the memory of oral storytellers could no longer accommodate it. This became the reason for the emergence of pictography - “picture writing”. Pictography is not yet writing itself. A pictographic chronicle, for example, is a chain of drawings, each of which depicts some significant event in the life of the tribe. Looking at such a painting, the keeper of legends remembered the sequence of facts that he had to tell about. Over time, the drawings become more and more simple and schematic, symbolic. Thus, in the “pictorial chronicle” North American Indians the image of a swan with its head lowered into the water meant the year of death of the leader named Swan. The so-called phraseography appears - with this system of “pictorial writing” an entire text is reflected, where each sentence corresponds to a special drawing.

Papyrus. “Book of the Dead” with the image of a priest of the god Amon. Egypt

The most culturally developed peoples of the world at the end of the Neolithic moved from pictography to ideography, or hieroglyphs. Ideography is already a writing system in the proper sense of the word. In it, the entire text is clearly and unambiguously conveyed through ideograms - fixed signs of one meaning or another. Unlike modern letters, ideograms, however, did not denote sounds, but entire words or roots of words, as well as numbers. To record proper names, as a rule, combinations of ideograms that were suitable in sound or meaning were used. Another name for ideograms, “hieroglyphs” (“sacred carving”), dates back to the ancient Greeks. This is what they called the mysterious Egyptian writing, which in the last centuries BC was understandable only to local priests.

Almost every center of independent development of civilization had its own system of hieroglyphic writing. However, scientists have not yet established who owns the palm. It is only clear that hieroglyphs originated in different, even neighboring regions, independently of each other.

Clay cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia

Many scientists consider the oldest writing to be the writing of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, known from the second half of the 4th millennium BC. e. But were the Sumerians its creators? Now there is more and more evidence that Mesopotamia is not the birthplace of “its own” writing. Symbolic “pictorial” signs, similar in design to Sumerian hieroglyphs, are found on vessels from the cultures of Asia Minor and the Balkans of the 7th-6th millennia BC. e.

In an ancient burial from the end of the 6th-5th millennium BC. e. On the territory of Romania, in Terteria, clay tablets with hieroglyphs were discovered. The find is extremely mysterious. The writing of the tablets resembles Sumerian (although it does not completely coincide with it). The material - clay - and the shape of the tablets are also quite “Sumerian”. But they were clearly not written in the Sumerian language and date back to a time much older than the most ancient monuments of Sumer. Many assumptions have been made about the mysterious tablets. Some scientists, for example, believe that the tablets are much younger than the burial. In any case, it is not yet clear how to interpret this find. However, recent research in Mesopotamia itself allows us to conclude that writing did not immediately become “Sumerian” and spread from the north. The Terterian tablets, if their date is correct, are the oldest written monument in the world.

As Mesopotamian writing developed, its signs, at first quite “pictorial,” became increasingly simplified. This was facilitated by the fact that from the 3rd millennium BC. e. extruded onto clay using a primitive wedge-shaped tool. Hence the name "cuneiform". The cuneiform image naturally moved away from “dramatic” accuracy, no longer conveying the true appearance of the object behind the root of the word (say, the figure of a farmer or a human head). Having simplified, writing became available for transmitting words and syllables of a foreign language. Cuneiform is borrowed by numerous peoples of the Middle East. Moreover, some of them previously had their own hieroglyphic system. The Elamites in southwest Iran and the Hattians in Asia Minor had their own hieroglyphs.

Egyptian funerary stele depicting sacrificial offerings to the god Osiris

In Egypt, hieroglyphic writing also arose in the 4th millennium BC. e. and existed without much change until the beginning of a new era. Here the main materials for writing were stone and papyrus. The icons were cut out or painted, while maintaining their “dramatic” accuracy and complexity. That is why Egyptian writing was not accepted by neighboring peoples, and then was gradually forgotten in Egypt itself, becoming part of the “sacred” priestly knowledge.

Other centers also had their own systems of hieroglyphs ancient civilizations. This was the case in millennia BC. e. in the Indus Valley (the so-called Proto-Indian writing), and in the 2nd-1st millennia BC. e. in South Arabia.

The oldest writing in Europe (not counting the mysterious tablets from Terteria) was the so-called Minoan hieroglyphic letter (see the article “Bull and Lion: Cretan-Mycenaean Civilization”). Its few monuments are scattered across the Aegean islands, Crete and Cyprus. The most famous, with which, in fact, the discovery of the letter is connected, is a disk with a circular inscription from the Cretan Fest. This writing system was replaced by the “linear writing” of the ancient Greek civilizations. It no longer used ideograms, but geometric symbols denoting syllables. A similar syllabary transitional to the alphabet is known to some other peoples of the Mediterranean.

The most widespread and surviving system of hieroglyphic writing is Chinese. It originated in the 1st millennium BC. e. and has come a long way in historical development. From the very beginning, Chinese hieroglyphs were distinguished by their simplicity and schematic designs and were quickly adapted to convey syllables. In addition, due to the isolation and originality of Chinese culture, the local hieroglyphs did not have to compete with alphabets. Chinese ideography not only survived, but was adopted in the Middle Ages by neighboring peoples: the Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese. In Japan, they still use one of the varieties of Chinese writing. However, Chinese ideographic writing was not the only one in the Far East. In the 70s XX century monuments of an independent hieroglyphic system of the 2nd - 1st millennia BC. e. discovered by Chinese archaeologists south of the Yangtze River, where the ancestors of the Thai and Vietnamese tribes lived in ancient times.

Utagama Kunisada. Festival of painting and calligraphy at the Manpashiro tea house. 1827

The Indian civilizations of Ancient America also had their own hieroglyphic writing. The oldest - Olmec - appeared in Mexico in the 2nd - early 1st millennium BC. e. The hieroglyphs of other Indian peoples of Central America go back to the Olmec writing: Mayans, Mixtecs, Zapotecs. IN South America at the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. e. The Aymara Indians created their own hieroglyphics (kelka). But in the 15th century, when the Aymara state was conquered by the Incas, all written monuments that testified to the greatness of the former culture were destroyed by the conquerors. Only three small kelka inscriptions dating back to before the 16th century have reached us.

The center for the further development of writing from ideography to alphabet became the lands along the eastern and northeastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It was here that linear and syllabic writing systems arose, already much simpler than the cumbersome hieroglyphic writing, consisting of many thousands of characters. The most developed of the “maritime” peoples of the Middle East were the Phoenicians (lived in Lebanon) at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. created the first alphabetic letter. In it, each sign corresponded to a specific sound. The alphabetic text is much longer than the hieroglyphic text, but there are hundreds of times fewer characters in it, so it is much easier to memorize them.

All currently numerous alphabetic writing systems, including ancient Greek, go back to the Phoenician alphabet. The word “alphabet” itself appeared in Greece - it comes from the name of the first letters “alpha” and “beta” (in the Middle Ages “vita”). From the Greek alphabet came the most common writing systems in medieval Europe - the Latin alphabet and the Slavic Cyrillic alphabet, which is also used in Russia.

Borgia Code. Vatican Library. XIII century

The presence of written monuments clarifies a lot for the historian about the past. But they also pose many difficult questions. Many ancient monuments are written not just on the “dead”, but on completely unknown people. modern world languages. Others (say, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic monuments) are written in a language that is generally understandable. But the writing system itself died long ago, and this “availability” still had to be established. So, after the discovery of a monument of ancient writing by an archaeologist, it is the turn of its “reader”-decipherer. Deciphering unknown writing systems has long been an important area of linguistics.

The main help for the decipherer are the so-called bilinguals - monuments in which the same text is given in two languages or two writing systems. Bilinguals were quite common in the Middle East, where different writing systems existed in parallel. The role of bilinguals can also be played by dictionaries, which for the same reasons were actively created in the ancient Middle Eastern states. A real success for a historian is the discovery of a trilingual, that is, a matching text in three different written versions.

The decipherment of ancient Egyptian writing once began with the trilingua. The inscription on the so-called Rosetta Stone fell into the hands of the French explorer Jean François Champollion (1790 - 1832). On this basalt slab the same inscription was repeated in Greek and ancient Egyptian. Moreover, one version of the Egyptian text was written in a well-known local alphabetic script, and the other - in hieroglyphs that were mysterious to the science of that time. Reading the Rosetta inscription made it possible to determine the main features of hieroglyphic writing and decipher it.

Greek letter. Stone. Louvre. Paris. 475 BC e.

A large number of dictionaries, bilinguals and trilinguals went to archaeologists who carried out excavations in Mesopotamia and other areas of Western Asia. Among them, a special place is occupied by the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved on the high Behistun rock near the city of Hamadan in Iran. This memorial inscription about the victories of the Persian king at the end of the 6th century. BC e. Darius I was read by the English scientist Henry Creswick Rawlinson (1810 - 1895). She provided the key to deciphering the cuneiform script of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. The logical result of this many years of work, climbing the chain of bilinguals and dictionaries, was the discovery of a previously unknown and unrelated famous language- Sumerian.

In cases where scientists do not have bilinguals at their disposal, they have to decipher the writings based on the texts themselves. Then the nature of the writing, the composition of the texts, and information about the culture that gave birth to them are subject to careful study. If it is possible to determine the intended meaning of at least one text (for example, a frequently repeated list of twelve to thirteen words can be a designation of months), the so-called artificial bilingual falls into the hands of scientists. If, with its help, texts begin to be read, and not only by the discoverer himself, then the right path has been chosen. The honor of developing this method belongs to the Russian scientist Yuri Knorozov (1922-1999), who studied the civilizations of Central America. The methodology he developed is successfully used by his students and followers in the study of Proto-Indian, Minoan and Rapanui writing.

Lecture No. 1. History of the emergence of writing

Writing, like sound speech, is a means of communication between people, and serves to transmit thoughts at a distance and consolidate them in time. Writing is part of the general culture of a given people, and therefore part of world culture. The history of world writing knows the following main types of writing:

pictographic,

ideographic,

syllabic,

letter-sound.

Pictographic(pictorial) - the most ancient letter in the form of rock paintings primitive people;

Ideographic (hieroglyphic) – writing from the era of early statehood and the emergence of trade (Egypt, China). IN IV-III millennia BC. e. V Ancient Sumer(Anterior Asia), in Ancient Egypt, and then, in II, and in Ancient China A different way of writing arose: each word was conveyed by a picture, sometimes concrete, sometimes conventional. For example, when talking about a hand, a hand was drawn, and water was depicted as a wavy line. A certain symbol also denoted a house, a city, a boat... The Greeks called such Egyptian drawings hieroglyphs: “hiero” - “sacred”, “glyphs” - “carved on stone”. The text, composed in hieroglyphs, looks like a series of drawings. This letter can be called: “I’m writing a concept” or “I’m writing an idea” (hence the scientific name for such writing - “ideographic”).

An extraordinary achievement of human civilization was the so-called syllabary, the invention of which took place throughout III-II millennia BC. e. Each stage in the development of writing recorded a certain result in the advancement of humanity along the path of logical abstract thinking. First is the division of the phrase into words, then the free use of pictures-words, the next step is the division of the word into syllables. We speak in syllables, and children are taught to read in syllables. It would seem that it could be more natural to organize the recording by syllables! And there are many fewer syllables than the words composed with their help. But it took many centuries to come to such a decision. Syllabic writing was already used in III-II millennia BC. e. in the Eastern Mediterranean. For example, the famous cuneiform.(They still write in syllabic form in India and Ethiopia.)

letter-sound(phonemic) writing expressing the phonemic composition of a language. Phonemes represent individual speech sounds and can vary depending on pronunciation. Our writing cannot convey all the sound nuances of the language and is intended only to differentiate (distinguish) words.

The Russian alphabet has 33 characters, while the phonemic structure of the language consists of 39 phonemes.

Letter-sound writing system- the basis of the writing of many peoples of the world, the linguistic specificity of which is reflected in the phonographic composition of their alphabets. So in the Latin alphabet - 23 characters, in Italian – 21 , Czech – 38, Armenian – 39 .etc.

The characters of the alphabet are graphically different from each other and in their simplest form represent graphemes(the unchanging form of the letters included in the alphabet, without taking into account style, typeface and other forms).

The graphematic composition of the alphabet has evolved over many centuries based on the requirements of a particular language, the requirements for ease of writing and reading.

First letter alphabet appeared around 16 in. BC. It is known that the Semitic tribes who lived on Sinai Peninsula, adopted a whole series of ideogram signs from Egyptian writing, denoting with them the first sounds of the names of certain objects. This is how the original alphabetic letter arose.

Phoenicians, having adopted and improved it, they in turn served as intermediaries in the movement of letter-sound writing from the South-Eastern Mediterranean to the Greeks.

The earliest Greek letters appeared in 8th century BC, but only to 4th century before ours eras have acquired relative completeness, graphic simplicity and clarity.

IN 3rd century BC exists and Latin alphabet. The Latins (residents of Rome and its environs, hence the name Latin) borrowed the Etruscan alphabet, which was based on the Greek. At the turn of the new era, writing was located between two rulers, was continuous, there were no intervals between words, and the geometric shapes of letters made writing difficult.

The creation of the alphabet of the Slavic-Russian writing system - “Cyrillic” refers to by the end of 9th beginning of 10th century. Creators Slavic alphabet based on Byzantine writing there were brothers Kirill(Konstantin the Philosopher, he took the name Kirill not long before his death) and Methodius, natives of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki) in Macedonia. Slavic was their native language, and they received Greek upbringing and education.

Along with the Cyrillic alphabet, there was another alphabet - Glagolitic.

In Rus', the Glagolitic alphabet did not last long and was completely replaced by the Cyrillic letter. From the history of the Old Russian font, the main calligraphic variants of the Cyrillic alphabet stand out:

from the 11th century - charter letter(according to the oldest Russian manuscripts that have come down to us);

from the 14th century – half-tired, which served as a model for the first printed font in the middle 16th century;

at first 15th century are becoming widespread different kinds cursive writing

Charter– an early calligraphic form of the Cyrillic alphabet. The letters of the charter had almost square proportions and were distinguished by straightness and angularity of shape. They were placed freely in the line; there were no spaces between words.

An example of a classic charter letter is "Ostromir Gospel", written in 1056-1057 Deacon Gregory by order of the Novgorod mayor Ostromir. A charter letter is quite labor-intensive to write. The drawing of the letters of the charter required frequent changes in the position of the writing instrument. The letters were drawn with a pen rather than written.

Half-charter- a type of calligraphic version of the Cyrillic letter. The text, written half-written, has a lighter overall picture. The letters are rounder and smaller, words and sentences are separated by clear spaces, the style is simpler, more flexible and faster than in a statutory letter. Stroke contrast is less; the pen is sharpened sharper. Many abbreviations appear under the titles, as well as many different superscripts, accents (strengths) and a whole system of punctuation marks. The letter takes on a noticeable slant. The semi-statut existed as long as the handwritten book lived. It also served as the basis for the fonts of early printed books. The first printed book in Rus', “The Apostle,” was produced by the printer Ivan Fedorov in 1564.

Russian ligature- a special decorative letter used with 15th century mainly for highlighting titles. There are two types of ligature: round and angular(stamped). One of the main techniques of ligature is the mast ligature, in which two adjacent strokes (stamps) of two letters were turned into one. The voids formed in this case were filled with reduced oval or almond-shaped letters, as well as half-masts (half-bombers) of neighboring letters. Inscriptions made in gold or cinnabar carried a special artistic and decorative meaning in various written monuments.

Almost simultaneously with the formation of a semi-charter in a business letter, cursive, which quickly penetrates into books. Cursive 14th century very close to half-staff.

In the 15th century it becomes freer and becomes more widespread; Various charters, acts, and books are written with it. It turned out to be one of the most flexible types of Cyrillic writing.

In the 17th century cursive writing, distinguished by its special calligraphy and grace, has turned into an independent type of writing.

In the 17th century semi-charter, having passed from church books to office work, is transformed into civil letter. At this time, books of writing samples appeared - “The ABC of the Slavic Language...” (1653), primers by Karion Istomin (1694-1696) with magnificent samples of letters of various styles: from luxurious initials to simple cursive letters.

Alphabet and font reform carried out Peter I at the beginning of the 18th century. contributed to the spread of literacy and education. In shape, proportions and style, the civil font was close to the ancient serif. All secular literature, scientific and government publications began to be printed in the new font. The first books of the new type were published in Moscow in 1708

It is traditionally believed that the earliest written texts were compiled by the Egyptians almost 5 thousand years ago. The oldest records of the Sumerians who lived in Mesopotamia date back to this time. Both writing systems were developed independently of one another and almost simultaneously. However, some archaeological finds call into question this established system of views on the past.

What do we know about Transylvania? Just that it's ominous wild land vampires and werewolves, gypsies and villages lost in the valleys... However, there is another version, according to which Transylvania is an area where the world's oldest civilization once dominated and where the world's first written language originated.

The reason for such assumptions is given by the tablets that archaeologists found during excavations of Turdash Hill. Three tiny clay tablets with mysterious designs strikingly reminiscent of Sumerian writing from the late 4th millennium BC. Only in age these letters were much older. According to the most conservative estimates, they are almost seven thousand years old.

Scientists have long known that Turdash Hill is located twenty kilometers from Terteria, in the depths of which an ancient settlement of Neolithic farmers is buried. Excavations in this place have been carried out for decades. For the time being, archaeologists came across all sorts of ancient tools of labor and life of primitive people. In short, nothing unusual that deserves special attention.

True, pictographic signs scratched on some fragments of vessels aroused some interest. But scientists considered them simple marks of the owners of the dishes. Then a natural disaster stopped the work altogether: the stream, changing its course, almost washed away the hill. In 1961, archaeologists were about to leave the excavation site, when suddenly a pit filled with ash was discovered under the lowest layer of the hill. At the bottom are figurines of ancient gods, a bracelet made of sea shells and... three small clay tablets covered with pictographic signs. It was they who attracted the attention of specialists. After all, your appearance and in content they were very reminiscent of Sumerian records from the distant Mesopotamia.

Two tablets were rectangular in shape, the third was round. The round and large rectangular tablets had a round through hole in the center. Careful research has shown that the tablets are made from local clay. The marks were applied only on one side. The writing technique of the ancient Terterians turned out to be very simple: the icons were scratched sharp object on wet clay, then the tablet was fired.

It was then that they remembered the forgotten signs on the previously found shards. They compared them with the Tertarian ones: the similarity was obvious. Was there really once a civilization on these lands that was in no way inferior in its development to the Sumerian?

Scientists initially suggested that the Terteria tablets dated back to the third millennium BC, but more careful radiocarbon dating revealed that the artifacts were much older. Now most archaeologists agree that the tablets were created about 7.5 thousand years ago, long before Sumerian writing, which was previously considered the oldest in the world.

According to official history, the first agricultural settlements in the Balkans appeared in the 6th millennium BC. Ancient people settled in dugouts and cultivated the land stone tools. Gradually, farmers mastered axes and other tools made of copper. They built clay houses and mastered the art of ceramics production. Time has preserved for posterity numerous figurines of people made by the hands of the ancient inhabitants of these lands. For example, a man’s head sculpted from clay or an image of a woman whose body is completely covered with complex geometric patterns that form an intricate pattern; ritual jug with a pattern. Maybe the signs on the tablets are not written at all, but simply some kind of interweaving of lines?

In 1965, one scholar argued that the Terterian tablets had nothing to do with writing at all. They say that Sumerian merchants once visited Transylvania, and it was their tablets that were copied by the natives. Of course, the meaning of the tablets was not clear to the Terterians, however, this did not prevent them from using them in religious rituals.

But then how to explain the millennium gap between the appearance of the Terterian and Sumerian tablets? Is it possible to copy something that does not yet exist? Other experts connected the Tertarian writing with Crete, but even here the temporary discrepancy reached more than two thousand years.

So could the writing of Terteria be an integral part of the ancient cultural system, under the influence of which Sumer many years later fell? Or mysterious signs on a piece of clay have nothing to do with writing?

Experts tried to decipher the clay messages. The first rectangular tablet bears a symbolic image of two goats, with an ear of grain placed between them. Perhaps this image is a symbol of the well-being of the community? It is curious that a similar plot is found on Sumerian tablets. The second plate is divided by vertical and horizontal lines into small areas. Each of them is scratched with various symbolic images. Maybe these are totems? But then they also coincide with the Sumerian ones. Based on this postulate, the inscription can be deciphered by reading it counterclockwise around the hole in the tablet, based on the Sumerian equivalents.

Having made this conclusion, the scientists began to read the round Terterian tablet. There are written characters on it, separated by lines. The number of them in each square is small. This means that the writing of the Terterian tablets, like the archaic Sumerian writing, was ideographic; syllabic signs and grammatical signs did not yet exist.

Then again a comparison with Sumerian writings arises. One of them contains a list of the chief sister-priestesses who led the four tribal groups. Perhaps there were similar priestesses-rulers in Terteria? Then, apparently, the Terterian tablet contained brief information about the ritual of burning a priest who has served a certain period of his reign.

The conclusion suggests itself: the inventors of Sumerian writing were, paradoxically, not the Sumerians, but the inhabitants of the Balkans. The Sumerians were only good students who adopted pictographic writing from the Balkan peoples and later developed it into cuneiform.

Signs, sometimes completely identical to those found on tablets in Transylvania, were discovered by scientists in the legendary Troy (beginning of the 3rd millennium BC). Around the same time, they appeared in other areas of Asia Minor. Distant echoes of Balkan writing are contained in the pictographic writing of Ancient Crete.

In addition, it is known: the creators of Balkan culture in the 5th millennium BC broke through Asia Minor to Kurdistan and Khuzistan, where the ancient Sumerians settled at that time. And soon a pictographic writing appeared in this area, equally close to both Sumerian and Terterian.

Perhaps the legend about the Babylonian pandemonium and the collapse of the single earthly language is not so groundless. After all, comparing the symbols of Sumerian writing with similar signs from other writing systems, one is struck by their coincidence not only in the principles of design, but also in the internal content. It seems that the written systems of the 4th millennium BC did not arise in different places on our planet, but were only a consequence of the autonomous development of fragments of a disintegrated single ancestral system that arose in one place.

There is a version that most likely, the finds of Romanian archaeologists belong to the pre-Indo-European Vinca culture, which was widespread in the territory of modern South-Eastern Europe during the Neolithic era, since the symbols on the tablets are very similar to the pictograms depicted on those found in 1875 near the Serbian the city of Vinča contains the remains of ancient pottery.

Danube Protoletter- a term introduced by German linguists for a set of symbols found on various objects of the Vinča culture.

The discovery of N. Vlass did not go unnoticed here either. On the instructions of Doctor of Historical Sciences T.S. Passek, the question of the presence of the Sumerians in Transylvania was investigated by the young archaeologist V. Titov. Alas, no consensus was reached on the essence of the Terterian riddle.

Today it is not difficult for a person to send a message to friends or relatives. Almost each of us can, due to our intelligence, write a message, text or email. It is difficult to imagine that there were times when writing did not exist at all. It would seem that people have almost always been able to read and write. However, this is far from the case.

In the process of researching the origin of writing, many questions arose, for example: where did writing first appear, when did it appear, how did people invent it? The answers to them still cause a lot of controversy in the scientific community, although scientists have developed specific theories on this matter. The study of writing must begin in the Middle East. which once existed on this territory are the cradle of world culture of both the West and the East. But before we consider the history of writing, we need to understand what meaning this term carries.

The meaning of the word "writing"

From a linguistic point of view, writing is special system signs, which allows you to formalize, transmit and record information for the purpose of its further use and transmission. In other words, writing is data that has acquired a symbolic form. Writing should not be differentiated from human language, because it is a subtype of this phenomenon. A similar theory emerged as a result of the study of the human psyche. When we write, we think, thereby producing a symbolic transfer of our speech. This characteristic does not allow us to say exactly where and when writing arose, however, historians still found some patterns, which made it possible to create certain theories of the origin of this phenomenon.

Writing of the peoples of Mesopotamia

How did Greek writing originate?

The emergence of writing in Greece, the cradle of Western culture, is associated with the appearance of the Greek alphabet. It should be noted that the Greek alphabet is borrowed. It was based on Phoenician, which the Greeks adopted in the 9th century BC. The alphabet consisted only of consonants, which was completely unsuitable for the Greek language. Therefore, the Greeks literally “diluted” it with several vowels. Already in the 7th century BC they learned to write, as evidenced by archaeological finds. The oldest text known in this moment, is the Dipylon inscription. There are also theories that Greek writing arose around the 17th century BC, but there is no real historical evidence for this. So, we know how Greek writing arose, as well as Egyptian and Mesopotamian. But there are also historical finds of something completely different, European culture letters.

Prerequisites for the emergence of Slavic writing

Somewhere in the 5th century AD, a great thing happens. As a result of this large-scale migration process, many different tribes appeared. This period is identified with the time when Slavic writing arose. Minor tribes gradually developed, and by the end of the 9th century East Slavs created their own state, which they called Kievan Rus. The new state rapidly gained military power, and also developed its culture. It was during this period that writing arose, because during the Slavic settlement there was only Slavic language. Paradoxical as it may seem, the laws of writing were formed after the invention Slavic alphabet, just as happened in Greece.

Cyril and Methodius - the progenitors of Old Russian writing

The first books in the Slavic language make it possible to understand how Old Russian writing arose.

Brothers Cyril and Methodius created the alphabet and the first books in the Slavic language for the Moravian prince on behalf of Emperor Michael III. This happened in 863. To the territory ancient Rus' writing came in the form of the alphabet - Cyrillic or Glagolitic.

But here there is a slight discrepancy. When people arose on the territory of this state, they already knew the Slavic language. Hence the question: writing and the alphabet really formed in the territory Kievan Rus or did these indispensable attributes of culture come from outside? Scientists cannot answer this question to this day. Most likely, the scattered tribes spoke their own, purely local dialects. As for the Slavic writing and language, they were formed in their classical form already during the existence of Kievan Rus on the basis of the alphabet of the brothers Cyril and Methodius.

Conclusion

So, we have analyzed various historical periods that make it possible to understand where and when writing arose. The history of the emergence of this phenomenon contains many secrets that still need to be shed light.

“According to the Slavic-Aryan Vedas, the basis of the written literacy of the Slavic-Aryan peoples were four forms of writing, from which all other types of alphabets and alphabets subsequently originated.

a) Sanskrit (samckrit) is an independent secretive priestly language.
A form of the Sanskrit language conveyed in dance on the temple mount
special dancers were called devanagarn (nowadays it’s just a Sanskrit font);
b) futhark; c) Slavic runes, runes of the Boyan Anthem; d) Siberian (Khak) runnitsa, etc.

2. Da'Aryan Trags (approved shining path) - hieroglyphic (ideogram) outline of transmitted images. Read in all four areas.

3. Rassen figurative-mirror writing (molvitsy).

This writing is now called Etruscan (Tyrrhenian) writing, which formed the basis of the ancient Phoenician alphabet, on the basis of which later simplified Greek writing and Latin were created.
The Russian scientist P.P. Oreshkin, in his book on the decipherment of ancient languages, “The Babylonian Phenomenon,” also notes this very peculiar feature of Rasen writing (mirrority), before which modern linguistics with its capitulatory slogan turned out to be powerless: “Etruscan is not readable.” Oreshkin calls this set of ingenious, in his opinion, techniques the “trick system” of the ancient races and gives his recommendations for overcoming them. But Rasen writing, as we see from its naming, is an organic synthesis of the figurative content of letters and words, as well as methods for identifying this figurative content.
This feature is, to one degree or another, characteristic of all forms of Rasich writing (Slavic “two-row”), because is the most important manifestation of the Vedic view, according to which everything is divided, reunited, and cannot exist without its own reflection.

The most common letter among the Slavic peoples of antiquity (“Pra-Cyrillic” or “runes of the Family” according to V. Chudinov). It was used both by priests and when concluding important inter-tribal and interstate agreements. One of the forms of the Holy Russian Initial Letter was the semi-runic letter known to us, with which the “Book of Veles” was written. “Vlesovitsa” (the name is conditional) is typologically older than the Cyrillic alphabet, writes linguist V. Chudinov, representing a sign system intermediate between syllabic writing and the alphabet. In the text of the “Veles Book” such a phonetic feature as “tsoking” was discovered, i.e. replacement of Ch with C. This is found very widely in Novgorod birch bark charters and is still distinguished by the Novgorod dialect.”

The form of the Initial Letter was also the “Slovenian” letter, in which, as in Sanskrit, the verbal structures “tha”, “bha”, etc. were also used. But "Sloveni" was too cumbersome a writing system for everyday communication, therefore, subsequently a simplified form of “Slovenia” appeared - a voluminous, all-encompassing Old Slovenian Initial Letter, consisting of 49 symbols-images (main), where the record conveyed not only the grapheme of the word being composed, but also its figurative meaning.
“Appeared in the 9th century. The “Cyrillic alphabet” was specially created (based on the initial letter - mine.) using the Macedonian dialect of the ancient Bulgarian language for the needs christian church as a bookish and literary language (Old Church Slavonic). Subsequently, under the influence of living speech, he gradually absorbed local linguistic features... These later regional varieties are usually called the Church Slavonic language of Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, etc.
edition or edition.” (G. Khaburgaev. Old Church Slavonic language). Thus, we see what, according to Slavists, Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic were and where, when and in what circles they were used. The Old Russian language (a secular simplified version of the Bukvitsa) survived until Peter’s language reform.

5. Glagolitic is a commercial script, and later they began to be used to record legends and Christian books.

6. Slovenian folk writing (traits and cuts) - for transmission short messages at the household level.

7. Voivodeship (military) letter - secret codes.

8. Princely letter - each ruler has his own.

9. Knot letter, etc.

In those days they wrote on tablets made of wood, clay, metal, as well as on parchment, fabric, birch bark, and papyrus. They scratched metal and bone sharpened rods (writing) on stones, plaster, and wooden buildings. In 2000, a book consisting of wooden pages was found in Novgorod - an analogue of the “Vlesovaya Book”. It was given the name “Novgorod Psalter”, because it included the famous texts of the three psalms of King David. This book was created at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries and is the most ancient book Slavic world from those recognized by official science.

“The emergence of a new source of information about events that took place thousands of years ago is always like a miracle. After all, it’s hard to believe that over several centuries of studying the written heritage of our ancestors, something significant could have escaped the attention of scientists; something significant was noticed and appreciated, for example, the monuments of the Russian runic. And did they even want to notice? After all, the presence of the same runic contradicts the position of inert official science, which proves that the Slavs before baptism were a young tribe, and not a people with ancient culture(“Return of the Russian runic.” V. Torop).

Another first-class find of domestic historians was a pre-Cyrillic text, which received the code name “lengthy edition of Boyanov’s hymn.” The text, consisting of the 61st line, has suffered quite a lot from time. The underlying protograph was restored, and it received its own name - the Ladoga Document.

In 1812, Derzhavin published two runic fragments from the collection of the St. Petersburg collector Sulakadzev. Until our time, the mystery of the published passages remained unsolved. And only now it becomes clear that the lines torn out by Derzhavin from the abyss of oblivion are not fakes, as would-be scientists have assured us for so many years, but unique monuments of pre-Cyrillic writing.

The Ladoga document allows us to draw an important conclusion. The Russian runic had a fairly wide circulation and was used not only among priests for recording such sacred texts as “Patriarsi” (Vlesova Book). Ladoga and Novgorod, of course, were not some unique centers of literacy in Rus'. Russian runic signs were found on antiquities of the 9th-10th centuries from Belaya Vezha, Staraya Ryazan, and Grodno. The text from the Derzhavin archive is the surviving evidence of a written tradition that once existed everywhere...

The commonality of information from both runic monuments speaks volumes. The ancientization of the historical tradition that formed their basis until the beginning of the 19th century (the date of the Sulakadze copy) makes the very idea of \u200b\u200bthe falsification of “Patriarsi” (Mirolyubov - ours) ridiculous. At the time of Sulakadzev, almost all the information contained in “Patriarsi” was unknown to science. Christian chroniclers wrote about the pagan Slavs about the same thing as today: “.... they live in a brutal way, they chew in a bestial manner, and they eat each other in Bivaku, eating everything unclean, and they have married each other... "

The authors of “Patriarsi” also stood up for the honor Slavic people. On one of her tablets we read: “Askold is a dark warrior and was only enlightened by the Greeks that there are no Rus, but only barbarians. One can only laugh at this, since the Cimmerians were our ancestors, and they shook Rome and scattered the Greeks like scared pigs.” The Ladoga document ends with a description of suffering Rus'. The same thing is said in “Patriarsi”: “Rus is broken a hundred times from north to south.” But in “Patriarsi” we find a continuation of the thought that ended mid-sentence in the document: “Thrice fallen Rus' will rise.”

How relevant is this ancient prophecy today! Derzhavin showed an example of successful resistance to the destruction of our memory. Until his last days, the great son of the Russian people fought to save the Russian runic and ultimately won. Miraculously, the surviving pages reveal to us the Slavic civilization, no less ancient and no less rich than the civilization of any other people.”