Writing and language are such an integral part of our lives today. It is hard to imagine there was ever a time when it did not exist. These two things were the keys that opened the doors of communication to the world and it all started with the alphabet.
The alphabet was invented in 1400 BCE as a means of communication. It was a writing system based on acrophonic principles. This was to simplify all the methods that had been previously used. The early alphabet was completely pictographic and progressed as follows: pictures, logos, phonetics and homophones, grammatical and determinative. The term alphabet was actually derived from two Greek words, “alpha” and “beta”. A Phoenician by the name of Cadmus has been credited for inventing the alphabet. Our modern day alphabet is based on the Phoenician alphabet and contains 26 letters. The alphabet democratized civilization by giving people a means of reading and writing. This led to the expressing of people’s ideas which was how they began to influence the Bible. The alphabet gave power to the people. Who knew that this would be the power we needed to change the world.
Writing began in Samaria around 3200 BCE mainly for the purpose of bookkeeping. In early days if a man owed another man payment for anything, they often drew pictures on stones to represent the amount that was owed. This created a way for the ancient people to keep track of who was owed what. Writing was said to be a gift from the gods. It is a script and not a language. Ancient writing used cuneiforms and hieroglyphics. The Behistun Inscription was used to read Cuneiform. More common to some of us was the Rosetta Stone. This was discovered by John Francois Champollion and was used to read hieroglyphics. Early writing also had a progressive form. It began with the Phoenicians and progressed to the Abecediary in 1400 BCE where all the letters of the alphabet were in order. Then came the Acrophonic alphabet in which the first sound of a picture or word became that letter of the alphabet. Next came Cuneiform, a wedge-shaped writing, and then the Pictographic alphabet.
The alphabet and writing were not the only ancient contributions that have had major influences on our world as we know it today. Archaeology was also one of those contributions. Archaeology is the scientific examination of material remains from humans in the past. Archaeology is one of the sciences responsible for linking our past to our present. It involves a very detailed method of uncovering data from our ancestors. By studying these findings we are able to have a better understanding of people, events and natural occurrences that took place long ago. Biblical archaeologists have provided us with valuable information that has helped guide us through biblical history and shape our image of the ancient world.
Modern archaeology relates to the Bible in that it gives us background information to those stories in the Bible. It gives us a feel and a description as to what the land was like geographically in that era. While archaeology does not prove that the Bible is true, it does help us to determine if certain events could have actually happened the way and during the time in which they are depicted. It provides a means of criticism and answers questions about theories that have long since been made. Archaeology helps to establish a time line and place things in chronological order.
Stratigraphy is the study of rock layers and layering. There are two common methods of stratigraphy. They are horizontal and vertical. During a horizontal excavation an archaeologist would find walls and dig out the entire room, exposing a broad horizontal area. A vertical excavation involves the use of balks to dig in narrow trenches in order to show the relationship between strata. It has often been a debate as to which method was better. The thought was that by using the vertical method the balks preserved the stratigraphical record. Modern archaeologists tend to use a combination of these methods.
I do not think that I would like to go on an archaeological excavation. I know these excavations provide critical links to history; however, it seems like boring work. It just seems to be time consuming and slow. I will admit that my opinion could be due to my ignorance as to what actually goes on during an excavation. This would definitely be a vacation to write home about “if” you could convince me to go.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 20th, 2006 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Class Comments, Week 03: Your Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.