The Alaphabet, one of man’s greatest creations, is a tool that has been used to democratize several thousands societies in today’s and yesterday’s world. Before we got the gift of the Alphabet, many ancient socities had formed some system of writing, but as simple writing matured the Alphabet emerged. Many of the first writings were found in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

In Egypt, hieroglyphics were used as a system of writing. Hieroglyphics were individual characters that were used to represent an idea or item. Because so many characters were used in this Egyptian writing, it was limited to scribes. Scribes were Egyptian men who had been taken since childhood and had their entire life dedicated to reading and writings they were the only people allowed to read and write in Egyptian texts. Scribes had two duties which were to keep government records of the pharoah and enscribe sacred text on tombs or temples. Total, Egyptians had three different scripts that were used for different puropses of writing. One script would be used for recording documents on papyrus which was a paper form to Egyptians. Another would be used to record events on temple walls that gave an account of something that occured. The last script would be used on tombs of kings and other nobles. (www.ancientegypt.com).

Mesopotamian writing also known as Sumerian writing one of the world’s oldest system of writins originated in Sumeria. Sumeria is Mesopotamia’s oldest civilized city. This form of writing is known as cunefiorm. In cuneiform, the characters were wedged shaped strokes. Sumerian writing was also pictograph in which it used pictures to resemble natural objects they represented. Early Sumerian writing, was first used on tokens or coins.This system of writing made it hard to keep record of with the risk of missing tokens or someone stealing the tokens. To solve this problem, jars with seals were invented to keep better keep of the tokens, but this did not help much because there still was the risk of forgetting how much was in a jar or still someone stealing. The next idea was the clay tablet where everything was recorded erasing the risk of losing a large clay tablet or missing someone stealing a large clay tablet. As the system of writing matured many of its symbol lost the wedged-shaped look and became more linear shaped(www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian).

As writing matured, more and more shortcuts were being invented to decrease the amount of characters. In some languages such as Chinese there were up to three thousands characters, so you can see why the more shortcuts the better. Finding ways to shorten different forms of writing helped contribute to the invention of the alphabet. According to legend it was believed that a Phoenician scholar invented the entire Alphabet on his own and was then adpoted by the Greeks and translated into Latin, but this is not the case. The Alphabet has its orgins in Egypt. It is still a mystery what person or group of people came together to invent the alphabet, scholars now know that the alphabet was first in Egyptian then translated to Phoenician and later the Greeks adopted the text and translated it into Latin making it easier to translate into modern languages such as English that has been of its root words from the latin language(www.geocities.com).

As the alphabet matured and became popular, everyday citizens were able to learn to read and write. Although society was civilized with just writing, citizens were not the rulers of the government. With more people reading and writing some governments were transformed into democratized societies. Because people could now understand the law and understand what was going in the government they were nthen not able to take part in governmental affairs. With understanding of written codes and written laws the public was now able to resist new laws that were being opposed or implement new laws that were benefical to the common public not just the elite or the wealthy which laws may have been doing before everyone was able to read and write.

Outside of legend, oral tradition and some saved ancient text, archeology plays a major role in uncovering the past. Archeology helps Bible scholars in many ways because it allows them to solve mysteries that would have been an unknown otherwise and it also helps explain some legends or other beliefs. Another way scholars use archeology is to explain and teach history. Without archeology many things would been unknown such as the meanings of different languages and many skeptic of the Bible could critized it as being a collection of false writings, myths and legends, but with archeology Bible scholars can say with confidence and back-up that the Bible is full of facts that can be proven with ancient history. Bible Scholars are able to unlock more and more secrets and the Bible and are also able to confirm some accounts or legends with tangible artifacts that give account of something. with this skeptics of the Bible have proof of an account and can not oppose hard tangible evidence. For example, it was once believed that Pontius-Pilate, that governor according to the Bible who crucifed Jesus, was never a real person who exsisted. This was confirmed by an archeology dig that found an inscription of his name on a document sent to Tiberius Caesar. Another way archeology was able to support the Bible is when it found the tomb of Cyrus the Great. In the Bible, Hebrew prophet Isaiah was able to name Cyrus two hundred years before his birth which illustrates how realistic the accounts of the Bible are. Numerous sites have been excavated that support accounts of the Bible. Of those cities are Assyria, Isreal, Babylon, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Peoples. Archeology has given Bible scholars a tool to confirm that the Bible has never made one error or given in any contridictions of historical facts (www.bible-history.com/empires).

This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 6:38 pm and is filed under 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.