- The earliest writing system was developed
in ancient Egypt, not in Mesopotamia, as scholars have traditionally asserted,
new research says.
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- The theory is explored in "Egypt,"
a book published today by the British Museum Press.
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- Vivian Davies, a leading scholar at the
British Museum, says that what we would regard as full writing -- a script
that expresses complex ideas -- first appeared in Egypt, according to Monday's
London Times.
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- "It was thought that the earliest
writing system was invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia towards the
end of the fourth millennium B.C. and that the idea was borrowed by the
Egyptians at the beginning of the First Dynasty, around 3100 B.C.,"
says Davies. "However, recent discoveries at Abydos have shown that
the Egyptians had an advanced system of writing even earlier than the Mesopotamians,
some 150 years before, between 3000 B.C. and 3350 B.C."
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- The findings emerge from a German expedition
to Abydos, headed by G¸nter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute,
which revealed a dynasty of kings before the First Dynasty, the Times reports.
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- The history of Egypt has been divided
into 30 dynasties. But a new dynasty, which reigned in about 3250 B.C.,
was found at Abydos. Hieroglyphics there dated from 150 years before the
First Dynasty.
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- Among them are 150 labels in ivory or
bone which are thought to have been attached to bolts of linen. Carved
into their surfaces are signs that spell out phonetically the names of
places from which goods such as wine jars originated.
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- In Mesopotamia, the earliest forms of
writing are simple lists of commodities and numerals that took several
hundred years to develop into a fully phonetic writing system, the Times
says.
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- In Egypt, there is no such forerunner:
The script appears in a fully developed form.
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- "We have no reason to quarrel over
this," says Christopher Walker, a Mesopotamian scholar at the British
Museum about the findings. "But we may in the end leap-frog each other.
If they think they have evidence of a fully developed script at that point,
we would start looking for earlier stages. You don't just jump into a fully
developed system."
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