The Reign of the Manuscript

by Perry Wayland Sinks

The last century of our Era witnessed two of the most important achievements of human ingenuity in relation to literature: the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform script of Assyria and Babylonia. Both these remarkable achievements are credited to the last century and have added immeasurably to our knowledge of early historical times, corroborated and confirmed much that was obscure and uncertain of the Bible narrative and its teaching, and opened up to the gaze of all men for all time to come the most valuable records of a vast period of human history which otherwise would have remained in unrelieved obscurity. These achievements were the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone and the cuneiform writing.

The hieroglyphic writing was of two classes; called ideographic in which ideas were denoted by signs or pictures and phonetic wherein sounds represented ideas. In the ideographic hieroglyphs which were the older—this being the parent writing—the picture of an object expressed the idea of or represented the object itself. A fish, e. g., was denoted by the outline drawing of a fish; an obelisk by the picture of that object; a vulture by the delineation of that bird, and so on. Sometimes, however, the cause was put for the effect, and vice versa: thus a palette and reed would commonly represent "writing"; it might also represent a "scribe." Dishevelled hair might represent "grieving," because in the time of trouble the hair of the head would be apt to be disturbed and uncared for. At a later date these ideographic hieroglyphics or pictures representing ideas, by a process of development from the basis of pure primitive picture writing, or by the association and suggestion which one thing gave to another or to other things, or by a species of conventionalization, came to represent sounds;—not letters but words or parts of words. Thus came into existence the other class of hieroglyph-writing—the "phonetic" hieroglyphics.

In the phonetic hieroglyphics pictures were used to express the sound of the objects which they respectively represented; and, in time, certain of the hieroglyphics both expressed and stood for other objects; and certain of the phonetics came to have syllabic value. Afterwards, in the order of development, ideas were communicated, not by pictures but by symbols for pictures, or by characters that represented and stood for definite ideas:—A star, thus, came to express the idea of God, and a succession of herons in a row the idea of "glorified souls."[40] Similar is the archæological witness from ancient Mexico. Prescott says: "A Mexican manuscript looks like a collection of pictures, each one forming the subject of a special study. The Aztecs had various emblems for expressing such things as from their nature could not be directly represented by the painter. A 'tongue,' for example, denoted speaking; a 'footprint,' traveling; a 'man on the ground,' an earthquake. These symbols were often very arbitrary, varying with the caprice of the writer; and it required wise discrimination to interpret them, as a slight change in the form or position of the figure intimated a very different meaning. They also employed phonetic signs, though these were chiefly confined to the names of persons and places. Lastly, the pictures were colored in gaudy contrasts, so as to produce the most vivid impression, for even colors speak in the Aztec hieroglyphics."[41]

Both the ideographic and the phonetic hieroglyphics are referred to in the following from Professor Hutson: "The ideographs were first pictures pure and simple of actual objects. A large number of them became ultimately symbolic, representing any one of a large group of ideas, and needing its nearest group of phonetics to give it definiteness. The phonetics expressed the sounds of syllables, not of letters, as in the case with our alphabets. Some of these phonetics even came to be used eventually as representatives of letters."[42] Thus in the phonetic writing the scribe finally expressed sounds independent of pictures or symbols and so created "words" through which ideas were recorded, perpetuated, and disseminated. There were about two thousand of the hieroglyphic signs.

At best, the picture-writing, while intelligible enough to its originators, was an incomplete and clumsy method of treasuring and transmitting knowledge. It was very liable to misinterpretation and misapplication. It was always exposed to the possibility of being misunderstood, inasmuch as every picture might have a variety of applications or significations, and thus might represent a number of different though kindred things or conceptions. "Thus in Egyptian we find two legs might represent simply the legs of a man, but they might denote 'walking,' 'going,' 'running,' 'standing,' 'support,' and even 'growth,' and their significance had to be divined without further explanation or assistance."[43] The exposure to error involved in the decipherment of the ancient picture-writing may be illustrated by what is said to have been an actual occurrence of modern times. It is related of an illiterate though not necessarily ignorant grocer who, being unable to write, kept his accounts by picturing the various articles bought and sold at his little store. Usually there was no occasion for any one to dispute the accuracy of his "charges" though they were recorded in a species of hieroglyphics—his own invention. On one occasion, however, the grocer was taken to task by a customer who "questioned" the "account" of a cheese which had been "charged up" against him. The customer protested that he had never bought a whole cheese, but acknowledged that he had bought what resembled a whole cheese in shape—a grindstone. This admission supplied a clue to the error in the grocer's "charges," for, in his picture-record he had inadvertently omitted the square hole in the center of his picture which would have transformed the "charge" of a cheese into that of a grindstone. In like manner, there was always an imminent and special exposure to error in the "record" with the ideographic hieroglyphic writing. And in addition to the inherent disabilities of the picture-writing and its exposure to a mistaken decipherment, these hieroglyphics gradually lost somewhat of their purely representative and symbolical value and thus, by being conventionalized, came into a more universal and a permanent use. Out of this fact grew the larger significance of the demotic writing as contrasted with the hieratic or priestly writing.

These ancient Egyptian writings, both the hieroglyphic and the demotic, were, alike, a sealed literature until the discovery (in 1799) of the Rosetta Stone—and its subsequent decipherment by Champollion and Young. The inscription of this most important "find" is cut into a basalt slab, three feet two inches long and two feet five inches wide. On this slab is carved a tri-lingual decree of Ptolemy Epiphanes in hieroglyphic or the earliest form of picture-writing, in demotic or the later writing of the people as distinguished from that of the priests, and in Greek or the language resulting from Alexander's domination of the world—the common tongue at the beginning of the Christian Era. The former two inscriptions, though in forms of the Egyptian language long "dead" and undecipherable, were given a material resurrection through their Greek consort. The Greek language, therefore, was the key to unlock, not the inscription of the Rosetta Stone alone but also the vast treasure house of the ancient Egyptian literature. By means of the "golden guess" or the hypothesis of Dr. Young that each part of the tri-lingual inscription on the Rosetta Stone referred to or contained the same subject-matter though in different writings; through the ascertainable meaning of the Greek part of the inscription (including the proper names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra); and through the untiring patience of these early Egyptologists, the hitherto unknown meaning, not only of the Rosetta Stone but of the entire Egyptian hieroglyphs, has been opened up to the world's view.

(2) The cuneiform writing. Scarcely second in time or importance to the hieroglyphs of Egypt was the cuneiform or wedge-shaped writing of the primitive Accadians of Mesopotamia, and communicated by them to the after Assyrians and Babylonians. The cuneiform writing was probably derived from an earlier hieroglyphic language among the most primitive people of Accad. This is evidenced by the pictured monuments and inscribed temple walls and gates of Assyria and Babylonia. Writing, both in Egypt and in Assyro-Babylonia, and also in the (as yet) undeciphered language of the Cretans, began with pictures. The cuneiform system of writing, it is held, must have taken centuries to have reached the stage at which it is first found. "It began, no doubt," says Mr. James Baikie, "with pure picture-writing, as the Egyptian hieroglyphic system began; but while the Egyptians maintained the pictorial element of their system to the end, developing alongside of it the hieratic and demotic systems of writing for ordinary purposes, the race in question had already, when we first meet with their writing, got away from any trace of the picture stage. Their writing is already the arrow-headed or cuneiform script which persisted right down to the fall of the great empires of the ancient East."[44] "Not unlike other script," says Professor Albert T. Clay, "the cuneiform was originally pictorial; but, as in Egypt, the hieroglyphs became more and more simplified and conventionalized. But, unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonian or Sumerian became conventionalized at a time prior to the known history of the land; and the hieroglyphs were not continued in use even for monumental purposes, but were practically lost sight of."[45] This conclusion is shared by no less a distinguished scholar than Professor Sayce. He held that "the pictures were first painted on the leaves of the papyrus which grew in the marshes of the Euphrates, but as time went on a new and more plentiful writing material came to be employed in the shape of clay."[46] This clay which was found under foot everywhere, when prepared, was employed by different peoples of western Asia and for a large variety of specific uses:—for literary and historical records; for mathematical tables; for correspondence; for legal documents which were often enclosed in protecting envelopes of clay; for business transactions, contracts being witnessed unto, in the absence of seals, by each party pressing his thumb-nail into the plastic clay, thus insuring the preservation of his signature for ages; in short, for all literary, historical, mathematical, commercial, and social purposes.

The cuneiform writing, whether derived from the earlier hieroglyphs or developed independently by the Accadians, was employed with all but unlimited fertility by the Assyro-Babylonian civilization. The writing was distinguished from the hieroglyphic in that it was made up, in its entirety, of a single, wedge-shaped or arrow-headed-like character, formed with a metal stylus having a triangular end. By pressing this stylus in the plastic clay of the prepared tablet or cylinder a sharply defined and angular shaped indentation was impressed and, afterward, the clay with its writing was hardened by exposure to the sun or baked by fire into an almost imperishable "record." The all but indestructible character of this material accounts for the large proportion of the Assyrian literature which has been preserved through tens of centuries.

Professor Albert T. Clay describes the preparation and use of this material as follows: "The well-kneeded clay, which had been washed to free it from grit and sand, while in a plastic condition was shaped into the form and size desired.... The stylus, which was made of metal or wood, was a very simple affair. In the early periods it was triangular and in the later quadrangular.... By pressing a corner of it into the soft clay, the impression made will be that of a wedge; hence the term cuneiform (from the Latin cuneus) writing."[47]

The single simple character (