History of Ancient Literature

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         Literature has come a long way from writing in cuneiform to using hieroglyphics. With this website, you will study the earliest forms of literature with writers and works dating back to the Middle Ages of Egypt and Greece. You will also study  brief history of the writer and a summary of their most famous also with links that will take you to other sites for a more expanded study. There is also a study guide section that will also be a useful tool in helping you to better understand this history.                    

Hieroglyphics

The script was developed about four thousand years before Christ and there was also a decimal system of numeration up to a million. Unlike other cultures the early picture forms were never discarded or simplified probably because they are so very lovely to look at. Hieroglyphs were called by the Egyptians "the words of God" and were used mainly by the priests. These painstakingly drawn symbols were great for decorating the walls of temples but for conducting day to day business there was another script, known as hieratic This was a handwriting in which the picture signs were abbreviated to the point of abstraction

Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. Also the upper symbols are read before lower.
Hieroglyphic signs are divided into four categories:
1. Alphabetic signs represent a single sound. Unfortunately the Egyptians took most vowels for granted and did not represent them. So we may never know how the words were formed.

2. Syllabic signs represent a combination of two or three consonants.

3. Word-signs are pictures of objects used as the words for those objects. they are followed by an upright stroke, to indicate that the word is complete in one sign.

4. A determinative is a picture of an object which helps the reader. For example; if a word expressed an abstract idea, a picture of a roll of papyrus tied up and sealed was included to show that the meaning of the word could be expressed in writing although not pictorially.
 

Rosetta Stone

 

 

Cuneiform tablets have also been found in Eblaite (a Semitic language from northern Syria), Elamite (from the area of modern Iran), Hittite (an Indo-European language spoken in ancient Turkey), and other languages throughout the ancient Near East.

The tablet illustrated here is a business document with a seal impression. Seal impressions are somewhat like signatures, in that they identify the person involved in the business transaction recorded on the tablet. While most of the tablets that have been found are such things as contracts, sales receipts, and tax records, a number of very important literary texts have been found as well, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi.

 

Cuneiform


The term "cuneiform" is very deceptive, in that it tricks people into thinking that it's some type of writing system. The truth is that cuneiform denotes not one but several kinds of writing systems, including logosyllabic, syllabic, and alphabetic scripts. In fact, "cuneiform" came from Latin cuneus, which means "wedge". Therefore, any script can be called cuneiform as long as individual signs are composed of wedges.