Signs – Sounds – Semantics. Nature and Transformation of Writing Systems in the Ancient Near East

A world without writing is hard to imagine, as it has become a regular feature of everyday life. However, our Western alphabetic writing system is the outcome of a millennia-long evolution. What is more, this system is only one strand of the many possible shapes that scripts can assume. This volume explores the various shapes and potentialities of ancient Near Eastern writing systems: the relationship between language and writing; the influences and pragmatics that affect sign form, organization, meaning, and purpose; the techniques for and necessity of phonetic values; and the interplay of the cognitive processes, behaviors, and material forms in producing and interpreting writing. It also works as a means of reflecting on our own alphabetic writing system, in terms of its implicit rules and limits. Ranging in time from the mid-4th millennium BC to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC and distance from today’s Southern Iraq to the Anatolian mountains, the contributions explore how languages like Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite, and Luwian were written, and how writing works without a specific linguistic referent. Part I focuses on signs, meanings, and language, while Part II concerns the pragmatics of signs and their production. Finally, Part III deals with the organization of lists, a prominent text genre in early writing. Cognitive processing in reading and writing is a pervasive theme, and indeed, the addition of neuroscientific findings to current interpretational methods and theories promises to yield exciting new insights into early writing systems.