1. Mythological Origins:
Mythologically speaking the history of handwriting dates from the beginning when the Word created the heavens. The firmament is a series of heavenly tablets, the hand writing of God, as conceived by the tablet-using Babylonians, or a scroll in the thought of prophets, the New Testament writers, and the rabbis. Whether the idea that "the heavens declare the glory of God," etc. (Ps 19:1-4), refers to this notion or not, it was one extensively developed and practiced in the science of astrology. In any event the doctrine of the Creator-Word reaches deep into the psychology of writing as a tangible record of invisible words or ideas, and this philosophizing stretches some 3,000 years or so back of the Christian era.
For writing among the gods in the mythologies of non-Biblical religions, see BOOK; LIBRARIES.
2. Earliest Use:
When and why the very simplest kind of writing began to be used has been the subject of much conjecture. The Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition) (XVI, 445) suggests that "the earliest use .... of inscribed or written signs was for important religious and political transactions kept by priests in temples," but the memorial pillar is older than the temple, and the economic or social record is perhaps older than the sacred, although this is less clear. Three things seem rather probable: (1) that the first records were number records, (2) that they concerned economic matters--although it is not excluded that the occasion for first recording economic matters was religious, (3) that they were not used memorially for important transactions, but rather as utilitarian or business records.
The original mnemonic record was probably a number record. The Hebrew words for "book" and "word" both seem to mean a setting down of one thing after another, and various words in various other languages point in the same direction, as do also in a general way the nature of the primitive situation and the evidences of history. Many of the oldest records are concerned with numbers of animals. Immense quantities of very old Sumerian records are simply such lists, and the still earlier cave drawings (whether they have numbers or not) are at least drawings of animals. One use of the primitive quipu was for recording sales of different kinds of animals at market, and the twig bundle and notched records are in general either pure number records or mnemonic records with a number base. What these animal records were for is another matter. If they were records of ownership for mere tally purposes (a natural enough purpose, carrying back even to hunting trophies) the use was purely economic, but as a matter of fact the early Babylonian lists seem generally to have been temple records, and even the cave records are commonly thought to be associated with religion. The early Egyptian lists too have religious associations, and the somewhat later records are largely concerned with endowment of temples or at least temple lists of offerings--votive offerings or sacrifices. This points perhaps to a religious origin and possibly leads back to the very first felt need of records for a tithing for religious purposes. But it may equally lead to the sharing of spoils socially rather than religiously, although the history of the common meal and sacrifice shared by worshippers points to a very early religious sanction for the problem of equitable sharing of spoils, and it may have been precisely at this point and for this purpose that number record was invented. However that may be, the evidence seems to point to a number-record origin even back of the cave drawings (which are said to be chiefly of domestic rather than wild animals) at a period variously figured as from 6,000 or 8,000 years ago, more or less, to millions of years ago.
3. Biblical History:
The pseudepigraphic books of the Old Testament variously represent writing as invented and first practiced by Yahweh, Adam, Cain, or Seth. Taking the Biblical narrative as it stands, the earliest allusion to true writing is the sign of Cain (Ge 4:15), if indeed this refers to a body mark, and particularly if it has analogy with the "mark upon the forehead" of the Book of Revelation (Ge 17:5; compare Ge 13:16; 14:1) and the tattoo marks of ownership or tribal marks of primitive tribes, as is thought by many.
The setting of the rainbow as a permanent sign (Ge 9:12-17) for a permanent covenant is quite in line with the recognized mnemonic writing. Noah's building of an altar had the same character if it was built for a permanent memorial. More obviously akin to this primitive form of writing was, however, the dedication of a memorial altar or pillar as a memorial of a particular event in a particular place, as in Jacob's pillar (Ge 28:18,22).
For perhaps 2,000 years before Abraham, image writing had been practiced in both Babylonia and Egypt, and for more than 1,000 years a very highly developed ideographic and phonetic writing had been in use. There were millions of cuneiform documents existing in collections large and small in Babylonia when he was there, and equal quantities of hieroglyphic and hieratic papyri, leather and skin documents in Egypt when he visited it.
See BOOK; LIBRARIES; HAMMURABI, CODE OF.
Abraham himself presumably used cuneiform writing closely parallel to the writing on Hammurabi's statue. A similar script was presumably also used by his Hittite allies. In Egypt he met with the hieroglyphics on the monuments, but for business and common use the so-called hieratic cursive forms were already developed toward, if not well into, the decided changes of the middle hieratic period (circa 2030-1788 BC; compare Moller, Hierat. Palaeog., VI, 1909, 3, etc.). It is a question whether the boundary heap, which Laban "called" the heap of witness in Aramaic and Jacob by the same name in Hebrew, was inscribed or not, but, if inscribed, both faces or lines of the bilingual inscription were presumably in cuneiform characters. The cuneiform remained, probably continuously, the prevailing script of Syria and Palestine until about 1300 BC, and until, some time well before 1000, the old Semitic alphabet began to be employed.
The question of the relation of the writing in Mosaic times and in the time of the Judges to the cuneiform or the hieratic on the one side and the alphabet on the other is too much mixed up with the question of the Pentateuch to allow of much dogmatizing. Some scholars are convinced that the Pentateuch was written in cuneiform characters if not in the Babylonian language. The old Semitic-Greek, "Phoenician," alphabet was, however, probably worked out in the Palestinian region between 1400 and 1100 BC (wherever the Hebrews may have been at this time), and it remained the Hebrew writing until the introduction of the square characters.
See ALPHABET.
At the beginning of the Christian era there had been a long period of the use of Greek among the educated, and long before the New Testament was written there was a large body of Palestinian-Greek and Egyptian-Greek literature. Latin for a time also had been used, more or less, officially, but the Aramaic, development of whose forms may be well traced from about 500 BC in the inscriptions and in the Elephantine papyri, was the prevailing popular writing. Greek remained long the language of the educated world. It was after 135 AD that R. Simeon ben Gamaliel was said to have had 500 students in Hebrew (New Hebrew) and 500 in Greek (Krauss, III, 203).
Latin, Greek, and Aramaic (New Hebrew) characters were all needed for the inscription on the cross. Hebrew had at this time certainly passed into the square form long enough ago to have had yodh pass into proverb as the smallest letter (jot) of the alphabet (Mt 5:18). Through the abundance of recent papyrus and inscriptional discoveries, it is now possible to trace the history of the varying forms of the bookhand and cursive Greek letters, and even of the Latin letters, for several centuries on either side of the year of our Lord and up to the time of the longer known manuscripts (see works of Gardthausen and Thompson). One may get in this way a good idea of how the most famous of all trilingual inscriptions may have looked as to its handwriting--how in fact it probably did look, jotted down as memorandum by Pilate, and how transcribed on the cross, assuming that Pilate wrote the Roman cursive (Thompson, facsimile 106 (AD 41), 321), and the clerks a fair epigraphic or rather for this purpose perhaps bookhand Greek (Thompson, facsimile 8 (AD 1), 123; Latin, facsimile 83 (AD 79), 276).
See TITLE.
LITERATURE.
General:
Edward Clodd, Story of the Alphabet, New York, 1912 (popular); Fritz Specht, Die Schrift u. ihre Entwicklung, 3. Ausg., Berlin, 1909 (popular); I. Taylor, History of the Alphabet, London, 1899, 2 volumes, 8vo; H. Wuttke, Geschichte der Schrift, Leipzig, 1874-75 (rich and comprehensive on primitive writing); Philippe Berger, Histoire de l'ecriture dans l'antiquite, 2nd edition, Paris, 1892; Karl Paulmann, Illustrirte Geschichte der Schrift, Wien, 1880 (uncritical but comprehensive and very useful for illus.); W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Formation of the Alphabet, 1912.
Primitive:
Leo Frobenius, The Childhood of Man, Philadelphia, 1908 (casual but useful aggregation of primitive examples); Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Washington, 1907-10, 2 volumes (dictionary form); G. Mallery, Smithsonian Inst. Reports, IV (1882-83), 3-256, X (1888-89), 1-822; M. Beuchat, Manuel d'archeologie americaine, Paris, 1912; M. H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, London, 1897; R. E. Dennet, At the Back of the Black Man's Mind, 1906; A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, London, 1904 (especially chapter xi); E. C. Richardson, The Beginnings of Libraries, London and Princeton, 1914.
Mediterranean:
Dechelette; Archeologie prehistorique. 1908; Arthur J. Evans, Scripta Minoa, Oxford, 1909; Angelo Mosso, The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, London, 1910.
Hebrew, Greek and Latin:
Frederic G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient manuscripts, 3rd edition, London, 1898; George Milligan, The New Testament Documents, 1913, Ludwig Blau, Studien zum althebraischen Buchwesen, Strassburg, 1902 (scholarly; first rank); Leopold Loew, Graphische Requisiten und Erzeugnisse bei den Juden, Leipzig, 1870-71, 2 parts; Samuel Krauss, Talmudische Archaologie, Leipzig, 1910-12, 3 volumes, III, 131-239, 300 ff (full critical notes and references); Mark Lidzbarski, Handbuch d. nordsemitischen Epigraphik, 1902-8 (also Ephemeris); Alvin Sylvester Zerbe, Antiquity of Hebrew Writing and Literature, Cleveland, 1911 (controversial); V. Gardthausen, Griechische Palaeographie, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1911-13, 2 volumes (remarkable for comprehensiveness, exhaustive bibliographic reference and critical scholarship); Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Paleography, Oxford, 1912 (expansion of his Handbook with greatly improved facsimiles, better treatment of papyri and a good working bibliography of palaeography); F. G. Kenyon, The Paleography of Greek Papyri, Oxford, 1899, 8vo; Ludwig Mitteis and Ulrich Wilcken, Grundzuge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, Leipzig, 1912, 2 volumes in 4 (Encyclopaedia of the subject); Theodor Birt, Das antike Buchwesen, Berlin, 1882; idem, Die Buchrolle in der Kunst, Leipzig, 1907 (of first usefulness, especially in matter of illus. and refs.); E. S. Roberts, Greek Epigraphy, part I, "The Archaic Inscriptions and the Greek Alphabet," Cambridge, 1887, 8vo; Karl Dziatzko, Untersuchungen uber ausgewahlte Kapitel des antiken Buchwesens, Leipzig; 1900; Ernest Christian Wilhelm Wattenbach, Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1896 (has an immense mass of original quotations of authorities).
Sources for Latest Literature:
W. Weinberger, "Beitrage zur Handschriftenkunde," Sitzungsber. Akad. Wien, 159, 161 (1908-9), pp. 79-195; Zentralblatt f. Bibliothekswesen, Leipzig (monthly); Hortzschansky, Bibliographie des .... Buchwesens (annual cumulation of the Zentralblatt material).
For inward writing see modern general psychologies and the books and articles in Rand's bibliographical supplement to Baldwin's Dictionary of Psychology. For continuation literature see the Psychological Index. For various aspects of writing consult also books on general Biblical archaeology (e.g., Nowack and Benzinger), general introductions and articles on "Alphabet," .... "Book," "Library," "Manuscripts," "Textual Criticism," and other special topics in this or other Biblical and general encyclopedias.
E. C. Richardson