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Importance of writing in ancient civilizations
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Writing in the ancient world was recognized as a powerful skill, the scribes were a very important people and not many were to be found. Starting with the Mesopotamian society, scribes were needed to send messages, convey news, take down Kings orders, register laws, write religious text, and much more as well as entertaining people with their readings. “The Mesopotamian scribes were an aristocratic elite, they contained power in their hands.” (Manguel 180). Text books in the past were found in the wealthier of homes not for the poor or common people.
In the Christian era the scribes of Ireland were also kept at an exalted status. The penalty for killing an Irish scribe was equal to killing a bishop.
In Babylon only an elite few people were trained to be a scribe, which they were held on a higher status than rest of society.
Back in history it was important for the chosen scribes to do well in school and there is evidence that fathers would bribe teachers to obtain good marks for their sons (Manguel 181). The students would learn the making of clay tablets and using the stylus, drawing and recognizing signs. The students would be given a round clay tablet which the teacher would inscribe a short sentence, proverb, or list of names on it, the student would study it and turn the clay tablet over and reproduce the writing. Becoming a reader and writer for the first time. Soon Mesopotamian script changed from pictograph to cuneiform. Signs took on sounds, becoming easier to comprehend the text, which brought forth complex literature. The ancient Mesopotamians believed birds to be sacred because their footsteps on wet clay left marks that resembled cuneiform writing, and if they could decipher the signs, they would know what the ...
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...e pursuit of knowledge that thrived in the ancient library. The old library encouraged the public to debate, create and invent. The new library is carrying that legacy forward” (Mohsen Zahran).
Works Cited
Chesser, Preston. “The Burning of the Library of Alexandria”. E. History. Ohio State University. 2014. Web. April 2014.
Crystalinks. “Library of Alexandria Bibliotheca Alexandrina”. http://www.crystalinks.com/library of alexandria.html. 2014. Web. April 2014.
Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York. Penguin Books, 1996. Print.
Staidos, Konstahtinow. “The Great Libraries: From Antiquity to the Renaissance. Delaware. Oak Knoll Press. 2000. Print.
Watson, Bruce. “Rising Sun”. Smithsonian Magazine. April 2002. Web. April 2014.
Whitehouse, David. “Library of Alexandria Discovered”. BBC News, Science/Nature. 12 May, 2004. Web. April 2014.
Without the Mesopotamians we would not have all the luxury we have today. Could you ever imagine a world without writing? You may think, life would not be so bad without it, but without writing we would not have stories, we could not write to the bank, we could not text. Two major contributions made to society were the first forms of writing known as Cuneiform and Hammurabi’s Code.
The award winning Jerwood Library, built in 1999, sits in an idyllic setting overhanging the River Cam and manages to look both modern and ancient at the same time. Traditional materials and methods have been used by Freeland Rees Roberts, to create a lovely building that rests perfectly in scale with its neighbours. The fragmented forms created with red brick and glass give it a gentle contemporary appearance. Students can often be seen sitting and reading on a large ledge pressed against the glass, picturesque river one side, 30,000 books the other – it can’t get any better!
Writing is one of the many factors which can lead to an unequal world. Writing was “One of the most important inventions in human history” (Prososki, “Writing”). It was believed to come from the Fertile Crescent called Sumer around 5,000 years ago. Over the years, writing has advanced as people created writing and printing systems, which were able to reach
Writing is perhaps the most important building block of communication - after verbal speech, of course. Writing, like most of human civilization, has its roots in ancient Mesopotamia. The first writing systems began in a style known as cuneiform (Cuneiform, 2013). These wedge-shaped markings have their roots in Sumerian culture and were used predominantly for record keeping and accounting. At the archaeological site of Uruk in what is modern day Iraq, a great wealth of knowledge has been gained from the artifacts located there. Uruk was a ceremonial site and is home to the world’s oldest known documented written documents (Price and Feinman, 2013). The documents discovered list quantities of goods that may have been stored at Uruk, leading archaeologists to believe that writing in this part of the world was developed primarily to keep lists of transactions and stockpiled quantities of goods located at the site.
The capital of this civilization was the city of Babylon. To keep peace among people living so closely together, they needed rules. King Hammurabi, who ruled around 2000 BCE, drew up the first recorded set of laws. The Code of Hammurabi, as these laws were called, set down harsh penalties for those who broke the laws like, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” You might question why and how did they come up with that type of code? That’s a good question! The creation of “the Code” was a tremendous achievement for not only Babylonian society but for the entire Mesopotamian region as King Hammurabi was ruler over all of that area. Its conception can be considered to be the first culmination of the laws of different regions into a single, logical text. Hammurabi wanted to be an efficient ruler and realized that this could be achieved through the use of a common set of laws which applied to all territories and all citizens who fell under his rule. But how and where did put these codes at? This is when the writing system came
4)Rosenstein, Nathan Stewart., and Robert Morstein-Marx. A Companion to the Roman Republic. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006. Print.
At the beginning of recorded history, writing was mainly used by societies to keep track of crops and trade transactions. However, as civilization progressed, writing had taken on a life of its own, with it uses evolving from keeping records to literature and law. Law codes at the time were few and far between, it wasn’t until King Hammurabi set laws for the Old Babylonian Empire were they etched into stone. Multiple empires in the region with kings also considered god-like, Hammurabi exalted himself above others and said that he was sent to Earth by their storm-god Marduk and it was said that he shall banish evil-doers, bring righteousness, and further mankind.
Brucker, Gene A. & Co. Renaissance Florence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Mandelbaum, Allen. A.
In a cradle of civilization where survival trumped education in life’s necessities, it should be of little surprise that the literate were an elite class who were catapulted to the upper echelon of Egyptian society. There was no attempt to provide free and universal schooling, so the only people who received any education were the wealthy. Anyone of a lower class such as peasants, soldiers, farmers, or tradesmen had to toil in physical labor daily just to survive. To them, education was a luxury that they would never achieve. Scribes were some of the most educated and revered people in Egypt. Royal scribe Nebmare-nakht extolled the virtues of becoming a scribe in a letter to his son who, judging by said letter, appears to be resisting the family business in a rebellious p...
The architecture of the Library of Congress expresses a modern presence of the past. It's similarities to the altar of Pergamon lie in physical appearances and in deeper meanings. Both reflect the beauty of Greek architecture and the values of the people who designed them.
The ancient Egyptians believed that it was important to record and communicate information about religion and government. Thus, they invented written scripts that could be used to record this
Rovira, Jim. “Babel in Biblia: The Tower in Ancient Literature.” July 1998. Babel.Web. 09 March 2012.
The real tragedy of course is not the uncertainty of knowing who to blame for the Library's destruction but that so much of ancient history, literature and learning was lost forever. Its importance and significance will never be resurrected, but will forever lay in a mystery. Only dreams and images can be pondered about what actually existed in such a great library. Scholars, historians and educated individuals can only daydream about what might have been.
... to the Library and that have generally been underused resources. B. Greater use of the Library's Capitol Hill facilities by scholars for the kind of interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, multimedia, multilingual, and synthetic writing that is important to Congressional deliberation and national policy-making, but inadequately encouraged both by special interest groups and by advocacy-oriented think tanks; and C. Greater use by the general public through programs that stimulate interest, increase knowledge, and encourage more citizens to use the collections on-site and electronically.”The Library employees will add their position as information guides by “helping more people find appropriate materials in a swelling sea of unsorted information” and directing them to services and resources exclusive to the Library of Congress. This requires not only more growth of employees that the Library has formerly had, but also making it easier in new ways more wide-ranging and “systematic use by researchers of the distinctive materials that only the Library of Congress has.” Courses for the common public, such as displays or publications, must display the importance and value of the collections.
Astronomy was born in the five cradles of civilization, along the Nile Valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley along the western region of the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese city states on the banks of the Yellow River, the ancient regions of Me-soamerica from central Mexico down to the Andean South America and the an-cient city states of Mesopotamia in the fertile crescent. Each of these ancient cul-tures incorporated astronomy into calendar making, religion, mythology, and astrology. Many of these civilizations kept various forms of stars charts, but some of the most complete came Mesopotamia.