Before Class, Chapter 1

1. Sum up the reading in your own words in 1-2 paragraphs. Do not copy straight from the book, or you will receive a zero for your first grade.


This reading was about the caveman time through the ancient Egyptians. The first part was talking about the caveman (supposedly orginating in Africa) drawings and how the rough outlines of buffalo and circles were ideographs. It wasn't until they were more refined and meant more things did they become pictographs. Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization, and the basic pictographs became a cuniform. A more refined script that we may think of (lines and squiggles) came when the pictographic cuniform was shorthanded. Eventually over 500 characters became an official cuniform script. Because of the 500+ characters reading and writing was difficult.One started learning around age 10 and was schooled from sun up to sun down with approx. 6 vacation days per month. These scholars were held in high regard and so was the practice of literacy. Scrolls and other works of writing was associated with the gods and used for ceremonies and special occasions. Eventually manuscripts for how to conduct ceremonies came out and only those who were literate could understand. It was the Sumerians who invented the Hittite seal, a small cylinder often hung around someone's neck or wrist used as a person's trademark.

The second part was about the ancient Egyptians who invented papyrus using reeds and their adaptation of the sumerian's cuniform. The chapter talked about how Egyptian text was almost lost until the Rosetta stone tablet was found which held sacred Egyptian Text in Egyptian demotic writing, Egyptian hieroglyphics and greek. A frenchman, Jean-Francois Champollion was the translator. The book talks about scrolls being sacred and how funeral scrolls became available because of paid scribes who would sometimes publish only certain parts of the funeral scrolls to make it cheaper and mroe available. It seems to stay a little as it talks about the process of a person's death through the underworld and judgement. It ends by talking about the scarab and its written markings and how it often goes upon where a person's heart would be when they die.

2. Name the fact you found most interesting from the reading.
 
I found most interesting the fact about the Hittite cylinders used for imprinting a signature. Apparently the sumarian kind was so complicated with its printing that you couldn't possibly copy it, which could've been an early form of printing since it was used multiple times. The Egyptians also used this method when they took over but was a slightly more simple symbol, but still complex enough that you didn't copy it. Artisans would use these to show they were the craftsman of whatever they made, be it a house, a pot, tool or a temple.