The Development of Writing

Along with the invention of the wheel the invention of writing is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Writing made it possible to communicate over long distances and also to record one’s personal history. The displays in the museum follow the development of writing from the very beginning and right up to the invention of the printing press and of typography.

Ancient Babylonian cuneiform table 1900-1700 b.C.Merovingian ink horn (ink-holder) 7th Century.

Over the course of time many independent scripts developed all over the world. The development steps were similar though the consequences were different. As a first step the world around us wis recorded by means of picture characters - hidden behind nearly all scripts can be found a picture! In a second step more complicated ideas such as “fertility” were formed by combining a number of picture characters (as for example in Chinese or in the
Cuneiform characters). In the last step the characters no longer recorded the “world” around us but rather the sounds of the language. And so scripts which are based on alphabets came into being.

It was the early Egyptian symbol for WATER which gave us our letter M.Out of a combination of the symbols for EYE and WATER the Sumerians were able to draw a symbol for CRYING. A phonetic script adopts the sound of that which is represented. So, for example, CAR and PET give the expression CARPET.