Humans – i.e. Homo sapiens – have been around for around 300,000 years, but the first attempts at writing go back just 5,000 years. Until then, all knowledge was passed on orally. Of course, cave paintings are much older. In a way, they were also the first traditions of knowledge that survived a human life. But they are not yet counted as writing.
The first traces of writing lead to Mesopotamia and Egypt. A forerunner of writing was invented here using the rebus principle – where exactly first is debatable. In any case, in Mesopotamia it was an initial form of bookkeeping that led to writing: lines on clay tablets and later symbols – such as an ear of barley – facilitated trade and records. This resulted in the so-called Rebus system: the symbol of barley (pronounced “sheh”) and the symbol of milk/cow’s udder (“ga”) pronounced together resulted in the word “sheh-ga” – meaning “pretty”. A word with a completely new meaning than the two symbols – de facto a forerunner of writing.
Over the centuries, these characters became the first form of the alphabet – shaped by simple migrant workers. Findings in Sarabit al-Chadim on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, which are around 4,000 years old, provide evidence of this.
papyrus, parchment and paper
The script is therefore “invented”, but a suitable carrier material was needed for its dissemination, because until then people “wrote” on stone and clay. This carrier was found in the fibers of papyrus. “The beginnings of the further spread of manuscripts are therefore associated with papyrus,” says Andreas Fingernagel, head of the manuscripts, autographs and estate collections at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. “It was only with the papyrus that the written form was handed down on a larger scale.”
However, papyrus was already in short supply in Europe before the fall of the Roman Empire and parchment began to flourish – comparatively more resistant animal skins. However, it was expensive and rare. Meanwhile, in China and later in the Arab world, there was already paper. Thanks to paper and writing, Central Asia in particular flourished. It was only much later that paper was also made in Europe, which is how writing was able to spread.
However, standardization was decisive for the development of modern writing. This happened during the Carolingian period in the eighth century. “Under Charlemagne, there was a typeface reform that aimed to standardize the many typefaces and make them clearly legible,” says Fingernagel. At that time, the monks in today’s Austria – for example in the monasteries of St. Peter in Salzburg and Mondsee – were striving for unification. Typefaces from France were adopted. In the twelfth century, a Romanesque script prevailed, and later a Gothic one. Typeface books were also used for standardization.
These handwritten letters naturally had a great influence on the beginning of book printing and its creator Johannes Gutenberg, who based his lettering on Gothic handwriting, which was easy to read and whose letters did not interlock. Thanks to the printing press, Europe was also able to develop rapidly intellectually in the following years.
From the 16th century onwards, Kurrent was the handwritten form of communication. It was characterized by squiggly letters, which made them sometimes difficult to read, since individual letters such as “e” and “n” are difficult to distinguish. It was replaced in the 19th century by the cursive script that is still in use today, although its roots also go back a long way – to the Middle Ages.
The history of one of the most valuable books in the collection of manuscripts and old prints, which Fingernagel has been director of since 2008, goes back much further. One of the oldest is the so-called “Viennese Genesis”. What makes her so special? On the one hand, the parchment is colored purple, the color reserved for emperors and rulers. The book, which probably dates from the fifth century AD, was written with silver (which, however, clogs the parchment). In addition, this fragmented Bible is illustrated throughout. Considering this and the fact that in such a book several writers have simultaneously described and illustrated individual layers over a year, and this “Genesis” also reveals a lot about the genesis of the writing and consequently of the people, the value of the book cannot be high enough to be looked at. And that of the Scriptures for the people anyway.
Source: Nachrichten
