Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2: Section II: Pictographs

Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2

Language: English

Section II: Pictographs

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We have so far, attempted a brief survey of the nascent attempts of primitive men to get over the difficulties of speech so that communication could be less perishable. But all these varied devices invented by them have been rightly grouped under ‘embryo-writing’ to be distinguished from true writing. Obviously, therefore, our main concern should be the study of the latter ; and to begin with, that is, pictography. In a way pictography is the boundary between writing and art, so that to view it in a wider perspective we should consider some of the theories put forward by historians of art. Many scholars tend to believe that the theory of sympathetic magic has largely explained the purpose of all primitive art. Yet, what was at the back of the minds of these artists would seem to defy mangling by preconceived theories. In her book *Paintings and Engravings*, (Tr. by Eleanore Frances Armstrong)³³, Mille Annate Laming-Las Caux “ has thought out along her own lines the reasons which may have prompted cave artists to acquire and develop their skill in order to be able to devote their time to decorating almost inaccessible areas of rock space. She joins issue, indeed, with Abbe Breuil, for she is not prepared to accept hunting, ritual and the practice of sympathetic magic as being sufficient explanations either of the choice or the number of the animals represented, or of the surfaces chosen for decoration, or of the seemingly casual superimposed drawings. Mille Laming draws attention to what she considers intelligibly obvious group compositions and argues that such groups are incompatible with the theory of sympathetic magic which depends on the supposition that each animal or figure was painted separately according to the needs of the hunt. More over, she rules out the alternative theory of these cave paintings being products of an anecdotal animal art on grounds of unnatural animal associations between certain animals within these groups .........'' ³⁴ It is therefore idle to conclude that these drawings and paintings represent one definite trend to the exclusion of all others or that all primitive art, irrespective of the factors of time and place, could be explained in terms of any single theory, however cogent it may seem to be. There is, indeed, no logical or historical necessity for any exclusive motive. Thus it is not improbable that primitive art has been permeated by many complementary factors. It may commemorate actual events or record instructions and directives to be carried out and essay as well dreamy visions of unfulfilled yearnings.

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³³ “The ideas of writing and drawing were identical in prehistoric Egypt and in early Greece, as it is shown by the Egyptian word *s-sh* and by Greek *graphein*, which mean both ‘writing’ and ‘drawing’”. (Diringer, *ibid.*, p. 25). “As far as history reaches, in every direction, the beginnings of writing seem to have been laid in pictorial art”. (W.A. Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 40.) The remarkable drawing and paintings of cave men of central Europe (who lived at the close of the last glacial period in Europe) which abound in artistic excellence, are frankly regarded as picture-writing by Dr. Arther J. Evans who interprets them as records of events.

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³⁴ See *The Times Literary Supplement*, May, 29. 1959, p. 316. See also review of the same book in *The Listener*, May, 7, 1959, p. 812.

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Fig. 3. The Penn Treaty Belt. Given by the Indians to William Penn

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Fig. 4. Wampum belt belonging to the Onondaga Indians.

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Fig. 5. Wampum Missionary belt.

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" However, picture-writing even in its elementary stage is more than a picture. It differs from picturing, which is the beginning of pure pictorial representation or art, from the fact that it is the utilitarian beginning of written language, aiming to convey to the mind not the pure representation of an event, but a narrative of the event, each notion, or idea being expressed by a little picture or sketch, which we term *pictograph*. The distinction is important, for the change from embryo-writing to picture writing implies an immense progress in the art of perpetuating or transmitting thought ''.³⁵ The change must have come about very early considering the pace of development from the Aurignasian cave drawings (of 20,000 to 30,000 years ago) which clearly show that people had acquired the mental trick of isolating the element of shape, and later those of colour, number etc. from their general impressions of animals.³⁶

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³⁵ Diringer, *op. cit.*, pp. 32-33.

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³⁶ R. A. S. Paget, 'The Origin of Language' in *Science News*, No. 20, p. 91.

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But it is doubtful whether in the evolution of writing we can distinguish between two distinct phases as the aesthetic and the utilitarian, for they seem to be inextricably fused together. Gordon Childe particularly stresses that the fact of the priestly origination of writing far from disproving the utilitarian theory only confirms it further for "the Sumerian priests invented writing not in their capacity of ministers of superstition but in that of administrators of a wordly estate. They, like Egyptian and Minoan scribes, used the invention not for magical or liturgical purposes but for practical business and administration".³⁷ While this is true, it does not take into cognizance the possibility of the prior existence of *pictures*, as such,³⁸ whose *raison d'etre* may not have been narration of events, and yet may have inspired the subsequent utilitarian picture writing. In the ultimate analysis, therefore, the birth of writing may not be wholly attributable to practical needs, though such needs may have been the immediate forces engendering it. There is at least one strong ground for this belief: the evolution of writing shows an unmistakable direction, viz., *from the decorative to the plain*, and throughout, the more thoroughly utilitarian writing is meant to be, the plainer it becomes.³⁹ When all evidence definitely establishes this uniform course in the development of writing, it should not be futile to study this evolution in the reverse and infer an original stage of pictures as such, pure and simple, the main concern behind which may not have been plain practical communication. If this stage can be considered a historical fact, then, writing has had an aesthetic and not an utilitarian origin.39a

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³⁷ *Man Makes Himself*, p. 185. "It is no accident that the oldest written documents of the world are accounts and dictionaries. They disclose the severely practical needs that prompted the invention of Sumerian Script". (*Ibid.*, p. 184).

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³⁸ See, *ante*, p. 11 for the quotation from Diringer.

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³⁹ Haddon, *Evolution in Art*, p. 215.

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39a We have incidentally emphasised it here so that advocates of utilitarianism supported by substantial *but later* evidence may not wholly miss it.

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The subsequent development of writing presents no great difficultly; according to A. C. Haddon,⁴⁰ the stages through which alphabet writing has passed are:

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⁴⁰ *Evolution in Art*, pp. 216-7.

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(a) *Pictographs*–Pictures or actual representation of objects.
(b) *Ideograms*–Pictorial symbols⁴¹ which are used to suggest objects or abstract ideas. *Phonograms*–Graphic symbols⁴² of sounds. They have usually arisen out of conventionalised ideograms, which have been taken to represent sounds instead of things.⁴³
(c) Verbal signs, representing entire words.
(d) Syllabic signs which stand for articulations of which words are composed.
(e) Alphabetic signs or letters, which represent the elementary sounds into which the syllable can be resolved.

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⁴¹ *Ibid.*, p. 212. "Symbols are less obvious and more artificial than signs, they are usually conventional, and are not only abstract, but metaphysical, and often need explanation from history, religion and customs. They do not depict but suggest objects: do not speak directly through the eye to the intelligence, but presuppose in the mind knowledge of an event or fact which the sign calls. The symbols of the ark, dove, olive-branch and rainbow would be the cross and the crescent to those ignorant of history". (quoted from Garrick Mallery, '*Sign Language* among North American Indians', *First American Report of the Bureau of Ethnology*, 1879-80 (1881).

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⁴² See preceding footnote.

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⁴³ See *Supra fn*. 80 from the *Encyclopaedia Americana*, (quotation.)

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Since pictography is the most natural and direct means of written communication it must have originated independently among different peoples and thus, as Haddon observes, there is no single system of pictography.⁴⁴ "In the vast majority of cases a native interpreter is required to explain the exact significance of the figures, or of the events which they commemorate. Once explained, the representations are found to be sufficiently appropriate."⁴⁵

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⁴⁴ *Op. cit.*, p. 215.

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⁴⁵ *Ibid.*

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Quite often, particularly in the earliest days of pictography, "the pictures simply recalled the objects to the mind; the special and particular meaning of the record had to be devised through a process of mental equation".⁴⁶ Even later a good number of signs, occurring, as for instance, along with hieroglyphic words, graphically picture human or animal forms or their parts Thus, beside the word spelt fully with the proper phonetic hieroglyphs there is a pictorial index sign "more fully to define its meaning".⁴⁷ Thus while in simple pictography, any figure stands for the object it represents, and its real meaning may be easily guessed, in complex representations, as they go beyond mere imitation there is great difficulty to discriminate their true import. A good knowledge of the signs, symbols and determinatives used is necessary for any correct interpretation.⁴⁸ E.B. Tylor illustrates this problem well:—"When the tortoise is put to represent land, it is no longer a mere imitation but has become an emblem or symbol. And where the bird is drawn to mean not a real king-fisher, but a man of that name, we see the first step toward phonetic writing or sound writing, the principle of which is to make a picture stand for the sound of a spoken word. How man may have made the next move toward writing may be learnt from the common child's game of *rebus*, that is writing words 'by things'. Like many other games, this one keeps up in child's sport what in earlier ages was man's earnest. Thus if one writes the word 'waterman' by a picture of a water-jug and a man, this is drawing the meaning of the word in a way hardly beyond the American Indian's picture of the king-fisher. But it is very different when in a child's book of puzzles one finds the drawing of a water-can, a man being shot, and a date-fruit, this representing in *rebus* the word 'can-di-date'. For now what the pictures have come to stand for is no longer their meaning, but their mere sound. This is true phonetic writing, though of a rude kind, and shows how the practical art of writing really came to be invented".⁴⁹

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⁴⁶ T. N. Subrahmanyan, *South Indian Temple Inscriptions*, Vol. III, pt. ii, p. 1570.

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⁴⁷ For instance: 'to dance' by a girl dancing; 'to rest' by a recumbent figure; 'to ascend' by a person walking upstairs; 'judgment' by an eye; 'wonder' by a man with his hands upstretched. (See Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 22).

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⁴⁸ *Ibid.*, pp. 215—16. "In attempting to decipher pictographs not only is it necessary to have a thorough knowledge of the people who made them, but it must be borne in mind that characters substantially the same, or 'homomorphs' (to use Colonel Mallery's term) made by one set of people have, a different signification among others. Further, differing forms ('symmorphs') for the same general conception or idea may occur. It is usually comparatively easy for any one to get a meaning out of a pictograph; but it is quite a different matter whether that was the meaning which the inscriber intended to convey."

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⁴⁹ *Anthropology*, Vol. I, pp. 133-34.

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Fig. 6. Bison and Men. Hunting scene. Obverse and reverse. From Laugerie Basse, Dordogne, France.

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Fig. 7. Reindeer carved on a piece of antler. From a cave near Thayngon, Switzerland.

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Amidst the best instances of pictograph are the drawings and paintings of the palaeolithic cave drockers of Central Europe. "Contemporaneous with Arctic and Semi Arctic animals long since extinct" they could still have such artistic excellence that nothing can compare with "the rare fidelity to nature of the drawings to which these rude men cut with flints or painted with coloured earths or vegetable dyes upon the rocky walls of their caves, or carved upon their crude stone implements or with better skill etched with delightful naivette upon the bones of now extinct animals, ages before metals were used or ever known".⁵⁰ Their numerous drawings portray the mammoth (see Fig. 6), bison, ox, reindeer, hyena, cave bear and the horse, "which with its erect mane and zebra-like characteristics gives further evidence, were it needed, of the vast prehistoric antiquity of their art".⁵¹ The incomparable drawing of the reindeer, reproduced here, is carving on a piece of reindeer antler found in a cave near Thayngen, Switzerland. (See Fig. 7). All these drawings are "replete with realism and for spirit and dash are well nigh unexcelled".²⁵ Dr. Arthur J. Evans straightaway calls them picture-writing looking upon them as records of events, primarily of the chase, their principal occupation.⁵⁸

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⁵⁰ Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 41.

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⁵¹ *Ibid.*, p. 42.

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At Lascaux, the cave paintings of the Aurignacian period show principally a giant aurochs; the entire animal is painted in "admirably vigorous strokes, but the head is the greatest masterpiece". There are a number of horses, with prominent manes and short legs, similar to those of other caves. One scene depicts a wild mare and foal hunted by bowmen, a scene full of life and movement.⁵⁴

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⁵⁴ Leouhard Adams, *Primitive Art*, p. 79.

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There are naturalistic representations by palaeolithic men, in Eastern Spain, giving us a good idea of their way of life with its principal occupation of hunting. "A large number of their pictures are full of excitement and animation". The fighting scene from Galeria del Roble as well as the galloping horse shows, as Leouhard Adams says, "one characteristic feature of Stone Age Painting at its highest development : concentration on what is absolutely essential and omission of all unnecessary detail ”.⁵⁵ And as he believes the original purpose of this and other similar pictures may not have been aesthetic, but rather pictographic.⁵⁶

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⁵² *Ibid.*

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⁵³ *Ibid.*, cited on p. 43.

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⁵⁵ Leouhard Adams, *op. cit.*, pp. 79—80. He observes earlier: “ I think it will be generally agreed that we are completely unconscious of the lack of perspective. Is there indeed a lack of perspective at all ? Does it not appear as if the artist had looked down from a high rock on this handful of men attacking each other from bows and arrows ? And in that case would not the representation meet even our demands in the matter of perspective”. p. 79.

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⁵⁶ *Ibid.*, pp. 80—81.

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Many of the drawings in the Atlas Mountains may well belong to a period earlier than the Neolithic, as is shown, for instance, by the figures of the giant buffalo (*Bubalus antiqus*) which by then, it is believed, had become extinct. Adams holds that the drawings of elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes and ostriches, which are no longer in the northern areas, must belong to the time when there was a considerably warmer climate in the Atlas region.⁵⁷ In Central Sahara paintings happen to be more common. “ The style is naturalistic, animated ” and “ of particular interest are several polychrome paintings in the Tasili mountains representing graceful human figures dappled cattle close by ”.⁵⁸ The French Ahaggar expedition discovered in 1935 another site to the South-West of this region “ with the same kind of polychrome wall paintings, showing various animals, but chiefly cattle. A few human figures are distinguished by extraordinarily animated and often graceful movements ”.⁵⁹

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⁵⁷ *Ibid.*, p. 82.

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⁵⁸ *Ibid.*, p. 84.

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⁵⁹ *Ibid.*, p. 85. Count de Chasoeloup recognises a striking similarity between Ahaggar paintings on one hand and Bushman art and the art of Ancient Egypt on the other and suggests the Ahaggar plateau as the original home of this art. Commenting on this Leouhard Adams observes : “ We can trace the development of Egyptian paintings in Egypt itself from very primitive beginnings. As far as we know strong influences have spread in exactly the opposite direction - that is from Egypt to the West and South-west, but even this took place in the dynastic period, and not in pre-historic times. In the Atlas region the engraved figures of bulls and rams with sun discs between their horns show an obvious influence, but they are not older than the New Stone Age, and may be even more recent. The paintings of Ahaggar plateau, then, appear to be only a link - though probably the most beautiful one - in the chain of Saharan art centres parallel in age to pre-dynastic and dynastic Egypt ”. *Ibid.*, p. 85.

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The paintings of the Bushmen of South Africa depict hunting scenes in which elephants, long haired bovines, lions, antelopes and other wild animals are found. One fine instance of Bushman painting shows a herd of ostriches of different colours. "A close inspection, however, reveals that one of the birds has 'human' legs, and peeping out from among the feathers a bow and arrow can be seen". This 'bird' is a bushman, out on a hunt, and to be able to get to the proximity of the birds, has disguised himself, putting on an ostrich skin. When George W. Stow showed a copy of this picture to a modern bushman he could readily explain: "Ostriches, three black males two blue females. The 'Nusy Bushmen' not the 'Kham Bushmen are said to hunt in Ostrich skins".⁶⁰ The Bushman paintings show attempts at perspective through fore-shortening, though some exhibit difficulties therein; they further depict the profile, the front view and, above all, the back view. One of the finer specimens shows both the animals, and the hunters are drawn with appreciable care for form and perspective.⁶¹

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⁶⁰ Cited in Leouhard Adams, *op. cit.*, pp. 88-9.

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⁶¹ *Ibid.*, p. 93.

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We have no doubt that these drawings were made for the purpose of record, "the only kind known to these savages in their backward stage". Mason observes, that they exhibit "a high degree of proficiency in the elemental art of drawing".⁶²

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⁶² See *A History of the Art of Writing*, p. 44.

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In Siberia too, rock art is common, consisting of engravings or pecked drawings and paintings. One rock drawing shows⁶³ hunters with bows and arrows and two naked men, one with a spear. The antiquity of these pictures is not above controversy, and while a very early date may be held quite reasonable, some of them definitely belong to a much later period, about the first millennium A.D. But many recent finds have been made by Soviet archaeologists and there is no doubt that palaeolithic art existed in the Asian countries of the Soviet Union, especially in Siberia. Female statuettes similar to those of the Auringnasian period of Europe have occurred in the Russian plains, Malta, Yakutsk in Eastern Siberia and in Uzbekistan.⁶⁴ As regards the Yakutsk rock pictures, Prof. Okladnikor's team (which investigated about eighty prehistoric sites and groups of rock pictures) believes that they belong to the Bronze and Iron Ages and partly to the Neolithic and Palaeolithic periods too.⁶⁵ Miss Tatyana Passek, Secretary of the Institute of History of Material Culture of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, hails the cliffs near the village of Shiskino, on the Lena river as a museum of primitive art; she observes that "in many places, over a stretch of a kilometer and a half the cliffs are completely covered with drawings".⁶⁶ The most interesting piece, according to her, is a life size drawing of a wild horse in red paint, resembling similar drawings in palaeolithic caves in Western Europe.⁶⁷ Another instance of rock art is the Surukhtaakh Khaya cliff which is covered with drawings representing 'witch doctors, reindeer, cupolo-like structures and various symbols'.⁶⁸ The piece of the rock art from this region according to Leouhard Adams may be only a rough sketch, perhaps not quite accurate. He holds that it is not palaeolithic or neolithic art, but apparently belongs to the Bronze Age. "However incomplete the section illustrated here may be, at least one typically primitive feature is quite distinct, viz., 'X-ray' vision; that is to say, the representation of the inner parts of a body. This is one of the several characteristics which ancient Siberian art has in common with North-west American art and other American art styles."⁶⁹ What has been called 'X-ray' vision may have played a vital role in the development of pictography and ideography; Leouhard Adams rightly regards it as the highest development of 'intellectual' as opposed to optical vision. His further remarks are quite apposite to the evolution of writing also: "The accentuation of certain features in a figure often leads to the disregard of others, so that realistic representation is gradually abandoned. It is eventually replaced by symbolism where a few characteristic traits suffice to convey the idea of an object, and may be stylized and transformed into conventional signs. In an extreme stage of development an isolated claw and a single wing may symbolize a raven".⁷⁰

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⁶³ Discovered near Abansk in the Minusinsk district.

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⁶⁴ I have followed the account of prehistoric art in Siberia and Central Asia given in Leouhard Adams, *Primitive Art*, (1954).

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⁶⁵ According to Leouhard Adams if the latter date is correct it must be the upper palaeolithic as far as the rock art is concerned. (*Ibid.*, p. 112).

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⁶⁶ *Ibid.*, cited on p. 112.

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⁶⁷ *Ibid.*

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⁶⁸ *Ibid.*, p. 113. The Surukhtaakh Khaya cliff is on the river Markha, a northern tributary of the river Vilyni, which is itself a tributary of the Lena. The site lies between 110° and 120° E. Long. and in about 65° N. Lat.

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⁶⁹ *Ibid.*, p. 114.

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⁷⁰ *Primitive Art*, pp. 37—38.

Hieroglyphs

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It cannot be decided, with the evidence at our command whether hieroglyphic or cuneiform writing is older. The consensus of opinion among scholars is that the development of the hieroglyph was parallel with the cuneiform, the Chinese, Mayan and other transitional scripts. Nevertheless some are of opinion that the entire script was artificially created at the time of the unification of Egypt under the First Dynasty.⁷¹ It is true that the Egyptians had their fully developed system of writing even in the time of Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty, whose date according to Flinders Petrie is 4777 B.C. The words by then had a purely phonetic value and were regularly spelt out instead of being indicated by ideograms alone.⁷² The purely pictographic stage had been passed and "remains a matter of inference."⁷³ But scholars who dispute the pictorial origin of the hieroglyphs hold "that the ancient names of the characters became obsolete so early that explanation for their phonetic value is discoverable even in the oldest inscriptions."⁷⁴ It is too much to believe that the hieroglyphs suddenly dawned on the people out of a vacuum, as it were. The primitive Egyptian ideograms are remarkably similar to the Ojibwa and Chinese symbols;⁷⁵ and the analogy of the evolution of other scripts can, by no means, be neglected. The theory of 'idea-diffusion' or 'stimulus-diffusion' according to which the script did not evolve gradually, but was invented by someone "who knew already of the existence of writing" is an attractive speculation. Holding that this suggestion is perhaps right, Diringer still admits that it is very difficult of proof.⁷⁶ In the absence of earlier records unfolding the evolution of the hieroglyphs, the only legitimate thing to do is to suspend our judgment, waiting to learn more.

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⁷¹ Diringer, *op. cit.*, p. 58.

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⁷² Gordon Childe, *Man Makes Himself*, (Watts, 1948), p. 184.

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⁷³ *Ibid.*

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⁷⁴ *Primitive Art*, p. 211.

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⁷⁵ *Ibid.*

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⁷⁶ Diringer, *op. cit.*, p. 58.

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However Egyptian writing may have originated, there is little doubt that in its final stage it antedated the Pyramids "by many centuries of advanced culture".⁷⁷ "The earliest attempts at uniting must have preceded the Pyramids by a tremendous length of time if, as the evolutionary theory holds, the hieroglyphs had passed through the usual stages of primitive pictographs, ideographic characters and rebus writing, parallel to the stages of cuneiform writing. The hieroglyphic inscriptions represent the same mode of writing as those of 3000 years later. "Nevertheless, the cautious scholars consider the few ancient documents extant .........as a pure pictorial representation, namely as a picture only, and not as crude pictography, that is as picture-writing or as transition from pictography to ideographic script, while the majority regard the documents as important evidence of the various initial stages in the development of hieroglyphic writing."⁷⁸

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⁷⁷ "The greater part of existing edifices upon the ancient soil appear to be not first essays, but the renaissance of the art of a civilization that had been interrupted by an invasion of barbarians anterior to the year 2000 before the Christian era. The inscriptions which decorate these monuments show us, in effect, the hieroglyphic writing already as complete in form as the last sculptured writings of the Egyptians of the second and third centuries after Christ" (Champollion quoted in Mason, *op. cit.*, pp. 186-7.)

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⁷⁸ Diringer, *op. cit.*, pp. 58-9.

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In the Rosetta stone inscription, the earliest to be deciphered by Champollion, the characters are quite pictorial. The translation of the inscription here shows that the characters are largely phonetic signs, though purely ideographic signs are also found. The defect with phonograms is that they cannot precisely represent homonyms, especially monosyllabic words which have significations, though pronounced alike. In order exactly to indicate which particular word is intended, it is necessary to add a determinative or explanatory ideogram.⁷⁹ However, this mixture of ideographs and phonographs in this and other Egyptian inscriptions as well as in Mexican picture writing according to the *Encyclopaedia Americana* does not prove the absolute precedence of ideographs.

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⁷⁹ “Thus, if a figure of the *stork* represented the bird, the same with a flower or some leaves by its side would indicate a *stalk*, and a pair of legs by the side of another bird would determinate the action of *stalking*”. (A. C. Haddon, *Evolution in Art*, pp. 217-18)

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“In our own system we use figures and other symbols when phonographic signs are too slow for our purpose, and with a less perfect phonographic system this would naturally occur much more frequently. It does not appear, moreover, that any transition from pictorial to phonetic writing is necessary through arbitrary non-phonetic symbols. Both of these modifications would no doubt proceed simultaneously from independent causes. Pictorial signs not phonetized would be abbreviated as well as phonetized signs and when the phonetized abbreviations came to prevail the non-phonetized abbreviations would be phonetized also, thus producing the appearance of a transition from arbitrary symbols to phonetic signs.”⁸⁰

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⁸⁰ *Encyclopaedia Americana*, (1953), Vol. XXIX, p. 572. “Nothing is easier than to make a rude pictorial representation of certain objects. To draw something resembling a man would be easier than to agree on a sign to represent the word man, hence ideographs would naturally precede phonetic symbols. But for the same reason, the earliest systems of writing would not be purely ideographic, but mixed. There are many things which form the subject of the least sophisticated human communications which cannot be represented pictorially. When writing was first practised these things were already represented by words, and the idea would naturally occur to form a sign to represent the word, that is, a phonetic sign. These signs could not be directly pictorial, but they might be allegorical or symbolic, and in the absence of analysis of sound they probably would take that form, although the direct intention was to suggest conventionally a specific word by the symbol. This sort of symbol might be called mnemonic. From such symbols to merely arbitrary syllabic and alphabetic symbols the transition would be easy.” (*Ibid.*)

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Writing about the development of the syllabic and alphabetic signs in Egypt, Mason suggests that long before the final invention of alphabetic signs a good number of syllabic symbols had been in vogue to express the phonetic values of monosyllabic words and symbols. These syllabic signs probably had been chosen from among the simplest or the commonest ideograms of mono-syllabic or polysyllabic words and used thereafter in writing as the phonograms of the initial syllables in these words: "The difference in use then was that the symbol which formerly was employed to indicate the name of an object or idea was later used as the sign for the sound of the first syllable of this name whenever it occurred in writing any polysyllabic word whatever."⁸¹

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⁸¹ Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 214. "For instance, the sign *pet* occurring several times in the inscription of Hu-nefer was originally the ideogram for 'heaven' *pet*. Later it was used as the sign for the syllable *pet* in any other word whenever it occurred."

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The Hu-nefer Papyrus reads from above downwards and to the right in the nine vertical columns and then continues in the the longtitudinal columns from left to right, interrupted by pictures and vignettes throughout its entire length. "Though the progression of the writing in the hieroglyphs is downward in the vertical columns and from left to right as the columns run, in each long horizontal line where there is more than one hieroglyph the reading is from right to left."⁸² While the general belief is that the Egyptians had the world's first alphabet and there is no doubt that they had evolved it before 4000 B.C., it will be seen that they failed to make independent use of the alphabetic signs and it passes one's understanding why they just stopped short of the final stage. The hieroglyphs consist of alphabetic, syllabic and ideographic signs jumbled up often in the same word and further the same word could be represented by different signs. As Haddon observes pithily, "when a name was alphabetically written a phonogram was added to explain it and an ideogram (or pictograph) was added to explain the phonogram. The word as finally written was an accretion of various stages in its own evolution."⁸³

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⁸² *Ibid.*, p. 203.

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⁸³ *Evolution in Art*, p. 219.

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The different signs for the same alphabetic sound were employed "according to the sentiment, implication and in some [Figure: Fig. 8. a. Symbols representing things shown b. Ideographs representing actions associated with things shown. c. Symbols representing abstract ideas.]

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Fig. 9-A. Hieroglyphic determinatives

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Fig. 9-B. Hieroglyphic bi-consonantal signs.

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cases the delicacy of the context”.⁸⁴ Vowels came first, but they were mostly disguised sounds.⁸⁵ A large number of these alphabetic signs as well as hieroglyphs, as we have seen, were pictorial; and Champollion has classified the hieroglyphic characters thus: heavenly bodies, the human figure and its parts, domestic and wild animals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, plants, fruits, flowers, clothing, furniture, armour, utensils, instruments, buildings, geometric forms and grotesque images.⁸⁶ In their alphabet one finds the eagle, reed, extended arm, chicken, leg, shutter, snail, owl, flowing water, mouth, lion, twisted cord, shovel, tank, bowl, altar, cap, hand, tongs and the serpent,⁸⁷ not to speak of the numerous duplicate signs and syllabic symbols.

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⁸⁴ Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 206. “For example in the case of the letter L, if it occurred in the name of man, the “lion” was used; in the name of a queen the “lotus” was employed. There were twenty different A's to choose from, thirty H's and many different duplicates of nearly every letter in their alphabet. (*Ibid.*, pp. 206-7).

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⁸⁵ “The first vowel, the ‘eagle’ was hardly *a*, but a mere breathing.” (*Ibid.*, p. 207).

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⁸⁶ *Ibid.*, p. 208.

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⁸⁷ A few additional alphabetic and syllabic signs in frequent use were crane, battlement, hoe, stylus, stick, plants, feather, lasso, whip and the plan of a house. This list practically constitutes a secondary alphabet; yet there were numerous other symbols too, which the Egyptians used as Mason observes aptly “for the sake of variety as we use different words of the same meaning to avoid repetition and redundancy”. (*Ibid.*, p. 209).

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The employment of hieroglyphic characters was three fold⁸⁸: (a) word signs (*Fig.* 8); (b) phonograms and phonetic complements; and (c) determinatives (*Fig.* 9). The use of bare word signs being uncommon, phonograms were formed usually out of the bare root of their parent words. “Egyptian writing like the later Semitic alphabets, expressed consonants only, and as practically there was no need for three consonantal phonograms, the phonograms were bi-consonantal, (*Fig.* 10) or uniconsonantal.⁸⁹ The origin of some of them continues to be obscure, while in a few instances there is a case for more than one origin, and in some others it cannot be definitely said whether acrophony played any considerable part; in the majority of cases, single consonants came to be denoted by symbols representing certain objects whose names (some of which had already fallen into disuse in very ancient times) contained prominently the consonant in question or, for reasons of phonetic decay were reduced to one syllable only. "However, that may be, the hieroglyphic writing contained twenty-four uni-consonantal signs" ⁹⁰. Diringer wonders if the uniconsonantal signs constituted an alphabet. ⁹¹ It is true, as he states, that the most important phonograms were these uniconsonantal signs. Nevertheless, for reasons already outlined, these signs failed to have an effective alphabetic status; at best they may have constituted a quasi-alphabet. ⁹²

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⁸⁸ Diringer, *op. cit.*, pp. 60-63.

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⁸⁹ “As the legs drawn forward or backward to indicate ‘going’ or ‘coming’, or bent to indicate ‘jumping’, the eye with drops to indicate ‘crying’ or ‘grief’ or two eyes to indicate ‘seeing’; the ear to indicate ‘hearing’; the tongue ‘speaking’; the hand holding a vase to indicate 'offering'; two arms holding a paddle meaning 'to convey'; or an arm holding a shield meaning 'combat'; and many similar symbols. (Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 213).

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⁹⁰ Diringer, *op. cit.*, pp. 60-61.

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⁹¹ *Ibid.*, p. 63.

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⁹² "Even if we agreed that the Egyptians had acquired an 'alphabet', we should conclude that they did not know how to use it. As a matter of fact, in practice they did not employ it when they could use word-signs or multi-consonantal phonograms, and they never employed it without determinatives *i.e.*, signs which were not to be read, but served simply as guides to the sense of the word; thus the alphabetic signs needed to be guided". (*Ibid.*)

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Mason suggests three stages in the development of Egyptian writing :— ⁹³

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⁹³ Mason, *op. cit.*, pp. 212-13.

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(1) Representative or imitative signs:—pictorial representations which subsequently became conventionalised and laid the foundation for the determinative ideograms used later;
(2) Symbolic signs: when it became necessary to portray actions, motives and sentiments the scribes resorted to (a) synecdoche--using a significant part instead of the whole of the figure ⁹⁴ (b) metonymy portraying

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⁹⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 213.

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Fig. 10. Hieroglyphic phonograms

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cause for effect and vice-versa employing the instrument to represent the effect produced⁹⁵ (c) metaphor, representing an idea by a resemblance, real or fancied to the properties of some object.⁹⁶

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⁹⁵ As the sun to represent day or time; the moon to represent a month; the pictures of the various implements used in writing to indicate the act of writing etc. (Mason, *op. cit.*, p. 213.)

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⁹⁶ As a book to represent ‘knowledge’; a lute, ‘goodness’; an eye ‘judgment’; a crocodile, ‘evil’; a bee, ‘king’; or the head of a lion to indicate ‘superiority’. (*Ibid.*)

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(3) Phonetic signs : one may surmise two stages in this last period of the evolution of Egyptian hieroglyphs, viz., syllabic or alphabetic phoneticism, though we have no evidence as to which is prior.⁹⁷

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⁹⁷ Article in the *Encyclopaedia Americana*, cited earlier.

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The hieroglyphs were used for inscriptions of a monumental character and as they had to last long writing was of the kind of ‘elaborately drawn, carved or painted pictures of objects’. But for business, literary and epistilatory purposes, in view of the need for speed, hieroglyphic writing was wholly unsuitable, and so a cursive form adopted from hieroglyphs was used. It has been named hieratic (sacred or ‘priestly’) as it was mainly used by priests, in contradistinction to the demotic (demos = people) writing of the common run of people, which, however, was a much later offshoot. Diringer observes : “while the hieratic signs in their most cursive forms hardly retained any clear trace of the original hieroglyphic pictures, in fact they were only cursive transcriptions, sign by sign, of hieroglyphic symbols. In practice, however, many single signs were linked together by the sweep of the brush and so ligatured groups were formed”.⁹⁸

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⁹⁸ *The Alphabet*, p. 64.

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A kind of hieratic writing existed even in the period of the First Dynasty ; but as it developed, it became obscure and with the emergence of the demotic writing in the seventh century B. C., it virtually became the script of the priests employed for transcribing religious texts and the like. The demotic was a highly cursive offshoot of the hieratic “and like it, as a symbol of writing was not more advanced than heiroglyphic since it was neither syllabic nor alphabetic''.⁹⁹ Its script thus consisted mainly of word-signs, phonograms and determinatives. Yet externally and "in addition whole associated groups of hieratic characters were fused by ligatures into single demotic signs". Demotic writing developed over a period of four hundred years and received its stereotyped form in the fourth century B. C. It is written from right to left and it is by no means easy to read. As Diringer says the main difficulty lies not in the language, but in the script.¹⁰⁰ During the Ptolemaic period demotic gained importance over hieratic and became equal in status to Greek and hieroglyphic. Decrees, temporal and spiritual, were engraved in triplicate, in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek versions. Its use continued till the end of the fifth century A. D; some of the demotic signs, for sounds not expressible by Greek letters, were assimilated by coptic alphabet.¹⁰¹

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⁹⁹ Diringer, *op. cit.*, p. 67.

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¹⁰⁰ *Ibid.*

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¹⁰¹ *Ibid.*

Cuneiform

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Cuneiform was, so to say, the multi-national script of ancient times unlike the Egyptian systems of writing.¹⁰² The resuscitation of the lost languages of Mesopotamia is a romantic, yet solemn tale. Thanks to the efforts of Grotefund (in 1821), Rawlinson (in 1851) and others we have gained an insight into the genius behind the languages and their cuneiform script, so named, owing to the wedge-like character of the strokes of the writing. Many of the inscriptions so far found have been incised "on soft clay subsequently baked, with a blunt pointed instrument or stylus, probably the three-sided stem of a rush which produced these wedge-like marks."¹⁰³ There are inscriptions on slate, marble, alabaster and other stones too, but, "the wedges which were natural and incident to inscriptions in soft clay were copied in the stone and became the standard forms in the written syllabary however and wherever used."¹⁰⁴ The wedges are separated from one another, well arranged in precise groupings constituted by syllables, the script itself being syllabic. A careful observer will not fail to see the latent pictoriality of the syllabic signs. As Mason writes, "they were but the survivals of an extremely archaic script, linear and pictorial in its character, of which they were the direct lineal descendants."104a The pictographs represented objects, both animate and inanimate. According to Professor Speiser "the property marks, the primitive prototypes of those which appear on the Mesopotamian cylinder seals, were the beginnings of the script out of which the cuneiform system arose".¹⁰⁵ It is well known that in the course of excavations in Mesopotamia the lower strata progressively showed the nature of the script to be essentially pictorial and finally we come across inscriptions in which the wedges have disappeared altogether, "and each sign is drawn in lines—no longer writing as we know it but veritable outline drawing".¹⁰⁶

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¹⁰² "The Egyptian scripts were essentially national.........; they originated in Egypt, they were employed only for Egyptian speech, they developed in Egypt and they died out in Egypt". *Ibid.* p. 63.

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¹⁰³ Mason, *op.cit.*, 232.

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¹⁰⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 233.

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104a Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 233.

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¹⁰⁵ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.

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¹⁰⁶ Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 235.

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In course of time the pictorial characters must have advanced further and thus arose a second stage in the development of cuneiform, namely that of symbols standing for abstract ideas. "As soon as the need for the representation of continuous discourse arose, it became evident that a number of the vital elements of speech, such as inflexions, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions or personal names, especially of foreigners, could not be represented by this means. Hence, the picture-symbols came to be used to represent not only objects or related abstract ideas, but also the phonetic value of words without any regard to their meaning as pictures. In other words the cuneiform writing became a *rebus-writing*; many symbols were "sound-pictures" or phonograms, symbolizing word-sounds as such, or "phonetic complements".¹⁰⁷

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¹⁰⁷ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.

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The Father Schiel Tablet,¹⁰⁸ which is one of the oldest, exhibits characters wholly pictographic without any manifestation of convention. They are drawn upright in vertical columns and are to be read downward and from right to left (as indicated) by the numbers at the top of the tablet. The first column is occupied by the proper name ‘Garduengub’ spelt with phonetic and syllabic characters as proper names and cannot be pictured otherwise.¹⁰⁹ Similarly in the ‘Monuments Blau’ the characters have just begun to progress beyond the ideographic stage and there is a combination of written characters and pictorial drawings. In the Hoffman tablet as well as in the collection of Babylonian tablets in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, one character occurs three times, each time drawn differently. And as in the ‘Monuments Blau’ “the characters are not placed above each other nor in vertical registers, but are disposed for the most part horizontally, reading from right to left along the horizontal lines rather than downward.”¹¹⁰

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¹⁰⁸ The inscriptions have been generally named after the discoverers.

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¹⁰⁹ “The characters in Garduengub's name really are pictures, or at least ideographs. The first one appears to be an early form of the symbol for ‘night’ and closely resembles the Chinese, Egyptian and Ojibwa symbols for night. The second character probably represents a covered pot; the third a throne; and the fourth obviously a human foot. The remainder of the inscription is written in characters probably largely ideographic” (Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 239).

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¹¹⁰ *Ibid.*, p. 244.

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The cuneiform symbols had an extensive range of expression; there were polyphones as well as homophones. As the latter had similar phonetic values but represented different objects, clarity in communication had to be provided by determinatives, that is signs placed beside the words to be clarified, and yet not pronounced. The determinatives indicated the meaning of a word by denoting precisely the class to which the object belongs. “In general the same cuneiform sign might stand for a simple syllable or vowel, or it might express a whole idea or word by itself, or yet again it might indicate only the class in which the particular word was being employed”.¹¹¹ However, in the gradual process of simplification the pictures were conventionalized and thus only the bare features necessary for ready identification, happened to be retained; the script too became linear.

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¹¹¹ Diringer, *op.cit.*, p. 43.

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Thus a permanent change came over in the position of the signs and they were drawn on their sides in horizontal rows and as a result the reading was from left to right. The account given here is far too simple and short to bring home the immense vicissitudes and the numerous stages which had to be passed through before any stability could be gained.

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The original signs, as Diringer points out, have not survived, as the people, perhaps, employed perishable materials, such as, wood or a kind of papyrus leaf.¹¹² Early Mesopotamian writing survives on a few clay tablets where the signs already appear quite developed. "About 3200 B.C. some scribes found it convenient to turn the tablet in such a way that the pictographs appear lying on their back while in inscriptions on stone or metal the old position of the signs persisted for a few centuries more".¹¹³ Later the monumental inscriptions also adopted the system of the clay tablets and the signs came to be regularly turned at an angle of 90 degrees. (*Fig*. 10, Col. 2) "The change from the linear script to wedge shaped strokes (*Fig*. 10, Col. 3) was not a device deliberately chosen, but came about more or less by accident" occasioned by the use of the stylus.¹¹⁴ By Hammu-rabi's time, thus, conventionalization had advanced so far that the resemblance of the cuneiform characters, then well established, to be read downward and from right to left (as indicated) by the numbers at the top of the tablet. The first column is occupied by the proper name ‘Garduengub’ spelt with phonetic and syllabic characters as proper names and cannot be pictured otherwise.¹⁰⁹ Similarly in the ‘Monuments Blau’ the characters have just begun to progress beyond the ideographic stage and there is a combination of written characters and pictorial drawings. In the Hoffman tablet as well as in the collection of Babylonian tablets in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, one character occurs three times, each time drawn differently. And as in the ‘Monuments Blau’ “the characters are not placed above each other nor in vertical registers, but are disposed for the most part horizontally, reading from right to left along the horizontal lines rather than downward.”¹¹⁰

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¹¹² Diringer, *op.cit.*, pp. 45-46.

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¹¹³ *Ibid.*, pp. 46-47.

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¹¹⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 48. "The Sumerians found themselves in a country abounding in clay, and in using it as a writing material, they soon discovered that one could draw a character in the wet clay—the written clay-tablets or bricks being exposed to the sun and baked hard, so that the record became durable—much better and more quickly by impressing them than by scratching. On the other hand curves, circles and fine long lines could not be impressed satisfactorily, so that all these lines, curves and circles were replaced by combinations of short, straight, vertical, horizontal or oblique strokes or angles. These were impressed, line by line, with the edge of a broad-headed stylus, consisting of a straight piece of stick of reed, bone, hard wood or metal. Assyrian monuments represent scribes holding the stylus in their closed fist and pressing upon the tablet. Naturally, the strokes impressed were thick on the top and on the left—the direction of writing being then from left to right—thus giving birth to a series of wedge-shaped characters, called by the users 'fingers'; and this peculiarity became more pronounced as time went on. The wedge-constructed characters, once they had been standardized, were cut on stone, metal, glass and other hard material". (*Ibid.*)

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¹⁰⁹ “The characters in Garduengub’s name really are pictures, or at least ideographs. The first one appears to be an early form of the symbol for ‘night’ and closely resembles the Chinese, Egyptian and Ojibwa symbols for night. The second character probably represents a covered pot; the third a throne; and the fourth obviously a human foot. The remainder of the inscription is written in characters probably largely ideographic” (Mason, *op.cit.*, p. 239).

Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2: Section II: Pictographs

Contents

Section II: Pictographs

Hieroglyphs

Cuneiform