clo2 early writing

AGS 1222/ AGD 1222

PREPARED BY: RINA BT. ABD SHUKOR

HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

CLO2: THE ORIGIN OF ALPHABET: Early Writing System

- Homo sapiens emerged

- Early innovations

- Evolved from Southern Africa

- Inhabit in caves

- Near Lake Turkana, Kenya

- Revealed a 30 million year old stone being invented to become a tool.

- Tool to dig roots or to cut away flesh from dead animals.

- Writing instead of speech

- Produce marks, symbols, pictures and letters

- Became a graphic part of spoken and unspoken thought

(experience, idea and historical event)

- Expressive

- Invention of writing and pictures were recorded to communicate

ideas for the early people before century.

- Establish in Africa over 200 thousand years old

- Early Paleolithic to Neolithic period 35 000 b.c to 4000 b.c.

- European and Africans left paintings in caves ; Lascaux in southern

France and Altamira in Spain (figure)

- Balck made from charcoal.

- Warm tones from yellow to red – browns made from red and yellow

iron oxides.

- Pigment mixed with fat as a medium (paste)

- Images; animals

- Technique; smeared with fingers onto walls or fabricate brushes

from bristles or reeds

- Issue; Ritualistic purpose, survival and utilitarian

- Animal images indicate that they were magical rites designed to

gain power over animals and success in the hunt.

PREHISTORIC VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

- Abstract geometric signs; dots, square and other configurations

related to the animals in the cave painting.

- Made in the beginning of recorded history (5000 year)

- Animals were painted into pictographs, elementary pictures

(sketches) representing meaning depicted.

- From Africa to North America to the island of New Zealand

(petroglyphs)

- Petroglyphs are pictograph, ideographs, symbols representing

concept and ideas

- Engrave in the cave of Lorthet in southern France; scratched

drawing (sketch) deer, salmon, 2 diamond – shaped form : symbol

(figure 1)



Figure 1

- 2 ways of early pictograph ; pictorial art (objects and events

recorded to increase integrity and accurateness) and secondly

(form into writing )

- Paleolithics developed simplification and stylization.

- Figures were abstract and expressed in minimal way

- Whereby late paleos were made less into letters.


THE CRADLE OF CIVILATION NON ALPHABETICAL (SYMBOLS)

- Mesopotamia (land between rivers) Tigris and Euphrates rivers

across mountain of eastern turkey now known as Iraq

(Persian gulf).

- Early humans here are nomadic 8000 b.c

- Land with planted wild grains, animal and agriculture land.

- 6000 b.c objects were hammered from copper (tool) (figure)

- 3000 b.c bronze

- invented wheel

- Society of Sumerian arrived in Mesopotamia end of fourth

millennium b.c

- Mesopotamians were the first future race

THE CRADLE OF CIVILATION NON ALPHABETICAL (SYMBOLS)

- Sumerians contributed social (system of god-man relationship) and

intellectual progress (early writing system)

- System of God – Anu (God of heavens)

- Invention of writing revolution

- Mesopotamia records invaders (Sumerians) conquered the culture

- Including; Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Chaldeans

EARLY WRITING

- Ziggurat temple (figure 2)

- Recessed levels

- Smaller toward the top of the shrine

- Enormous power.

- Invented the gods and the kings

- Ministered magical and religious needs.

- Writing is the way to keep records the system and information of

that era

Figure 2

EARLY WRITING

EARLY WRITING

- Small clay tags identified contents of; pictograph.

- Earliest written records are tablets from the city Uruk

- Assemble pictographic drawings of objects, numeral and personal

names.

- Produced a reed stylus sharpened to the point and drew fine,

curved lines of the early pictograph.

- Clay mud were held on the left hand while pictographs were

scratched onto the surface (figure 3)

Figure 3

EARLY WRITING

- Structured on a grid of horizontal vertical division

- 2800 b.c pictograph written in horizontal rows, from left to right

and top to bottom right (figure 4)

- Three hundred year later (3100 b.c),

pointed stylus was upgraded into

“triangular – tip”

- Stylus were pushed into clays instead

of dragging it through (figure 5)

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

EARLY WRITING

- This is whereby pictographs are evolved into abstract sign called

“cuneiform” (figure 6)

- When picture – symbols represented animate and inanimate

objects, signs became “ideographs”

- Sun represents day and light

EARLY WRITING

- Pictures are used in Phonograms (graphic symbols for sounds).

- Adverbs, prepositions and personal names could NOT be presented

into pictographic style.

- Picture symbols represented sounds of the objects.

- Cuneiform became rebus writing which pictures and pictographs

represented word and syllables.

- Cuneiform is difficult even it was simplified by the Assyrians.

- Mixed writing with relief images was presented on the “Blau

monument” (combining words and pictures on the same surface)

(figure 7)

- As well as the law code of Hammurabi which also used words and

picture in the 1792 – 1750 b.c

Figure 7

- On the stele contains 282 laws gridded in 21 columns.

- This Hammurabi’s code were stood in the main temple of Marduk

(Son god of Babylon) at Babylon (Iraq) as well as in other cities.

- Written in precise style, harsh penalties were express directly and

clarity.

- The code indicated; crimes,

punishments, established social

order and justice (figure 8).

- Written in “cuneiform” on a

2.44meter (8ft) tall stele (stone slab)

and were carved for memorial purpose

EARLY WRITING

Figure 8

- Example of case written on the Blau monument; “A thief stealing

from a child to be put to death”, “a physician operating on a

slightly wounded man with a bronze scalpel shall have his hands

cut off” and “a builder who builds a house that falls and kills the

owner shall be put to death”.

EARLY WRITING

- Produced visual identification of cattle (beast) and proprietary

marks (trademark) of the ownership to be established. It is identify

case problems developed of superior quality inspired repeat

purchases.

- The means of identifying is the author of the clay cuneiform tablet

at certifying documents and contracts proving the authority of

religious and royal proclamations.

Cylinder seals

- The Mesopotamian cylinder seals provided forgery proof method

for sealing documents and proving their authenticity (originality)

(Figure 9)

- These small cylinders had images and writing etched into their

surfaces.

MESOPOTAMIAN VISUAL IDENTIFICATION

- Its is worn on a string around the neck or wrist.

- Images could be reproduced and can be seen in a form of printing.

- Herodotus a Greek historian (500 b.c) identified that Babylonians

wore the cylinder seal on a cord (rope) around their wrist like a

bracelet.


Figure 9

- The most used of the ornaments (decoration), status symbols and

unique personal signatures.

- Cylinder seals are mark to use it on the house door when the

occupants were away and indicating burglar had entered the

premises.

- The earliest seals were engraved with simplified pictures of kings,

cattle (beast) or mythic creatures.

- Developed more narrative images; one god, man fighting a battle

and man killing wild animal.

- In the Assyrian period, North Mesopotamia stylized heraldic design

(badge symbol); stories of gods and illustrated animal were shown

engaged in battle (figure).


- It identifies the glory of Mesopotamian civilization during the

dynasty of King Nebuchadnezzar at the (d. 562 b.c) in the city of

Babylon.

- In the 538 b.c Babylon became the richest city in the world with a

population reaching a million.

- Then it fell to the Persian decease (destroyed) and begins to

become the Persian colonial and followed by Greece and Rome.

- The birth of Christ, great cities of Babylon and Ziggurat were fallen

as well as abandoned invisibly.- Egyptians took over and evolved

complex writing based on pictographs.

- Phoenicians formed a complexity of cuneiform with simple

phonetic signs.


clo2 early writing

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