William Penn on the making of a treaty with the Leni-Lenape chiefs in 1682. Here, in the centre of the belt, two figures, intended to represent Penn and an Indian, join hands, thus clearly indicating a treaty. Very simple pictures are drawn upon birch bark, indicating by their order the subjects in a series of song-chants with sufficient precision to enable the singer to recall the theme of each in his recitation. An account can be kept of sales or purchases by representing in perpendicular strokes the number of items, and adding at the end of each series a picture of the animal or object to which the particular series refers. Thus three strokes followed by the picture of a deer indicate that the hunter has brought three deer for sale. A conventional symbol (a circle with a line across it) is used to indicate a dollar, a cross represents ten cents, and an upright stroke one cent, so that the price can be quite clearly set forth. This practice is followed in many other parts of the world. In clay tablets discovered by Dr Arthur Evans during his exploration of the great palace at Knossos, in Crete, a somewhat similar method of enumeration is followed; while at Athens conventional symbols were used to distinguish drachmae and obols upon the revenue records, of which considerable fragments are still preserved.
In comparatively recent times, according to Colonel Mallery (10th Annual Report of American Bureau of Ethnology), the Dakota Indians invented a chronological table, or winter count, wherein each year is recorded by a picture of some important event which befell during that year. In these pictures a considerable amount of symbolism was necessary. A black upright stroke indicates that a Dakota Indian was killed, a rough outline of the head and body spotted with blotches indicates that in the year thus indicated the tribe suffered from smallpox. Sometimes, in referring to persons, the symbol is of the nature of a rebus. Thus, Red Coat, an Indian chief, was killed in the winter of 1807-1808; this fact is recorded by a picture of a red coat with two arrows piercing it and blood dripping. There is, however, nothing of the nature of a play upon words intended, and even when General Manyadier is represented as a figure in European dress, with the heads of two deer behind his head and connected with his mouth, no rebus was intended (many a deer), but the Indians supposed that his name really meant this, like their own names Big Crow, Little Beaver, and so forth. Here the Mexicans proceeded a stage further, as in the often quoted case of the name of Itz-coatl, literally knife-snake, which is ordinarily represented by a reptile (coatl) with a number of knives (itz) projecting from its back. It is, however, also found divided into three words, itz-co-atl—knife-pot-water—and represented by a different picture accordingly. The Mexicans, moreover, to indicate that the picture was a proper name, drew the upper part of the human figure below the symbol, and joined them by a line, a practice adopted also amongst their northern neighbours when, as in names like Little-Ring, the representation would hardly be sufficiently definite. Simple abstract notions could also be expressed in this picture-writing. Starvation or famine was graphically represented by a human figure with the ribs showing prominently. A noose amongst the Mexicans was the symbol for robbery, though more logically belonging to its punishment. In a Californian rock-painting reproduced by Mallery (p. 638), sorrow is represented by a figure from whose eyes drop tears. This could be abbreviated to an eye with tears falling from it, a form recorded by Schoolcraft as existing amongst the Ojibwa Indians. The symbol is so obvious that it is found with the same value among Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The civilization of the American Indians was nowhere very high, and for their simple needs this system, without further development, sufficed. It was different in the more elaborate civilizations which prevailed among the ancient peoples of the Old World, to whom with certainty the development of writing from pictography can be ascribed—the Assyrians (see Cuneiform), Egyptians (see Egypt) and Chinese (see China). Here more complex notions had to be expressed. The development of the system can be traced through many centuries, and, as might be expected, this development shows a tendency to conventionalize the pictorial symbols employed. Out of conventionalized forms develop (a) syllabaries, (b) alphabets. As regards the latter the historical evolution is traced in the article Alphabet. The account given under China (language) gives a good idea of the development of a syllabary from pictographic writing.
The Egyptian system of writing is perhaps the oldest of known scripts, and was carried on till the Ptolemaic period, when the more Egyptian. convenient Greek alphabet led to its gradual disuse. But, as in Chinese, the fact that it was so long in use led to the conventionalizing of the pictures, and in many cases to a complete divorcement between the symbol and the sound represented, the original word having often become obsolete. In this case it is no longer possible to trace it. Attempts have been made to connect the three great pictographic systems of the Old World, some authorities holding that the Chinese migrated eastwards from Babylonia, while others contend that the civilization of Egypt sprang originally from the valley of the Euphrates, and that the ancient Egyptians were of the same stock as the Somali and were overlaid and permeated by a Semitic conquest and civilization. But there is no clear evidence that the Egyptian system of writing was not a development in the Nile Valley itself, or that it was either the descendant or the parent of the pictographic system which developed into the cuneiform of Assyria and neighbouring lands.
Egyptian started from the same point as every other pictographic system—the representation of the object or the concrete expression of the idea. But, like the Chinese, it took the further step, short of which the American Indian pictographs stopped; it converted its pictures into a syllabary from which there was an imperfect development towards an alphabet. Egyptian, however, never became alphabetic in the sense in which the western languages of modern Europe are alphabetic. This is attributed to the natural conservatism of the people, and the influence of the artist scribes, who, as Mr F. Ll. Griffith has pointed out, “fully appreciated the effect of decorative writing; to have limited their choice of signs by alphabetic signs would have constituted a serious loss to that highly important body.” The effect of this love for decoration, combined with a desire for precision, is shown by the repetition several times over in the symbols of the sounds contained in a word. The development of Egyptian was exactly parallel to Chinese. A combination of sounds, which was originally the name of an object, was represented by the picture of that object. This picture again, like Chinese, and like the Indian name “Little-Ring,” required at the end a determinative—a picture of the kind of object intended—in order to avoid ambiguity. As the alphabet represented only consonants and semi-consonants, and the Egyptian roots consisted mostly of only three letters, the parallelism with Chinese is remarkably close.
The cuneiform script spread to other people who spoke tongues in no way akin to those of either its inventors, the Sumerians, or their Hittite. conquerors, the Semitic Babylonians. A widespread series of inscriptions, found in many parts of Asia and even in the Aegean, which are generally described as Hittite (q.v.) are written in a script of pictographic origin, though probably independent of Babylonian in its development.
It is noteworthy that at a very early period a colony of Greeks from the Peloponnese, speaking a dialect closely akin to the Arcadian Cyprian. dialect (which is known to us only from a much later period), had settled in the island of Cyprus. Alone among the Greeks this colony did not write in an alphabet, but under some Asiatic influence adopted a syllabary. Even when the island came again closely in touch with their Greek kinsfolk, after the Persian wars, the Greek inhabitants continued to write in their syllabary. In the recent excavations made by the authorities of the British Museum an inscription of the 4th century B.C. was discovered, whereon a dedication to Demeter and Persephone was given first in Greek letters and repeated below in the syllabary, the Greek (as universally at so late a period) reading from left to right, the syllabary from right to left. This syllabary has five vowel symbols, but it could not distinguish between long and short vowels. In its consonant system it is unable to distinguish between breathed, voiced and aspirated stops, thus having but one symbol to represent τε, δε and θε. It is, of course, unable to represent a final consonant, but this is achieved by using the symbol for a syllable ending in e conventionally for the final consonant. Thus ka-se stands for κάς, the Cyprian equivalent of καί, “and.” There are symbols for ta, for te, for ti, for to, for tu, though none for t, and similarly for most of the other consonants. There is, however, no symbol for wu (Fv); ya, ye, yi occur, but no yo or yu. Δημήτρι is expressed by ta-ma-ti-ri, where ti stands for t alone; sa-ta-sa-to-ro stands for Στασάνδρω (genitive). Here it is to be observed (1) that ν preceding another consonant is omitted altogether, the vowel being probably nasalized as in French; (2) that, as in the previous word, there is a sort of vowel euphony whereby the unnecessary vowel accompanying t takes the colour of the succeeding vowel. In other cases, however, it follows the preceding vowel, as in a-ri-si-to-pa-to-o-a-ri-si-ta-go-ra-u = Ἀριστόφαντο(ς) ὁ Ἀρισταγόρου.
For literature on the history of writing, see the bibliographies to the articles Alphabet, &c., and under the headings of the various languages and peoples.
