Based on excerpts of A. Bernard Knapp’s, History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt

  1.3.III.C. Key Concept Addressed

  Upper Paleolithic (30,000-12,000 yrs. ago)  Scratches on bone may have been to record lunar time Earliest Record Keeping

  Tokens date to as early as the 8 th millennium BCE  Found from Iran to Khartoum in the Sudan  Clay, purposely fire hardened  Small:.08-.8”  Shapes: spheres, rods, discs, cones, tetrahedrons  Each stood for a different commodity or item  Many forms are symbolic in nature: unrelated to shape of item that they represent  This symbolic nature of the token system is the link to writing The Token System

  Used for taking inventory, keeping records of transactions, bartering, accounting for herds or harvests  This system stayed relatively stable from the 8 th -4 th millennium BCE  By 3,500 BCE abundance and widespread geographic distribution of tokens in the archaeological record show popular usage all over the Near East and parts of North Africa  Would have transcended language barriers The Token System

 Tokens

  3,500 BCE (Uruk Period 4,000-3,100 BCE)  Earliest Cities  New centralized economic authorities  Appearance of new commodities  Use of intermediaries in inter-city trade  New demands placed on token system  New forms begin to appear in 3,500 BCE  Up to 250 different types of tokens Innovations in the Token System

1.Perforations on tokens 2.The Bulla Two Innovations to Accommodate Trade by Intermediaries

  Used tie tokens together?  Bound together for transport?  Create a “message” of tokens from “seller” to “buyer”  Like a modern invoice Perforations

  Small, spherical clay envelope  C. the size of a baseball  Hollow: tokens put inside and bulla sealed  Recipient had to break open  Eventually began to impress with markings from tokens on outside over seal  Markings were of the number and general shape of tokens inside  These marks are the crucial link between the Token System and writing The Bulla

 Bullae

  Marks on outside of bullae are the crucial link between a three-dimensional token system and two-dimensional writing  Anyone familiar with tokens could now “read” the bullae  It would soon be apparent that the tokens inside were superfluous since the same information was already on the outside of the bullae  Soon a stylus was used to draw the shape of the tokens, instead of the pressing the tokens themselves into the bullae  The earliest writing tablets resembled the bullae in size shape and even convexity The Crucial Link

  Earliest cuneiform (Sumerian) had over 2,000 signs  By end of Early Dynastic period (c BCE) two improvements had been made 1.Number of signs reduced to about Phonetization achieved through the Rebus Principle From Pictographic/Logographic to Syllabic Writing

  A word or idea is represented by depicting an object whose name suggests the word or idea it is describing  The Rebus Principal leads to Phonetization  Eye Can Sea Ewe Rebus Principle

  Representation of the sounds that express an idea, rather than a depiction of the idea itself  Necessary to express the full range of sounds and ideas encountered in spoken language  Accomplished by end of Early Dynastic period Phonetization