This uneven distribution is mainly a reflection of the emergence of a centralized administration. Most early texts appropriately consist of very brief indications of private names, places, or goods and appear on pottery and stone vessels, labels, and sealings, which could easily be transported.
Both opened entirely new avenues of research. Systematic work by J. Kahl on the earliest stage of writing has enabled research to proceed on a firmer basis. The publication of the discovery of this tomb U-j at Abydos in Dreyer as the find-spot of the oldest samples of writing in Egypt sparked an intense and productive debate.
Revisions of the theories outlined in the publication focused on the structure and system represented by the U-j inscriptions and the social, economic, and political context in which writing could have emerged. With the start of an Early Dynastic dictionary in by J. Kahl Kahl b , and a Palaeographic Study of Early Writing in Egypt Regulski , comprehensive tools are now available to address more specific issues.
The chronological gap of some years between these earliest abbreviated notations written in Egypt and the first narrative inscriptions from the Old Kingdom has been a source of uneasiness for scholars. Many aspects, such as the development of the sign corpus and the thought processes behind it, have received little attention Kammerzell ; Warburton , Over 4, inscriptions provide us with more than 20, signs at an average of five signs per inscription , the larger half of which are used by Egyptologists and students on a daily basis, yet the emergence and early development of this corpus has yet to be fully examined.
Apart from valuable publications of new discoveries, most theoretical and methodological discourse focuses almost entirely on the phonetic character of early writing and its relation to the development of the Egyptian state.
The relation between script and spoken language have been barely investigated. This article presents current perspectives on the origins and development of writing in Egypt, covering the first attestations of writing discovered in tomb U-j ca. Its central position in Cemetery U as well as the discovery of an ivory sceptre inside, led to the conclusion that tomb U-j was the final resting place of a Pre-Dynastic ruler, or at least a member of the highest elite of the region.
Later offering deposits in connection to the tomb stress the status and legacy of whomever was buried in it. It is generally agreed that the content of the inscriptions consists of prestigious names, perhaps those of gods and officials, but also places and numbers.
More specific readings are based upon analogies with later hieroglyphs and remain open to various interpretations Stauder The discovery of tomb U-j was of exceptional importance for understanding the origin of writing in Egypt. It caused the beginning of hieroglyphic writing to be dated earlier than was previously thought, at least two centuries before the First Dynasty ca.
It was often assumed that Egyptian writing was invented under the stimulus of the Mesopotamian system, developed in the late fourth millennium BC Petrie , 49—50; Pope , 17—23; Brewer , ff.
Two sets of radiocarbon dates have been obtained: One places the Abydos material as slightly later than the Uruk IV tablets ca. However, it cannot be proved that these Pre-Dynastic seals already reflected a proper writing system such as that detected among the U-j labels Kahl , ; Morenz , 40; Regulski b , —; Stauder These seals probably belong to an earlier form of notation that was later replaced by the Egyptian writing system cfr. The earliest solid evidence of Egyptian writing differs in structure and style from the Mesopotamian and must therefore have developed independently.
The ivory labels found in it provide the earliest attested two-consonantal phonograms used in a rebus principle typical of later hieroglyphic writing structure. The Egyptian writing system was clearly not initially designed or able to represent continuous spoken discourse. Early Egyptian texts commonly consist only of short entries, yielding information in a few words regarding the provenance of delivered items, economic investments, or the involvement of administrative departments.
The way the bone labels from tomb U-j were fabricated indicates the existence of a centralized administration; technical details show they were to some extent mass produced. Some labels bear incised lines close to the edges that may be interpreted as remnants of an early type of manufacture Dreyer , , figs. Larger bone surfaces were inscribed with many copies of the same group of signs, inlaid with a dark paste, scored with a grid, and then cut into separate labels along the grid lines.
Truncations and the overlap of signs from one label to another can be detected in certain cases where the break was not made in quite the right place, or the sign carver exceeded the space available. The plate was thus cut into separate labels only after the inscriptions referring to different places in Egypt were applied Regulski a , — The labels were attached to the goods after they had arrived at an administrative center, presumably in the vicinity of Abydos.
The role of early writing in Egypt cannot, however, be categorized as exclusively administrative. The Egyptian script may have been devised for recording managerial information, but since only the happy few were able to read and write, it also served as a means for cultural and elite display. Much early writing is incorporated into representational works such as ceremonial palettes or in elite mortuary contexts.
From its earliest use, writing fulfilled the dual roles of ordering and directing the flow of material goods, while redefining the social context of the commodities to which it was attached. The manufacture of the U-j labels demanded skilled and intensive labor, including the use of colored pigment in miniature signs Piquette , — The creation of writing may be best understood as part of the social, cognitive, and economic changes that occurred as Egyptian society became more complex at the end of the fourth millennium BC.
The stimulus to create writing in Egypt is related to the growing complexity of interaction between different regional polities and the establishment of a centralized administration in Upper Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BC. Political and economic change and the ideological discourse that accompanied it are thus deeply entangled in the emergence of writing. The northward expansion of the southern court culture is one of the developments that led to the establishment of a highly centralized state Bard : ; Wenke , the capital at Memphis and the institution of kingship Baines , 95—; Baines , — The writing system used by the new elite was a necessary tool to govern the consequent economic and social reordering.
A variety of notational systems already existed across Egypt when the writing system was launched. The inscriptional material from tomb U-j demonstrates the coexistence of distinct but compatible modes of written communication during the early Naqada III period. These systems were part of Pre-Dynastic traditions and differ from the more familiar ones of later pharaonic Egypt.
Early evidence of protecting and validating transactions, accounts, and stored goods can be found in major Pre-Dynastic settlements in the form of seals and painted and incised potmarks. Their geographic spread across Egypt and beyond its borders testifies to intensive regional and foreign exchange from the Naqada II period onward. Cylinder seals of the kind that produced the surviving impressions found in Egypt may have been imported from Mesopotamia to the Nile Valley in the mid-fourth millennium BC, where they were imitated and adapted by local craftsmen in stone, wood, and ivory.
The finest of the Pre-Dynastic seals do not resemble the later Early Dynastic seal impressions, but they are reminiscent of the precise carving and iconography on Pre-Dynastic Egyptian knife handles Hartung , — Attempts to decipher their decorative patterns and individual elements as hieroglyphic signs Hill , 99f; Morenz , 60—68 have not been successful. The use of seals as a means of transmitting royal names and other information was only later adopted.
Likewise, the ink notations on the pottery vessels from tomb U-j signs show a unique repertoire of symbols largely unparalleled in later phases of Early Dynastic writing. Other parallels of such Pre-Dynastic symbolic representation can be found in rock art, on the Coptos colossi, decorated pottery, and in the form of serekh signs rectangles representing the palace wall, later used to frame the Horus name of the king; van den Brink , ; MacArthur incised on wine jars.
Despite occasional graphic similarities with later hieroglyphs and clear semantic rules governing their arrangement, their iconography cannot be understood in relation to the hieroglyphic writing system Stauder To fully understand the context from which the hieroglyphic writing system emerged, these notation systems should be more clearly defined.
Instead of defining these earlier systems in relation to the writing system, it seems more productive to recognize their autonomous status. I have illustrated elsewhere how a fundamental rethinking of the engagement between the new court culture and earlier local traditions resulted in the codification of a power system incorporating state formation, ceremonial rituals, the institution of kingship and a national elite, and a formal writing system Regulski b.
The conscious personal intervention of great artists and architects was instrumental in bringing this codification about. Using the early iconographic record, these creative individuals devised a remarkably homogeneous formal script stylistically consistent with the developing canon of formal art.
The codification of the writing system did not, however, provide a model that everyone immediately adopted; the new style was an intellectual creation of the court. Earlier notation systems such as the Pre-Dynastic seals, the serekh signs, etc. Throughout the Early Dynastic period, the codification of writing underwent a long and complex interaction with preformal traditions, resulting in a few old elements being folded into the new.
Some nontextual marking systems, such as the practice of sealing and the technique of incising potmarks prefiring 16 , were incorporated into the writing system because they were considered suitable tools to convey phonetic writing. Numerous ink inscriptions on pottery jars from his reign mention oil deliveries from Upper and Lower Egypt as ipw. Bureaucratic organization advanced further in the beginning of the First Dynasty ca. With almost inscriptions, this group is the largest surviving body of cursive writing from before the Second Dynasty.
More important for the current discussion, comparisons of handwritings show that scribes associated with the administration of Upper Egyptian goods worked separately from their colleagues in Lower Egypt Regulski a , State formation, by nature, involved the foundation of a capital city as the seat of centralized administration 20 for domestic affairs, trade, and military expansion.
The new writing system was now being used on an international scale. The codification of the formal writing system was a multilayered process, the synergetic result of interaction between a variety of Pre-Dynastic components. As the range and volume of writing increased and spread, the codification process probably accelerated. It was more or less completed by the beginning of the Third Dynasty and coincided with reforms of the sign corpus, graphic development, and an increased phonetization of the script.
Egyptian writing witnessed rapid development, and the main principles established during the Early Dynastic period remained current throughout the pharaonic and Graeco-Roman periods. It is now widely accepted that a limited phonetic writing system was in place by the end of the fourth millennium BC. Although the early writing system was not designed to render speech, there can be no doubt that at least from the Naqada IIIA2 period BC onward, hieroglyphic signs stood for certain phonetic values.
The first half of the First Dynasty has been described as one of the most productive periods for the establishment of the sign classes. Most of the graphemes, such as uni- and biconsonantal phonograms, and the use of logograms, classifiers, or determinatives were introduced in the years between tomb U-j and the reign of Den Kaiser and Dreyer , , fig.
Apart from y and s, and perhaps h and k, the complete set of monoconsonantal phonograms was attested under king Den ca. A range of triconsonantal signs as well as the use of phonetic complements are likewise known from the First Dynasty. Yet complex grammatical adjuncts, including suffix pronouns, prepositions such as the dative and genitive n, and the verb system, were not yet expressed in writing Stauder The sign corpus and the writing system represented by early telegraphic notations differ in structure and appearance from the first narrative inscriptions of the Old Kingdom Schweitzer Figure 1 The introduction of hieroglyphic signs throughout the Early Dynastic period.
A concerted effort to make the repertoire of graphic sign classes uni-, bi-, and triconsonantal signs as functionally complete as possible coincides with the rapid expansion of the sign corpus. The first two dynasties produced a set of over a thousand signs, far more than what is known for later periods up to the Ptolemaic period, from BC onward.
Others present unusual and sometimes puzzling signs that appear to have fallen from the repertoire before the start of the Old Kingdom. This process of adding and subtracting signs can easily be documented Regulski , —; Figure 1 23 ; interpreting the dynamics behind it is more difficult. The earliest Egyptian writing from tomb U-j at Abydos provides us with a limited repertory of 51 identifiable signs.
A little over half of them survive into the later classical record. After a continuous increase over the next years, the number of signs used as proper hieroglyphs reached its peak of about 1, signs in the mid-First Dynasty ca.
While the majority survived into the classical repertoire, some were never used again. From the second half of the First Dynasty onward and particularly throughout the Second Dynasty, the corpus shrank to a few hundred signs in the mid-third millennium BC.
The Early Dynastic period was a formative time in which many of the later known hieroglyphs were introduced, including some that were filtered out in the course of the first two dynasties. These observations might be simplistically explained by the uneven distribution of preserved material from the different phases of the Early Dynastic period and the consequent focus of scholarly research.
The First Dynasty is well represented, whereas material from the Second Dynasty is comparatively scant, except for evidence from the reign of Khasekhemwy, whose tomb was reexcavated by the German expedition. But we cannot assume that the number of signs decreased because we have less evidence of them. When examining the introduction of new signs, precisely because of the chronologically uneven distribution of the evidence, the fact that a sign is attested is more important than the number of attestations by which it is represented.
The noticeable decrease of new signs continued into the reign of Netjerikhet, the first king of the Third Dynasty, when a vast number of sources are available. By this time, scribes increasingly worked with the available repertoire of signs to systemize rather than add to it. The same phenomenon has been observed in other early writing systems cfr.
The sign corpus was constantly adapting. Signs were introduced, reconsidered, and eventually sometimes abandoned. This was not a linear development, however, implying that fewer earlier sign versions survived and that the later a sign was introduced, the greater its chances of survival as a classical hieroglyph. On the contrary, the survey shows that a sign appearing in the first half of the First Dynasty had the best chance of surviving. Signs introduced throughout the Second Dynasty more often concern Early Dynastic sign versions that soon became extinct.
The formation of the sign corpus was not a cumulative process, but a conscious reaction to certain changes in the social and political environment. Graphic standardization certainly made some signs redundant, for example in the case of variant signs rendering the same phonetic value. But a more profound morphological process must have influenced such a fundamental reduction of the sign corpus.
Given the evidence for more complex grammar at the end of the Second Dynasty, it seems plausible that increasing or adaptive phonetization coincides with, or perhaps instigates, the optimization of the sign corpus throughout the Second Dynasty. In most of the later Egyptian writing phases, multiliteral signs uni-, bi- and triliteral are generally used as logograms, phonograms including phonetic complements , or determinatives.
Determinatives are usually explained as nonphonetic glyphs that classify the meanings of words, distinguish homophones, and serve as word dividers. Both logograms and phonograms could be combined on the basis of the rebus principle. The number of different words that could theoretically be written as logograms can therefore not exceed the number of existing hieroglyphic signs about in Middle Egyptian. The rest of the 17, or so known Egyptian words had to be written with phonograms.
But this hieroglyph was only used as a determinative in Middle Egyptian. Writing with logograms was therefore the exception in classical hieroglyphic rather than the rule. Comparing these observations with the Early Dynastic writing system generates a number of methodological problems, since it is difficult to satisfactorily reconstruct phonetic values and linguistic classifications for most of the early signs.
This is particularly difficult for signs that disappear, since later hieroglyphic successors cannot be consulted.
A rough estimate yields five times more logograms and two times more determinatives than phonograms. From the same list it can also be deduced that mainly logographic signs were filtered out before the start of the Old Kingdom.
Almost all signs that were used as phonograms in the earlier phases of the Early Dynastic period survived into the classical repertoire. A large number of logograms, the most typical element of the Early Dynastic sign corpus, disappear or the sign is later used as a determinative.
With more words being written phonetically, the need for clearer classification, both phonetic and semantic, increases. Hence, phonetic complements and determinatives become more important. Similar processes have shaped other languages, even in very recent times.
The best example where phonetization dramatically reduced the number of signs is the Banum script in western Cameroon invented by King Njoya Fischer , The partly ideographic and partly syllabic script consisting of 1, stylized hieroglyphs was swiftly refined between and to an almost completely phonetic system of just seventy signs. Most, if not all, human languages have acquired their contemporary form by contact with other speech communities—that is, speakers using a slightly different system, a distinct dialect, or a foreign language.
Several potential scenarios for the formation of the Egyptian language have been discussed. The lexicon of earlier Egyptian consists of at least two different strata; one shows similarities with Afro-Asiatic, and the other exhibits structural and lexical affiliations with Indo-European. The affinities between Egyptian and Indo-European languages have been explained by historical and social-linguistic circumstances, rather than genetically, that is, belonging to the same linguistic family Kammerzell , — These circumstances led to a particular linguistic situation in late Pre-Dynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt out of which pre-Old Egyptian, the language reflected in the earliest attested script, emerged.
The difference between the possible scenarios concerns the nature of influence of the two speech groups on the emergence of pre-Old Egyptian and its development into Old Egyptian. These linguistic scenarios require further investigation and may yield interesting consequences for our understanding of the development of script. For example, the idea of a contact language could be reassessed in connection with the sudden appearance of the writing system among existing Pre-Dynastic notation systems, some of which have clear affiliations with Mesopotamia.
According to the last scenario pre-Old-Egyptian as a contact language , a smaller community of speakers of the language with Indo-European affiliation may have occupied important positions in the political, social-economic, and cultural life that allowed them to play a significant role in the emergence of the hieroglyphic writing system. Several traits in the earliest system do not only differ from basic typological characteristic of spoken Egyptian but also resemble typical features of contact languages i.
This pre-Old Egyptian would consequently have been spoken by a small community and absorbed into the majority language while impacting its further development.
In any case, the development from pre-Old Egyptian into Old Egyptian certainly occurred as a result of significant language shifts during which Old Egyptian acquired several of its structural characteristics from an external source. Such shifts may have contributed to the process of adapting the script to better represent speech.
Certain processes can be dated by their reflection in the written record, such as the phonemic split between velar and palatal obstruents. It can be no coincidence that these changes in the linguistic environment coincide chronologically with revisions of the sign corpus, specifically the rejection of a large number of logographic signs. Clearly, the formation of Old Egyptian influenced written communication by adapting the corpus of usable hieroglyphs.
If indeed the earliest hieroglyphic record demonstrates a linguistic system that could be classified as a distinct language rather than merely a predecessor of Egyptian, it would explain the enigmatic nature of many of the early inscriptions and the disappearance of many typical early signs before the Old Kingdom. A more thorough comparison between such linguistic developments and their graphic articulation should be carried out to further detail the development of early writing.
Figure 2 Comparison between introduced signs and introduced outlines. The complex process of establishing a generally accepted repertoire of signs inevitably affected the shapes of the signs themselves Figure 2. The graphic formation of the sign corpus is characterised by a dynamic relation between the creation of the hieroglyphic sign corpus i. The divergence of those processes i. In a survey of palaeographic development, I have identified more and less productive periods when simultaneous changes in the forms of different signs occurred Regulski The first evidence for graphic modification can be detected at the beginning of the First Dynasty.
As was the case for the number of signs, graphic reform was first and foremost visible in the extension of possible outlines for existing signs Reform 1. The first half of the First Dynasty including the reigns of Narmer, Aha, Djer, and Djet contributed to the development of the early writing system by enlarging both the sign corpus as well as updating hieroglyphic style characteristics. The scribe could now choose from a range of variant outlines for already existing signs Stauder Using grammar that was very similar to its Demotic predecessor, Coptic used the Greek alphabet plus a few signs derived from Demotic to form its alphabet.
Like the earlier Egyptian scripts, Coptic did not show breaks between the words. Although it is no longer spoken, a dialect of Coptic is still used in services of the Coptic church much in the same way Latin was long used by the Roman Catholic Church.
Meroitic The writing system for the Meroitic language of Nubia appeared around the 2nd century B. The alphabet consisted of a combination of hieroglyphic signs and cursive letters.
Although the individual signs can be pronounced, the Meroitic language is still not fully understood and its texts are waiting to be deciphered and read. Part of a limestone lintel inscribed with hieroglyphs E , Dynasty 18 B. Fragment of papyrus written in hieratic , 20th Dynasty ca.
Gallery Tour. These individual hieroglyphs each measure just over a half meter in height, and the entire tableau is about 70 centimeters The area where the researchers located the inscriptions is in the northern desert hinterland of Elkab. This area, along with Hierakonpolis, located across the river and known as its twin city, were very important centers in ancient Egypt, says Darnell, and demonstrate that the communicative system in these areas is not limited to the more commonly found small tokens or labels.
Darnell explains that these discoveries reveal that there was not a slow development of writing primarily for bureaucratic use as previously believed, but that hieroglyphic writing was more geographically widespread and topically diverse at the time of or shortly after its development.
The team of archaeologists located these rock inscriptions by mapping out routes based on road networks in Egypt. Most rock inscriptions in Egypt that Darnell has seen, he says, are not randomly placed: Most inscriptions are located along major roads, either roads that parallel the Nile or roads that head out into the desert.
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