The writings left by ancient civilisations allowed archaeologists to discover the history and linguists to learn ancient languages. However, the writings used in the past, and still used now, were a communication method between people and cities. The Rosetta Stone, Bisutun Inscription and Amarna tablets are examples of thousands of writings found from historical site. The fact that illiterate rate is high among …show more content…
This economy development generated the need for writing systems that was more sophisticated than the token system. The evolved cuneiform gave the opportunity of conceptual development from pictographs, a visual writing system to an auditory writing system or phonetic writing. The pictographs which originally represent pictures of object changes to represent the different syllables of individual words. This led to reduction of symbols and allowed people to express concepts and ideas. Therefore, the Mesopotamian can handle the rise in communications between city-states, governments and merchants. They also can improve record keeping to be more complex such as accounting and …show more content…
A faster writing was invented. It was demotic, appeared in Third Intermediate period around 700 BCE. Demotic consists of the most simplified signs derived from hieroglyphs and hieratic which became almost abstract symbols. This writing did not use pictographs or pictures at all. It was used when efficiency is needed rather than being beautiful particularly to record the everyday language of accounts, administration texts, and letters.
Finally, after the death of the last pharaoh Cleopatra, Egypt became a Roman province. This allowed the spread of Christian religion and by 4 CE, it had become the main religion in Egypt. The old writing system that related to ancient Egypt; hieroglyph, hieratic and demotic were abandoned because of its relationship with the ancient Egypt religion. Although the Christian Egyptians saw these three writings as unnecessary and associated with paganism, they still use Egyptian language in their conversation. Hence, they invented Coptic to write the Egyptian language using the Greek