Writing

Barry B. Powell is Halls-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has written extensively on ancient Greek literature and the history of writing. His books include Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (1991), A New Companion to Homer (editor, with Ian Morris) (1997), Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature (2001), and two editions of Homer (second edition, Blackwell, 2007).

"For anyone interested in language, writing, and their fascinating history across many cultures and centuries of development, this engagingly written, well-illustrated book will provide a very readable mine of information." (CHOICE, December 2009)"Powell's concentration on precise names for terms used in discourse clears up some of the confusion common to histories of work on ancient scripts." (About.com, May 2009)"A feature … is the use of the ancient scripts in the text with numerous illustrations to familiarize the reader with the different writing systems. The result is a readable and enlightening study of a complex topic." (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, April 2010)"Writing is stimulating and impressive." (Science, April 2009)

• List of Illustrations ix Maps xivPreface xvChronology xviiIntroduction: A Difficult Topic, Little Studied, Poorly Understood 11 What Is Writing? 112 Writing with Signs 193 Categories and Features of Writing 384 Some General Issues in the Study of Writing 515 Protocuneiform and Counting Tokens 606 Origin of Lexigraphic Writing in Mesopotamia 707 Plato's Ideas and Champollion’s Decipherment of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs 858 Egyptian Writing and Egyptian Speech 1009 The Origin and Nature of Egyptian Writing 10810 “The House of Life”: Scribes and Writing in Ancient Egypt 12011 Syllabic Scripts of the Aegean 12812 The West Semitic Revolution 14813 What Kind of Writing Was West Semitic? 16314 The Origins of West Semitic Writing 17515 Chinese Logography 18716 Lexigraphic Writing in Mesoamerica 20617 The Greek Alphabet: A Writing That Changed the World 22718 Summary and Conclusions 245Glossary 255Bibliography 263Index 270