Idea of Writing

Alex de Voogt, Ph.D. (1995) in Psychology, Leiden University, is an Assistant Curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His studies on writing systems and the dispersal of board games focus on the Indian Ocean region.Joachim Friedrich Quack, Ph.D. (1993) in Egyptology, University of Tübingen, Habilitation (2003) in Egyptology, Free University of Berlin, is Professor of Egyptology at Heidelberg University. He is a leading specialist for Egyptian cursive writing systems. Contributors include Hans-Jörg Döhla, Theo Krispijn, Reinhard Lehmann, Sven Osterkamp, Konstantin Pozdniakov, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Ingo Strauch, Aldo Tollini, Thorsten Traulsen and Alex de Voogt.

• Acknowledgements1. Invention and Borrowing in the Development and Dispersal of Writing Systems Alex de Voogt2. 27–30–22–26 – How Many Letters Needs an Alphabet? The Case of SemiticReinhard G. Lehmann3. Nubian Grafffijiti Messages and the History of Writing in the Sudanese Nile BasinAlex de Voogt & Hans-Jörg Döhla4. About “Short” Names of LettersKonstantin Pozdniakov5. Early Adaptations of the Korean Script to Render Foreign LanguagesSven Osterkamp6. Han’gŭl Reform Movement in the Twentieth Century: Roman Pressure on Korean WritingThorsten Traulsen7. The Character of the Indian Kharoṣṭhī Script and the “Sanskrit Revolution”: A Writing System Between Identity andAssimilationIngo Strauch8. Symmetry and Asymmetry, Chinese Writing in Japan: The Case of Kojiki (712)Aldo Tollini9. Writing Semitic with Cuneiform Script. The Interaction of Sumerian and Akkadian Orthography in the Second Half ofthe Third Millennium BCTheo J.H. Krispijn10. Old Wine in New Wineskins? How to Write Classical Egyptian Rituals in More Modern Writing Systems Joachim QuackSubject IndexLanguage (Group) and Script IndexAuthor Index