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Law and the Written Word: The Origins of Modern Writing Systems in Syllabic Script: A Concordance of the Cypriot Syllabary, Linear B, Phaistos Disk, Elamite, Sumerian Pictographs, and Egyptian Hieroglyphs

By Andis Kaulins

This is the story
of how writing came to Western Civilization
-- and to the law.


Don't miss it at
LexiLine -- History of Civilization
Ancient World Blog
Lingwhizt

Consider that David W. Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co., wrote his dissertation on Minoan Linear A. What's that, you may ask, if you are not familiar with the field of undeciphered scripts. A programming language?

The importance of the study of the origins of writing -- a fascinating field in its own right --is often underestimated. The origin of written script impacts not only document-oriented professions such as law, but also modern technology and the methods of modern digital science.

Communication is the name of the game. Imagine Facebook or Twitter without writing.

So, how did writing start, and how does that written word influence us today?

At the following mirrored sites:

LexiLine -- History of Civilization
Ancient World Blog
Lingwhizt

the author of LawPundit, Andis Kaulins, is currently publishing a series of postings which present the origins of writing of syllabic script as a syllabic script "concordance".

That concordance "meshes" the signs and syllabic values of the Cypriot Syllabary, Linear B, the Phaistos Disk, the Axe of Arkalochori, Old Elamite scripts, and selected Sumerian pictographs and Pharaonic Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The results are rather phenomenal and confirm e.g. the suspicion of Lloyd B. Anderson, Ecological Linguistics, who
-- in the abstract to his presentation at The American Oriental Society (New Haven, Connecticut and Ann Arbor, Michigan, 217th meeting, San Antonio, Texas, March 16-19, 2007) --
wrote as follows:

"With increasing discoveries of contacts between the Aegean and the ANE [Ancient Near East], we should consider whether mathematical notations and syllabic writing systems were transmitted from Mesopotamia to the Aegean."

This is the story of how writing came to Western Civilization -- and to the law.

Don't miss it.

Full post as published by LawPundit on February 06, 2011 (boomark / email).