This week we got more into the meat of things. Powell talked about
Egyptian writing. One thing I
found particularly interesting from this reading was that there are three
different forms of Egyptian writing: demotica, hieroglyphs, and hieratic. I thought it was pretty cool that the
Egyptians had different types of writing for different parts of their
lives. They separate their writing
for the common people from their sacred carvings, and priestly and literary
works. This concept reminded me of
how we use writing now. We have
our more informal writing that we would use to write an email to a friend (a
conversational tone), our formal writing used for things like the Bible and
official books and writing papers, and our informal writing that we use when we’re
texting someone about their date last night.
I also didn’t know that the Egyptians had a cursive script they used
that was faster than their normal writing, which is what ours was originally
used for and then went by the wayside…I still find myself using it when I want
to write quickly on paper.
Another thing I didn’t know is that they used their skirts as
desks. I don’t what I thought they
wrote on, but that’s pretty nifty…wish I could do that. I also thought it was
cool that scribes were part of the elite and spent their time in the company of
nobility earning a good wage. What happened to that?! I want to be a writer,
but I know I’m going to be eating Ramen noodles and living in a shack for most
of my natural life.
It’s pretty amazing that with all the technology we have now a lot of its
components are based on old technology. Scroll, trash bin…etc.
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