Egypt has been a highly cultured country since ancient times. Until now, there have been preserved monuments of Egyptian writing, which date back to the end of the fourth millennium BC. Scientists associate the appearance of writing in Egypt with the development of the economy, which required the accounting of information, the preservation and transmission of information.
Writing as a factor in the cultural development of Ancient Egypt
The slave state in Egypt reached its heyday in the III millennium BC. In those days, crafts were actively developing on the Nile coast, which led to an increase in the country's prosperity and contributed to its cultural development.
The flourishing of ancient Egyptian culture was largely due to the emergence of writing.
Using the example of Egyptian writing, one can quite accurately trace the evolution of the original forms of writing. The most ancient inscriptions, made on the rock surface and on clay, were the so-called pictographic writing. Subsequently, an ideographic letter appeared, which was replaced in later times by the alphabetical system.
At first, only the ruling strata of the population - rulers, noble nobles and priests - could write in hieroglyphs in Egypt. Only with the introduction of papyrus into circulation, writing gradually began to become the property of ordinary Egyptians. The pages made from the stems of aquatic plants were connected together in strips and rolled into rolls. Such papyrus was of very high quality and durability.
Development of ancient Egyptian writing
What were the Egyptian hieroglyphs? These were signs that symbolically denoted material objects and objects. To designate an action, signs were used that were close to him in meaning. For example, a drawing of a scepter could mean the verb "dominate" or "dominate."
After the invention of papyrus, Egyptian writing changed somewhat and acquired a cursive form called hieratic writing. At the same time, the hieroglyphs began to be reduced and simplified, becoming more stylized.
As time went on, gradually hieroglyphs denoting individual things and whole concepts began to be replaced by phonetic writing. For this purpose, a special alphabet was created, in which at first, however, there were no vowels. Before that, it was relatively easy to write a word that denoted a material object. Difficulties began when the term could not be correlated with a specific object. This is what gave rise to the alphabetical writing, consisting of 24 letters. Letters have become a complement to hieroglyphs.
For a long time, Egyptian written sources defied deciphering. Success came to the French linguist Champollion, who in 1822, after painstaking and hard work with primary sources, managed to find a clue to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.
