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A Historical Journey Through Writing Systems and

Evolution of Letter’s Shape

It is not obvious to a modern person why are the letters of the English
alphabet shaped the way they are. What was the main mind shifts that leaded to
invention of different writing systems? And why some writing systems occurred to be
used widespread till now and another died?
Before answering these questions, it is necessary to focus on the history of the
first writing tries and its motivation.

Cuneiform as the example of logo-syllabic writing system

Denise Schmandt-Besser's hypothesis [1] suggests that the ancient Sumerians
and Elamites initially used a system of clay tokens of various shapes to keep track of
their possessions, such as livestock and other goods with each token denoting one
object (cow, ram, etc.). These tokens evolved over time, with markings and imprints
appearing on them (fingerprints, serifs, recognizable geometric shapes). The tokens
were placed in clay envelopes, sealed with a cylindrical seal for identification.
Around 3300 B.C., imprints of the tokens along with the owner's seal began to
appear on the surface of the clay containers. This duplication of information allowed
for reading the contents without breaking the seal, ensuring the security of the
information. Eventually, the physical tokens disappeared, leaving only their imprints,
and the containers changed from spherical to flat, leading to the emergence of the first
clay tablets with recorded quantities of various objects.
During this period, there was no universal unit of measurement, and each
symbol represented a specific qualitative and quantitative attribute. For example, the
signs "1 goat", "2 sheep", "3 measures of grain" played the role of a "picture symbol",
they were pictograms by definition. The early symbols of writing took the form of
countable objects or goods, functioning as pictograms.
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Over time, combinations of these pictograms formed stable ideograms, whose

meanings went beyond the sum of their individual depictions. For example, the sign
"bird" together with the sign "egg" gave the combination "fecundity" not only in
application to birds, but also as an abstract term.
Such pictograms and ideograms are considered as precursors of writing
evolving into symbols representing sounds and forming words by 3000 B.C. But in
some moment it appeared to be not enough – the needs went beyond agricultural
accounting and there was no possibility to represent all necessary words as pictures or
logograms. So cuneiform script gradually expanded its vocabulary, adding syllabic
symbols. This new logo-syllabic writing system used both – logogram symbols,
representing the whole word, and between 600 and 1,000 characters to spell words by
dividing them up into syllables, like 'ca-at' for cat, or 'go-at' for goat [2]. From this
point Sumerian writing becomes fully capable of cipher and decipher information
independently from knowing particular domestic phenomenon.
However the use of cuneiform gradually declined over time for several reasons
like emergence and spread of other, more practical writing systems, evolving societal
needs and the requirement for more versatile writing systems, political and cultural
changes leading to the displacement of existing writing systems and technological
advancements in writing tools and materials, favoring more efficient methods of
communication and record-keeping.

Egyptian hieroglyphs as the example of logo-syllabic writing system

Like cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs were used for record-keeping, but also
for religious purposes. However Egyptian hieroglyphs combined not only
logographic and syllabic but also alphabetic elements, with about 1,000 distinct
characters in total.[4]
There is no knowing who invented Egyptian hieroglyphs, but hieroglyphic
writing probably originated at one of the rival royal courts in the late-fourth
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millennium BC, before Egypt was unified under the first dynasty. While the idea of
writing may have been borrowed from Mesopotamia (where it had been developed
centuries earlier), the hieroglyphic system was distinctively Egyptian. Still, different
versions are being argued on whether Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian
Cuneiform were invented independently.[3][5][6][7]
Hieroglyphic script was the oldest in the evaluation of Egyptian writing. Each
hieroglyph was a picture of a thing that existed in the world or imagination of the

ancient Egyptians, for instance, the ground plan of a simple house , a human

mouth , or a pair of legs in motion . These could be used to write the words

that they depicted, or related words: for example, “house”; “come.”

Eventually ideograms and phonograms began to appear. Ideograms were used

to convey both sound and meaning (sound and meaning signs). For example
depicts a house (in plan) and represents the sound combination of p + r = pr. The sign
is used in the word pr = house. Phonograms were used to indicate the sounds of
signs (sound signs). The sign Dw represents a sand hill and is used as a sound sign

in which means evil. The sound of these signs is in Latin letters, known as
transliteration. We shall start with unilateral signs which could be identified as
"Alphabet".
As Egyptian writing progressed, different versions of the hieroglyphic script
emerged, including hieratic and demotic, so called Cursive hieroglyphs used for
religious literature on papyrus and wood. Hieratic, a stylized form of hieroglyphs, was
used for religious, public, commercial, and private documents, while demotic, an even
more condensed script, eventually replaced hieratic for most purposes, while hieratic
was mostly used by priests for religious writing. [8]
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From logo-syllabic to alphabetic writing systems

Demotic Egyptian script became the base of Proto-Sinaitic script that later
evolved into the Phoenician alphabet, used as a base for old Greek – the first pure
alphabetical language. In Proto-Sinaitic script for example, the hieroglyph for pr
"house" (a rectangle partially open along one side) was adopted to write Semitic /b/,
after the first consonant of baytu, the Semitic word for "house".
The earliest known alphabetic (or "proto-alphabetic") inscriptions are the so-
called Proto-Sinaitic (or Proto-Canaanite) script sporadically attested in the Sinai and
in Canaan in the late Middle and Late Bronze Age. The script was not widely used
until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC.
The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite" script
of the Bronze Age collapse period. Phoenician uses a system of acrophony to name
letters. The names of the letters are essentially the same as in its parental scripts,
which are in turn derived from the word values of the original hieroglyph for each
letter. The original word was translated from Egyptian into its equivalent form in the
Semitic language, and then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's
value.[9]

Writing systems evaluation and their role in civilization studies

The Polish American Assyriologist Ignace Gelb distinguished four stages in
this evolution, beginning with picture writing, which expressed ideas directly;
followed by word-based writing systems; then by sound-based syllabic writing
systems, including unvocalized syllabaries or consonantal systems; and
concluding with the Greek invention of the alphabet.
The invention of the alphabet is a major achievement of Western culture. It
is also unique. The alphabet was invented only once, though it has been
borrowed by many cultures. It is a model of analytic thinking, breaking down
perceptible qualities like syllables into more basic constituents. And because it is
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capable of conveying subtle differences in meaning, it has come to be used for the
expression of a great many of the functions served by speech.
The alphabet requires little of the reader beyond familiarity with its
orthography. It allows the reader to decipher words newly encountered and
permits the invention of spellings for new patterns of sound, including proper
names (a problem that is formidable for nonalphabetic systems). Finally, its
explicitness permits readers to make a relatively sharp distinction between the
tasks of deciphering and interpreting. Less explicit orthographies require the
reader first to grasp the meaning of a passage as a whole in order to decide which
of several possible word meanings a particular graphic string represents. [10]

Evolution of letter shapes

As writing systems developed the shapes of letters became more and more
simple. For example, here’s how the letter “A” most likely came into existence
(Figure 1). All letters started as pictures and evolved over centuries before they finally
acquired their current shape.

Figure 1.Evoluation of letter A shape from the earliest writing systems to nowadays

Analyzing the motivation that leaded people from ancient times to change
their writing systems, I assume there was some overall trends of writing evolution and
reasons for each of the trends:

Simplification. Most, if not all, writing systems that we know have evolved towards
the overall reduction of the stroke count and the drop of most complex sub-elements.
Indeed, it is much simpler, faster and cheaper to write the “A” letter, than to draw a
bull head. The simplification had boosted the speed of writing, entailed the spread of
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writing into less educated majorities, and allowed kings and librarians to save gold on
salaries for professional painters to have their stuff written.

Regularization. Over time, letters evolved to consist of similar, repeating elements

and to be written in similar manner. For example, Latin script has such repeating
elements (radicals) as half-circle (P, B, D, R), horizontal median line (H, A, F, E),
circles (O, Q, C, G) and so on. It greatly contributed to ease of writing and reading:
it’s easier to master the writing system when you can tell exactly how two letters are
different from each other, and where some originality doesn’t hurt legibility. Also, it
made writing arguably more aesthetic (you can easily tell that every Romanic letter
belongs to one common set just by looking at them).

Variation. More often than not, while letters evolve to consist from a limited set of
radicals, they also evolve to utilize it in the most diverse way. For example, English
alphabet starts like this: A, B, C, D, E, F, G… Not like this:

Figure 2.Variation of letters used in alphabets

That’s a rare occurrence in writing system evolution, because every letter starts
from different pictures, but occasionally one can see a stroke popping up to enhance
the difference between two letters. It’s a contribution to legibility and ease of mastery:
it’s easier to pick a system when each element is different from each other as much as
the system allows.

Literature:
1. Before Writing: Volume 1: From Counting to Cuneiform Hardcover – May 1, 1992
2. Cuneiform /anglais Paperback – May 1, 2015by FINKEL IRVING
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3. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/arts/design/20writing.html
4. Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1995), p. 12.
5. Geoffrey Sampson (1990). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction. Stanford University
Press. pp. 78–. ISBN 978-0-8047-1756-4. Retrieved 31 October 2011.
6. Simson Najovits, Egypt, Trunk of the Tree: A Modern Survey of an Ancient Land, Algora
Publishing, 2004, pp. 55–56.
7. David, Rosalie (2002). The Experience of Ancient Egypt. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-96799-5.
Retrieved 18 April 2022.
8. https://www.worldhistory.org/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs/
9. https://wiki.alquds.edu/?query=Phoenician_alphabet
10. https://www.britannica.com/topic/writing/History-of-writing-systems