Before Class: Chapter One

1. Sum up the reading in your own words in 1 paragraph.
This reading was about the development of written language. The chapter talked a lot about Mesopotamia and that it was the beginning point for recorded history on clay tablets. How writing styles could have been written vertical, horizontal, left to right, or right to left. The chapter also mentioned how Egyptian hieroglyphs combined words and pictures to communicate information. During the Egyptian section of the reading, the development of papyrus was described and proven to be very significant from recording important royal proclamations to daily accounting. New technologies/utensils were being created to improve and speed up the process of writing. From cave drawings to Egyptian hieroglyphs, written language has been evolving to become more efficient.

2. Name the one thing (or person) you found most interesting from the reading.
There was a few things that I found to be really interesting. One was the fact that Napoleon found the Rosetta Stone, and that people were able to interpret it and translate it into their language. Another was that the Mesopotamian's created a forgery-proof method for sealing documents with the invention of the cylinder seal. People would wear them around their wrists as a status symbol that was unique personal signature.

3. State at least one question you have after the reading. (if you state none here, you’d better have more detail done above to offset the work.)
Some questions I have after reading this chapter is how did Jean-Francois Champollion figure out the Egyptian hieroglyphs? How did he know what each cartouche meant? How did he realize that some of the signs were alphabetic, some were syllabic, and that some were determinatives?