2009]
book reviews
heavy going. However, there is a richness and complexity of narrative that will make persistence rewarding.
classics department university at buffalo 341 mfac buffalo, new york 14260
[email protected]
Stephen Dyson
The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on Literacy and Communication, edited by John Baines, John Bennet, and Stephen Houston. Pp. xvii + 378, figs. 61, tables 8. Equinox, London 2008. £65. ISBN 978-1-84553-013-6 (cloth). Why do scripts die? The subject has received little attention overall, so this collection of 16 papers is a welcome advance. The contributions explore various examples from the past to the present, followed by Baines’ attempt at a synthesis. An earlier paper on the topic was the basis for a conference held at Oxford in March 2004, when these papers were presented (S. Houston, J. Baines, and J. Cooper, “Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 [2003] 430–79). Several contributors refer to that paper, so it could have been helpfully reprinted here, making use of the blank pages at the end of the volume. Baines writes in the final sentence of the book that the loss of writing systems “may be just as revealing as their first AU: page appearance” (378). Certainly, the demise of a script may be no. correct? inherent in its origin, as with some systems African “prophets” produced, for only the creations of those who gain disciples may survive, as Monaghan explains (“Revelatory Scripts, ‘the Unlettered Genius,’ and the Appearance and Disappearance of Writing” [323–34]). The Manchu script was developed from Mongolian when the Qing dynasty controlled China in the 17th century and all but disappeared when the dynasty fell. Yet Stary shows it lingering among descendants of Manchu garrisons in Xinjiang today, endangered by Chinese, possibly having a future only to bolster a political concept of autonomy as has happened in the Manchu homeland (“Disappearance of Writing Systems: The Manchu Case” [310–21]). Political change obviously played a major part in the extinction of scripts; Greek rule in Egypt and Babylonia are clear cases. Yet both Egyptian and cuneiform continued for some centuries. Stadler, in “On the Demise of Egyptian Writing: Working with a Problematic Source Basis” (157–81), traces the use of demotic into the fifth century C.E., with it growing more complex and increasingly isolationist, restricted to religious circles. Egyptian religion died along with its script— as Coptic (“basically Egyptian in Greek letters”) and Islam dominated—for “Egyptian writing makes no sense without its cultural and religious background and backbone” (174). Cuneiform experienced a similar, though shorter, twilight, as Brown explains in “Increasingly Redundant: The Growing Obsolescence of the Cuneiform Script in Babylonia from 539 BC” (73–101). Some religious traditions outlived the script, however, as Middle Aramaic texts from Assur witness. After the mid first century B.C.E., the only cuneiform tablets known are astronomical or astrological. Scribal competence was falling, and Brown suggests it ended when Babylonian star
lore had been translated into Aramaic or Greek. He sees the demand for horoscopes as the impetus that kept the script alive for so long after the dramatic reduction in its use in the reign of Xerxes (486–465 B.C.E.). In Babylonia, the Aramaic language with its alphabetic script replaced the ancient indigenous ones. Cooper, in “Postscript: Redundancy Reconsidered. Reflections on David Brown’s Thesis” (103–8), accepts Brown’s conclusions, arguing that authority perceived in the originals may explain their continued copying in the Hellenistic period. Here, the extinction of the Kharos.t.hı- script early in the third century C.E.—to be replaced a little later by the Bra-hmı- without any major cultural shift—makes an interesting comparison. In India, Salomon argues, association of one script with a particular language and religion is not so strong as, for example, in ancient Egypt, because of the powerful role of oral tradition. Scribes simply moved from one system to a new (usually rather similar) script. Recently published manuscripts support his position (“Whatever Happened to Kharos.t.hı-? The Fate of a Forgotten Indic Script” [139–55]). The late Black attributed “The Obsolescence and Demise of Cuneiform Writing in Elam” (45–72) to “the range of competing cultures which were alien to Elam” under the Achaemenids (65). This led to local decline in the vernacular and to the dominance of Aramaic, until it was finally used only for display in the reign of Artaxerxes II (404–359 B.C.E.). Assyrian conquests and competing cultures with their own scripts were the likely culprits ending the Hittite hieroglyphs in the seventh century B.C.E. (“The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Hieroglyphic Luwian” [Hawkins (31–43)]). Bennet reconstructs a slightly different situation in “Now You See It; Now you Don’t! The Disappearance of the Linear A Script on Crete” (1–29), proposing that rulers in Knossos responsible for major changes in Late Minoan II material culture (from ca. 1450 B.C.E.) changed the administrative system and “killed” Linear A by adapting it to record their language as Linear B. The peaceful transition from one script to another—or others—and adaptation to different languages is described by Macdonald in “The Phoenix of Phoinike-ia: Alphabetic Reincarnation in Arabia” (207–29). The Canaanite linear alphabet passed to Arabia, dividing into Ancient North Arabian (attested in 10 forms known principally from thousands of graffiti left by nomadic herdsmen) and Ancient South Arabian. Nomads settling as farmers in communities speaking Aramaic and Greek lost their leisure for scratching graffiti, so resulting, Macdonald suggests, in Ancient North Arabian’s death. In Yemen, migrations of Arab tribes, foreign invasions, the arrival of Judaism and Christianity, and eventually the dominance of Islam overwhelmed the South Arabian script. But across the Red Sea, brought by colonists in the fourth century C.E., it survives (with modifications) as Ethiopic. Alongside Ancient North Arabian, cursive Aramaic spread in the north and, adopted by the Nabataeans, supplied highly cursive shapes to Arabs in the third and fourth centuries C.E., eventually transmuting into the Arabic script. The alphabets of pre-Roman Italy attest a similar process. Lomas concludes that “local priorities and the cultural agenda of the local elites” drove the “abandonment of local scripts in favour of the Latin alphabet” (30) (“Script Obsolescence in Ancient Italy: From Pre-Roman to Roman Writing” [109–38]). Perhaps the best case is Rilly’s “The Last Traces of Meroitic? A Tentative Scenario for the Disappearance of the Meroitic
book reviews
Script” (183–205), in which “nearly all the factors which can cause obsolescence of a writing system were present: a radical political shift, with the collapse of the central power . . . socio-linguistic change . . . importance of a new prestige written language . . . religious upheaval” (199). (Here the Indus Valley script might be added as another that suffered those fatal blows.) The Central and South American writing systems experienced the same history. Houston finds both abrupt extinction of Classical Maya and gradual decline and extinction, with monumental texts disappearing when the main centers collapsed but private documents continuing in provincial regions (“The Small Deaths of Maya Writing” [231–52]). From 1300 to 1600 C.E., Aztec-related groups used pictography for permanent records of facts, not language, as Boone explains. The pictographs died under the alphabet’s pressure, once the information it preserved had been absorbed (“The Death of Mexican Pictography” [253–84]). Knotted cords (khipu), long used in the Andes, likewise recorded facts—not speech— their persistence being due to their value as repositories of local knowledge inaccessible to the Spanish ruling class until changing circumstances made their contents irrelevant (“Late Khipu Use” [Salomon (285–310)]). Gosden’s “History Without Text” (335–46) deals with recording that is further removed from script, considering oral history and the enduring influence of memories embodied in the landscape, such as the sanctity of sites overriding changes in religion. The inclusion of runes on the cover of the book emphasizes that, as Baines observes, “the coverage of this volume is very incomplete” (348). He mentions the cuneiform alphabets, best known from Ugarit, and they deserve inclusion because their extinction resulted from a change in writing material as Babylonian writing on clay tablets waned in the Levant after 1200 B.C.E. Equally, the tenacity of some scripts in the face of the alphabet deserves attention (e.g., Cypriot). Each essay is informative and stimulating; the whole collection presents studies that should stimulate further research into a comprehensive analysis of the factors involved in the disappearance of writing systems. Baines and his colleagues deserve gratitude for this significant volume.
Alan Millard school of archaeology, classics and egyptology 14 abercromby square university of liverpool liverpool l69 7wz united kingdom
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L’art égéen. Vol. 1, Grèce, Cyclades, Crète jusqu’au milieu du IIe millénaire av. J.-C., by Jean-Claude Poursat. Pp. 304, b&w figs. 400, color figs. 85. Picard, Paris 2008. €96. ISBN 978-2-7084804-3 (cloth). This splendid volume is the first of a projected pair devoted to the art of the Aegean Bronze Age. Here, the author presents material from Crete, the Cyclades, and the Greek mainland, beginning in the Neolithic and ending in the mid
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15th century B.C.E., which marks the demise of the second phase of the palaces of Minoan Crete. Volume 2 will treat the Mycenaeans, especially as they transformed the Aegean and other parts of the Mediterranean into a Mycenaean realm. The book has a model organization. Within four main headings, proceeding chronologically from the art of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age to that of the First and Second Minoan Palace periods, Poursat devotes individual chapters to such topics as architecture, glyptic, pottery, and painting, with cross-references to the inevitable overlapping areas of discussion. The faience snake handlers from the Temple Repositories at Knossos, for example, appear in the section on Neopalatial sculpture, where one can readily see how they fit into the wider context of Minoan three-dimensional production, while the faience plaques and other objects from the same findspot appear in the chapter on stone vases, ostrich egg vessels, ivories, metalwork, and textiles, leading to a better understanding of their place in Minoan luxury, pyrotechnical, and specialized manufacture. Hundreds of objects, plans, views, and reconstruction drawings grace the pages in black and white, with separate signatures of color plates at regular intervals. Familiar objects are nicely balanced with those not so often pictured. Furthermore, some well-known works are shown at unexpected angles, such as the octopus flask from Palaikastro, whose side view is given, as well as the usual frontal one, allowing us to observe exactly how the tentacles curl and flow about the vase (fig. 375). There are only occasional instances in which the relations between and among images are a bit jarring in terms of scale. The bull’s head rhyta (figs. 299, 301), for example, are pictured as rather small in comparison with their lioness head counterpart (fig. 300), although it is useful to have them all on the same page, and the projecting horns do pose layout challenges. One also regrets a few perpetuations of reconstructions now deemed erroneous, such as the erstwhile priest-king of figure 237. As for the color plates, they sometimes seem murky, overexposed, or oddly tinted, which is surprising given the high quality of the black-and-white images. The two-column format of the text was sensibly chosen to facilitate the appearance of most illustrations within easy reach of their mention. A welcome decision was made to run the notes in a third column, where they may be more conveniently consulted than when they are relegated to the back pages, as is far too common nowadays. Maps and a chronolo gical chart as well as a glossary, helpful indices, a list of image sources, and a bibliography round out the book. I have written at length about what others might consider simply mechanical matters because I believe that the images, text, and research apparatus in a book like this one must complement and enhance one another in an integrated fashion for the work to have enduring value. The care taken at every turn by Poursat and his publishers has resulted in a book that sets a new standard in the field of Aegean art. As for the writing, it is clear, precise, and jargon free. Scholars will especially admire the masterful way in which the author brings his lapidary style to bear upon complex, controversial issues, such as the debate over the date of the Thera eruption. Two aspects of the book are of particular interest. One is Poursat’s views on issues of artist and workshop identification in Aegean Bronze Age art, which he deftly weaves through his discussion of various classes of material, such as Cycladic
