Re: Invention or Evolution

Dennis wrote:
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" wrote :
>
> >> Obviously I need to look at Albright's book again; Sass' 1988
> >> book, which is apparently comprehensive, isn't at the library I use.
> >
> > No, you don't need to look at Albright's book, which is now 40 years
> > old and filled with wild assumptions and extrapolations.
>
> OK. If I choose to pursue this further, I'll get Sass' book on
> interlibrary loan, unless you recommend something better.

A new book by Sass has been announced.

> >> I meant, ask about the history of the Jews/Hebrews/Israelites
> >> in
> >> an appropriate forum, not about the alphabet. As for the Dead Sea
> >> Scrolls, of course BAR would want to see them published fully; those
> >> are a very important piece of biblical archaelogy.
> >
> > "BAR" is Herschel Shanks, who is probably the most despised creature
> > anywhere touching on ANE studies. He is a rich attorney who encourages
> > the trade in illegal antiquities who publishes a magazine with pretty
> > pictures and no scholarship, and is apparently a compulsive liar.
> >
> > The one time I was in the same room with him he lied about the
> > antiquities policies of the American Institute of Archaeology, the
> > American Schools of Oriental Research, and the American Oriental
> > Society, all in one sentence.
>
> Egad! I was unaware of all that. That shows you what I know.
> What then is a reliable journal on the subject?

Any journal edited by a scholar and published by a scholarly press.

> I had read about how BAR had forced full publication of the Dead
> Sea Scrolls. Was *that* a sleazebag affair? What about their recent
> exposure of the "Yehoshua ossuary" fraud?

Excuse me?? Shanks promoted the authenticity of all three recently
exposed hoaxes: the James Ossuary, the "temple tablet," and the ivory
pomegranate.

I believe the publication of the remaining DSS materials was due to the
Huntington Library, which was one of two depositories of the complete
collection of photographs outside Israel in case something happened to
the originals. Shanks's nagging may have been relevant, but the first
publication was of a concordance of the texts done on the basis of the
Huntington photos.

> >> > A couple weeks ago PBS's "History Detectives" series did a segment
> >> > on an 1860 Cherokee Bible that had an inscription in pencil on the
> >> > flyleaf (using the printed shapes, not Sequoyah's originals). The
> >> > experts (elders) in Oklahoma they called on were unable to read it,
> >> > especially the names (Scancarelli has written on the
> >> > underspecification of Cherokee writing -- unfamiliar words, such as
> >> > old names, will be undeterminable). It's conceivable that maybe
> >> > someone somewhere could have done better, but not likely.
> >>
> >> I understand that the underspecification arises because vowel
> >> length contrasts, there can be closed syllables within a word, there
> >> is a stress phoneme, and possibly in a few cases there is a pitch
> >> phoneme.
> >
> > It's a lot more than that. Read her articles.
>
> OK. What is her full name, and some citations if you have them
> handy?

You're supposed to be taking notes! Janine Scancarelli, in WWS, with her
articles in the Milwaukee volume and in the Southeast US Indians volume
edited by I think James Crawford.

> >> However, if we already know that the Cherokee syllabary
> >> underspecifies the language, does the instance in the PBS show tell
> >> us anything new, other than giving a practical example thereof? I
> >> ask because the pencil inscription did *not* use Sequoyah's original
> >> glyphs.
> >
> > What you mean "we," kimosabe? How many even of PBS's viewers even of
> > "History Detectives" even knew the Cherokee syllabary existed?
>
> "We" meaning those of us who are somewhat more knowledgeable.
>
> Incidentally, if you want to know the origin of "Kemosabe", here
> is the FAQ of the site of another correspondent on the current topic:
>
> http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Ekoontz/faq.htm
> >
> > What does "original glyphs" have to do with it? Obviously the owner of
> > the Bible could read it, so why shouldn't s/he write an inscription in
> > the same characters?
>
> True, good point. My inquiry had been about whether the original
> Sequoyah glyphs (not those modified for Rev. Worcester's typefaces) had
> been pre-existing Cherokee symbols of some sort, or imaginative
> modifications of the Latin alphabet, as you say below that the Armenian
> and Georgian alphabets were of the Greek alphabet (they certainly aren't
> straightforward Greek characters!)
> >
> >> It seems obvious to me that the Vai syllabary is based on
> >> indigenous African images rather than the alphabet, so that is a
> >
> > Images?
> >
> >> definite example of what I was thinking about: that the only stimilus
> >> needed for development of a writing system is the idea that writing,
> >> and writing sounds in some fashion, is possible. Indigenous,
> >> pre-contact images can then be used to implement a system.
> >
> > Images?
>
> I mean: African symbols that had been present before contact with
> the white man, and that could then have been the basis for the Vai
> glyphs.

What evidence do you have for 18th-century Cherokee or Vai "images"?

> The Nsibidi and Andinkra symbols are the sort of thing I'm
> thinking about (samples of Nsibidi and Andinkra here):
>
> http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/symbols/african.html
>
> ... or perhaps something even less explicitly meaningful.
>
> > The Armenian and Georgian alphabets are widely believed to be
> > substitutions of geometrical shapes for the Greek alphabet and such
> > supplementary letters as were necessary to fill out the phonological
> > structure (and serve as digits in groups of 9).
>
> The above comments on the Sequoyah syllabary are also applicable
> here.
>
> The central topic of my New Invention of Writing subsite is how
> unsophisticated individuals, who were illiterate in the white man's
> writing, took nothing but the idea that the sounds of language could be
> written and devised usable writing systems for their own languages.
>
> Before I saw your chapters in WWS, I knew of no other treatment of
> this topic.

Schmitt, of course. Do you read German?

> However, after looking at your article in WWS, I think that some
> of the creators of unsophisticated African scripts might in fact have
> been literate in the Latin and/or Arabic alphabet, and even had

If so, then they weren't "unsophisticated."

> sophisticated knowledge of Western writing theory. I especially wonder
> about Bassa, since it is a phonemic system that even shows tone
> phonemes. At some time I will have to read the sources in your
> bibliography.
>
> Speaking of which: is this book any good?
>
> Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika
> by Saki Mafundikwa (Mark Batty Publisher, 2004) ISBN: 0972424067

I went to his publication party, at the Society for Typographic Arts,
and he's a really nice guy and most of his chapters are more aware than
similar treatments. He doesn't go into much detail about any one thing,
and WWS is in his bibliography.

Mark Batty publishes bibliophile books (which in some cases are also
scholarly books).
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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