Denise Schmandt-Besserat opened a major new chapter in the history
of literacy when she demonstrated that the cuneiform script
invented in the ancient Near East in the late fourth millennium
BC--the world's oldest known system of writing--derived from an
archaic counting device. Her discovery, which she published in
Before Writing: From Counting to Cuneiform and How Writing Came
About, was widely reported in professional journals and the popular
press. In 1999, American Scientist chose How Writing Came About as
one of the "100 or so Books that shaped a Century of Science."
In When Writing Met Art, Schmandt-Besserat expands her history
of writing into the visual realm of communication. Using examples
of ancient Near Eastern writing and masterpieces of art, she shows
that between 3500 and 3000 BC the conventions of
writing--everything from its linear organization to its semantic
use of the form, size, order, and placement of signs--spread to the
making of art, resulting in artworks that presented complex visual
narratives in place of the repetitive motifs found on preliterate
art objects. Schmandt-Besserat then demonstrates art's reciprocal
impact on the development of writing. She shows how, beginning in
2700-2600 BC, the inclusion of inscriptions on funerary and votive
art objects emancipated writing from its original accounting
function. To fulfill its new role, writing evolved to replicate
speech; this in turn made it possible to compile, organize, and
synthesize unlimited amounts of information; and to preserve and
disseminate information across time and space.
Schmandt-Besserat's pioneering investigation of the interface
between writing and art documents a key turning pointin human
history, when two of our most fundamental information media
reciprocally multiplied their capacities to communicate. When
writing met art, literate civilization was born.
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