Chapter 1

Question 1

Substrate

Answer 1

A surface, as a writing surface

Question 2

Pictograph

Answer 2

An elementary picture or sketch representing the thing depicted

Question 3

Petroglyph

Answer 3

A carved or scratched sign or simple figure on rock

Question 4

Ideograph

Answer 4

A symbol that represents an idea or concept

Question 5

Mesopotamia

Answer 5

• “the land between rivers”
• known as the cradle of civilization
• Early humans stopped their nomadic wanderings to establish a village society between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
  (these flow from the mountains of what is now eastern Turkey across Iraq and into the Persian Gulf)

Question 6

Sumerians

Answer 6

Those who settled in the lower part of the Fertile Crescent before 3000 BC

Question 7

Ziggurat

Answer 7

A multistory brick temple compound constructed as a series of recessed levels becoming smaller toward the top of the shrine.

Question 8

Cuneiform

Answer 8

• Latin for “wedge-shaped”
• A method of writing in which a triangular-tipped stylus was pushed into the clay and formed a series of wedge-shaped strokes rather than a continuous line drawings.

Question 9

Rebus Writing

Answer 9

Pictures and/or pictographs representing words and syllables with the same or similar sound as the object depicted

Question 10

Phonogram

Answer 10

A graphic symbol that represents sounds

Question 11

Scribe

Answer 11

the profession of those individuals who could read and write in early cultures (such as Sumeria and Egypt)

Question 12

Edubba

Answer 12

a writing school or “tablet house” where youths in early Mesopotamia selected to become scribes began their schooling

Question 13

Stele

Answer 13

an inscribed or carved stone or slab used for commemorative purposes

Question 14

Cylinder Seal

Answer 14

• A method of sealing documents and proving their authenticity.
• Prized as ornaments, status symbols, and unique “trademarks” for the owner.
• By rolling the seal across a damp clay tablet to create a raised impression of the depressed design

Question 15

Hieroglyphics

Answer 15

• Greek for “sacred carving,” after the Egyptian for “the god’s words”
• Picture-writing system
• Earliest known from about 3100 BC and retained for almost three and a half millennia.

Question 16

Rosetta Stone

Answer 16

• August 1799, Napoleon’s troops were digging a foundation for an addition to the fortification in the Egyptian town of Rosetta, which they were occupying.
• They unearthed a black slab bearing an inscription in two languages and three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script, and Greek.

Question 17

Determinatives

Answer 17

Signs, such as hieroglyphics, that determine how the preceding glyph should be interpreted

Question 18

Obelisk

Answer 18

A tall, geometric, totemlike Egyptian monument

Question 19

Cartouche

Answer 19

A bracketlike plaque containing the glyphs of the important names

Question 20

Ankh

Answer 20

• A hieroglyph of a cross surmounted by a loop
• Modest origins as the symbol for a sandal strap
• Due to phonetic similarity, it gained meaning as a symbol for life and immortality
• Was widely used as a sacred emblem throughout the land

Question 21

Papyrus

Answer 21

• Developed in Egypt
• Made from Cyperus Papyrusplant, which grew along the Nile in shallow marshes and pools.
• Paperlike substrate, used for manuscripts, major step forward in Egyptian visual communications.

Question 22

Verso

Answer 22

The bottom surface of a papyrus sheet in which fibers run vertically

Question 23

Recto

Answer 23

the upper surface of a papyrus sheet in which the fibers run horizontally

Question 24

Hieratic Script

Answer 24

• From the Greek for “Priestly”
• Simplified hieroglyphic book hand
• Developed by priests in Egypt for religious writing
• Earliest hieratic script differed from hieroglyphics only in that the use if a rush pen, instead of a pointed brush, produced more abstract characters with a terse, angular quality.

Question 25

Demotic Script

Answer 25

• From the Greek for “popular”
• an abstract script in ancient Egypt that supplemented hieroglyph
• Came into secular use for commercial and legal writing by the year 400 BCE

Question 26

Papyrus Manuscripts

Answer 26

• came into use as funerary texts around 1580 bce in Egypt
• Citizens of limited means could afford simple papyri to accompany them on the journey into the afterlife

Question 27

Pyramid text

Answer 27

• Beginning with the pyramid of Unas (c. 2345 bce)
• Hieroglyphic writing that civered the wals and passages of the pyramid
• Including myths, hymns, and prayers relating to the godlike pharaoh’s life in the afterword

Question 28

Coffin texts

Answer 28

• Funerary Texts
• Often illustrated with pictures of possessions for use in the afterlife
• Covered all surfaces of a wooden coffin and/or stone sarcophagus

Question 29

The Book of the Dead

Answer 29

• a third phase in the evolution of funerary texts
• Was written in first-person by the deceased
• placed in the tomb to help it’s occupant, the deceased, triumph over the dangers of the underworld
• the artist who illustrated the Book of the Dead papyri were called upon to foretell what would occur after each subject died and entered the afterlife

Question 30

Hammurabi

Answer 30

• Reigned in Sumeria from 1792-1750 bce
• Established social order and justice through the Code of Hammurabi, a stele containing 282 laws that spelled out crimes and their punishments

Question 31

Thomas Young

Answer 31

• 1792-1750 bce
• Proved that the direction in which the glyphs of animals and people faced was the direction hieroglyphics should be read
• and that the cartouche for Ptolemy occurred several times on the Rosetta Stone

Question 32

Jean-Francois Champollion

Answer 32

• 1790-1832
• did the major deciphering of the Rosetta Stone Hieroglyphs.
• Realized that some of the signs were alphabetic, some were syllabic, and some were determinatives