Chapter 7: The First Written Records

Question 1

3000 B.C.

Answer 1

Around the time when written history began. Also, the richest Sumerians laid their counters out on a thin sheet of clay, folded the sheet up around them, and placed a seal on the seam, When the clay dried it formed a kind of envelope.

Question 2

Cuneiform

Answer 2

Sumerians did not mark on their own innovation, but an old Persian scholar gave the writing the name cuneiform. Cuneiform derived from the Latin for “wedge-shaped.”

Question 3

Determinant

Answer 3

A sign placed next to a hieroglyph to show whether it served as a phonetic symbol or just a pictogram.

Question 4

Hieroglyph

Answer 4

It is an Egyptian pictogram. Some of the signs remained as pictograms but others were phonetic symbols.

Question 5

Hieratic script

Answer 5

A simplified version of hieroglyphic writing. It became the preferred writing for business matters, and administrators.

Question 6

Pictogram

Answer 6

Used to represent the number things counted. The pictograms used became increasingly simplified.

Question 7

Prototsinaitic script

Answer 7

A later form of writing after hieroglyphs. It borrowed almost half of its signs from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Question 8

Rosetta stone

Answer 8

A seven hundred pound slab of basalt with inscriptions written in hieroglyphs, in a later Egyptian script, and also in Greek. It was found by Napoleon and his soldiers.

Question 9

Thoth

Answer 9

Who Egyptians believe that writing was invented by. He was the god of writing, wisdom, and magic.