What does the biblical story of the Tower of Babel teach. The legend of the Tower of Babel - what it warns about

Who in our time has not heard the myth about the legendary Tower of Babel? People learn about this unfinished structure to the skies even in deep childhood. But not every skeptic knows that this tower has a real existence. This is evidenced by the notes of ancient and modern archaeological research. Today we go to Babylon to the remains of the Tower of Babel.

Biblical legend of the Tower of Babel

The biblical legend about how people wanted to build a tower to heaven, and for this they were punished in the form of a division of languages, is better to read in the biblical original:

1. The whole earth had one language and one dialect.

2 Moving out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime.

4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do;

7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.

8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].

9 Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.

History, construction and description of the Etemenanki ziggurat

Babylon is known for many of its structures. One of the main personalities in the exaltation of this glorious ancient city is Nebuchadnezzar II. It was during his time that the walls of Babylon, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate and the Procession Road were built. But this is only the tip of the iceberg - throughout the forty years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in the construction, restoration and decoration of Babylon. He left behind a large text about his work done. We will not dwell on all the points, but it is here that there is a mention of a ziggurat in the city.

This Tower of Babel, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which in translation means the House of the cornerstone of heaven and earth. Archaeologists during excavations were able to find a huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon Esagila.

Painting "Tower of Babel", Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563 )

For all the time, the tower was demolished and restored several times. For the first time, a ziggurat was built on this site before Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), but before him it had already been dismantled. The legendary building itself appeared under King Nabupalassar, and his successor Nebuchadnezzar took over the final construction of the peak.

The huge ziggurat was built under the direction of the Assyrian architect Aradahdeshu. It consisted of seven tiers with a total height of about 100 meters. The diameter of the structure was about 90 meters.

At the top of the ziggurat was a shrine covered with traditional Babylonian glazed bricks. The sanctuary was dedicated to the main deity of Babylon - Marduk, and it was for him that a gilded bed and table were installed here, and gilded horns were fixed at the top of the sanctuary.

At the base of the Tower of Babel in the Lower Temple was a statue of Marduk himself made of pure gold with a total weight of 2.5 tons. About 85 million bricks were used to build the Etemenanki ziggurat in Babylon. The tower stood out among all the buildings of the city and created the impression of power and grandeur. The inhabitants of this city sincerely believed in the descent of Marduk to their habitat on earth and even spoke about this to the famous Herodotus, who visited here in 458 BC (a century and a half after construction).

From the top of the Tower of Babel, another from the neighboring city, Euriminanki in Barsippa, was also visible. It is the ruins of this tower for a long time classified as biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he offered to rebuild the majestic building anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. In 275, Esagila was restored, but Etemenanki was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.

In what country was the Tower of Babel located? Does it exist now and where are its remains? We understand together with EG.

The name of the city of Babylon is mentioned in the sacred books - the Bible and the Koran. For a long time it was believed that in fact it did not exist at all, and the metaphors about the tower and pandemonium that are familiar today are taken from legends.

For several centuries, the inhabitants of Iraq did not even suspect that the hills near the outskirts of the modern city of Al-Hilla, a hundred kilometers from Baghdad, hide the ruins of the world's first metropolis and the very Tower of Babel. But in the XIX century there was a man who revealed to the world the secret of the ancient ruins. It was an archaeologist from Germany Robert Koldewey.

Like a phoenix bird

Reference: Babylon (in translation - "gates of the gods") was founded no later than the third millennium BC, located in the south of Ancient Mesopotamia (between the Tigris and Euphrates), in the region of Akkad. Sumerians, one of ancient peoples who settled here called it Kadingirra. The city changed hands more than once during the invasions of numerous conquerors.B - I millennium BC e. it became the main city of the Babylonian kingdom created by the Amorites, where the descendants of the Sumerians and Akkadians lived.

Tsar Hammurabi(1793 -1750 BC) from the Amorite dynasty, having conquered all the significant cities of Mesopotamia, united most of Mesopotamia and created a state with its capital in Babylon. Hammurabi is the author, in fact, of the first legislative code in history. The laws of Hammurabi written in cuneiform on clay tablets have come down to our time.

Under Hammurabi, Babylon began to grow rapidly. Many protective structures, palaces, temples were built here. The Babylonians had many gods, and therefore the temples were erected in honor of the goddess of healing Ninisina, the moon god Nanna, the thunder god Adad, the goddess of love, fertility and power Ishtar and other Sumero-Akkadian deities. But the main thing was Esagil - a temple dedicated to the patron of the city, the god Marduk.

However, the gods did not save Babylonia from the invasions of the invaders. At the end of the 17th century BC. e. The Babylonian kingdom was conquered by the Hittites, early XVI century BC e. it passed to the Kassites, in the XIII century the Assyrians began to rule it, in the VII-VI - the Chaldeans, and in the IV century BC. e. the city of Babylon became the capital of the empire Alexander the Great. The conquerors did not spare the city, and therefore Babylon was repeatedly destroyed, so that in the end, like a Phoenix bird, it would again be reborn from the ashes.

City of Wonders

It is believed that Babylon reached its greatest prosperity under the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled between 605 and 562 BC. He was the eldest son Nabopolassara founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty.

From an early age, Nebuchadnezzar ("the firstborn dedicated to the god Nabu") showed himself to be an excellent warrior. His army conquered several small states in the territory of the modern Middle East, and everything that was valuable there was taken to Babylonia. Including free labor, which turned the desert into an oasis with numerous channels.

Nebuchadnezzar pacified the recalcitrant Jews, who now and then rebelled against Babylonia. In 587, the Babylonian king destroyed Jerusalem and its main temple of Solomon, took the sacred vessels from the temple and resettled the Jews under his supervision.

The "Babylonian captivity" of the Jews lasted 70 years - so much was measured to them in order to realize their mistakes, repent of their sins before God and again turn to the faith of their ancestors. They were allowed to return home when the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylonia.

Oddly enough, but in his memoirs Nebuchadnezzar noted that most of all he was proud of the rebuilt cities and the roads that lie in them. Babylon would be the envy of many modern cities. It became the largest metropolis of the ancient world: it had a million inhabitants.

International trade was concentrated here, science and the arts flourished. Its fortifications were impregnable: on all sides the city was surrounded by walls up to 30 meters thick with towers, high ramparts, and water tanks.

The beauty of Babylon was amazing. The streets were paved with tiles and bricks carved from rare rocks, the houses of the nobility were decorated with huge bas-reliefs, and the walls of numerous temples and palaces were decorated with images of mythical animals. To connect the East and West districts of the city, Nebuchadnezzar decided to build a bridge across the Euphrates River. This bridge is 115 meters long and 6 meters wide with a removable part for the passage of ships - engineering marvel that time.

Paying tribute to the city, the king did not forget about his needs. He, according to an ancient source, tried a lot to "build a palace for the dwelling of my majesty in Babylon."

The palace had a throne room, richly decorated with images of columns and palm leaves, made in colored enamel. The palace was so beautiful that it was nicknamed the "Miracle of Mankind".

In the north of Babylon, on specially created stone elevations that looked like mountains, Nebuchadnezzar built a palace for his wife Amanis. She was from Media and missed her usual places. And then the king ordered to decorate the palace with lush vegetation, so that it would resemble the green oases of Media.

They brought fertile soil and planted plants collected from all over the world. Water for irrigation was raised to the upper terraces by special pumps. The green waves descending in ledges looked like a gigantic stepped pyramid.

The Babylonian "Hanging Gardens", which laid the foundation for the legend of the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" (the legendary Asian conqueror and queen of Babylon, who lived in a different period), became the seventh wonder of the world.

Feasts of Belshazzar

Nebuchadnezzar II ruled Babylonia for more than 40 years, and it seemed that nothing could stop the city from flourishing further. But the Jewish prophets predicted his fall 200 years before. This happened during the reign of the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar II (according to other sources - the son) Belshazzar.

According to the biblical legend, at that time the troops of the Persian king Cyrus approached the walls of Babylon. However, the Babylonians, confident in the strength of the walls and protective structures, were not very worried about this. The city lived luxuriously and cheerfully. The Jews generally considered it an immoral city, where debauchery reigns. King Belshazzar gathered at least a thousand people for the next feast and ordered wine to be served to the guests in sacred vessels from the Jerusalem temple, which had previously been used only to serve God. The nobles drank from these vessels and mocked the God of the Jews.

And suddenly appeared in the air human hand and inscribed on the wall incomprehensible words in Aramaic: "Mene, mene, take, uparsin." The amazed king called the prophet Daniel, who was still a youth in Babylonian captivity, and asked to translate the inscription. It read: “Numbered, calculated, weighed, divided,” Daniel explained that this was a message from God to Belshazzar, in which a quick death was predicted for the king and his kingdom. Nobody believed the prediction. But it came true on the same October night in 539 BC. e.

Cyrus took the city by cunning: he ordered the waters of the Euphrates River to be diverted into a special canal and entered Babylon along the drained channel. Belshazzar was killed by Persian soldiers, Babylon fell, its walls were destroyed. Later it was conquered by the Arab tribes. The glory of the great city has sunk into oblivion, it itself has turned into ruins, and the “gates of the gods” have closed forever for humanity.

Was there a tower?

Many Europeans who visited Babylon looked for traces of the tower, which the biblical legend told about.

Chapter 11 of the book of Genesis contains a legend about what the descendants of Noah, who escaped the Great Flood, planned to do. They spoke the same language and, moving from the east, came to a plain in the land of Shinar (in the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates), where they settled. And then we decided: let's make bricks and build ourselves a city and a tower, as high as the heavens, and make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.

The tower kept growing, rising into the clouds. Watching this construction, God remarked: “Behold, there is one people, and one language for all; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do.

He did not like that people imagined to exalt themselves above the sky, and he decided to mix their language so that they would no longer understand each other. And so it happened.

Construction came to a halt as everyone began to speak different languages, people were scattered all over the earth, and the city where the Lord "mixed the language of the whole earth" was given the name Babylon, which means "mixing." Thus, the original "Babylonian Pillar-CREATION" is the creation tall building, and not a heap-small and confusion.

The story of the Tower of Babel would probably have remained a legend if during the excavations of Babylon no traces of a colossal structure were found. These were the ruins of a temple.

In ancient Mesopotamia, temples were built that were completely different from the usual European ones - tall towers, which were called ziggurats. Their peaks served as sites for religious rites and astronomical observations.

Among them stood out the Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki, which meant "House where heaven meets earth." Its height is 91 meters, it had eight tiers, seven of which went in a spiral. The total height was about 100 meters.

It was estimated that at least 85 million bricks were needed to build the tower. A two-storey temple towered on the upper platform, a monumental staircase led to it.

At the top there was a sanctuary dedicated to the god Marduk, and a golden bed intended for him, as well as gilded horns. At the foot of the Tower of Babel, in the Lower Temple, stood a statue of Marduk made of pure gold, its age was 2.5 tons.

It is believed that the temple existed during the reign of Hammurabi, it was destroyed and rebuilt more than once. Last time- under Nebuchadnezzar. In 331 BC. e. by order of Alexander the Great, the tower was dismantled, they were going to reconstruct it, but the death of Alexander the Great prevented this plan from being carried out. Only majestic ruins and biblical legends remained in the memory of mankind.

Biblical legend of the Tower of Babel

The biblical legend about how people wanted to build a tower to heaven, and for this they were punished in the form of a division of languages, is better to read in the biblical original:

1. The whole earth had one language and one dialect.

2 Moving out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime.

4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do;

7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.

8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].

9 Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.

History, construction and description of the Etemenanki ziggurat

This Tower of Babel, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which means the House of the cornerstone of heaven and earth. Archaeologists during excavations were able to find a huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon Esagila.

Painting "Tower of Babel", Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563 )

From the top of the Tower of Babel, another from the neighboring city, Euriminanki in Barsippa, was also visible. It was the ruins of this tower that for a long time were attributed to the biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he offered to rebuild the majestic building anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. In 275, Esagila was restored, but Etemenanki was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.

The Tower of Babel is one of the most prominent structures of Ancient Babylon. It was built more than four thousand years ago, but even today its name is a symbol of confusion and disorder.

The Tower of Babel is dedicated to the biblical tradition, which says that initially there was one language throughout the Earth, people succeeded in their development and learned how to make bricks from baked clay. They decided to build a tower as high as the sky. And when the Lord saw such a tower, rising very high above the earth's surface, he decided to confuse the languages so that the construction would no longer move.

Historians have proven that the biblical legend was about a real structure. The Tower of Babel, called the ziggurat, was actually built in the 2nd millennium BC. e., then it was destroyed many times, and it was rebuilt again. According to modern data, this building was equal in height to a 30-story skyscraper.

The Tower of Babel was a pyramid lined with baked bricks. Each of its tiers had its own specific color. At the top was the sanctuary of the god Marduk, the patron saint of the city. In the corners it was decorated with golden horns - a symbol of fertility. Inside the ziggurat, in the sanctuary on the lower tier, there was a golden statue of Zeus, as well as a golden table and throne. Religious processions ascended the tiers along wide staircases.

The tower rose on the left bank of the Euphrates. It was surrounded by the houses of priests, numerous temple buildings and special buildings for pilgrims who rushed here from all over Babylonia. Herodotus left the only written evidence of a European eyewitness. According to his description, the tower had eight tiers, with the lower one 180 meters wide. However, this statement diverges from modern archeological data.

The ruins and foundation of the tower in Babylon were discovered by the German scientist Robert Koldewey during excavations in 1897-1898. The researcher calls the tower seven-tiered, and the width of the lower tier, in his opinion, is 90 meters. Such discrepancies with Herodotus can be explained by the difference in the 24th century. The tower was rebuilt many times, destroyed and restored. Everyone had their own ziggurat Big City Babylonia, but none of them could compete with the Tower of Babel.

This grandiose building was a shrine not only for the city, but for the entire people who worshiped the deity Marduk. The tower was built under several generations of rulers and required enormous labor and material costs. So, it is known that about 85 thousand bricks were required for its construction. The ziggurat in Babylon has not survived to this day. But the fact that the Tower of Babel described in the Bible really existed on earth is undeniable today.

But back to earth...

The gods-civilizers - solving, of course, primarily their own tasks - transferred people from hunting and gathering to agriculture and cattle breeding, introducing them to a settled way of life and passing on to them a whole layer of knowledge necessary for life in these new conditions. Since there was a single source of knowledge - a limited group of representatives of an alien civilization, a certain similarity of languages became a by-product of their progressor activity, as mentioned earlier.

Not only modern linguists, who are trying to explain it by the presence in the past of a single “great-people” with a single “ancestral language,” drew attention to the fact of the similarity of languages, but also our distant ancestors, who also mentioned “one language” in legends and traditions. And perhaps the most famous reference to this is the myth of the Tower of Babel.

“The whole earth had one language and one dialect. Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime. And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building. And God said, Behold, there is one people, and all have one language; and this is what they began to do...let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city and the tower. Therefore, a name was given to her: Babylon ... ”(“ Genesis ”, ch. 11).

There is a similar story in other sources.

“George Smith, in the Chaldean Book of Genesis, quotes the Greek historian Hestes: the people who escaped the flood and came to the Babylonian Shinar were dispersed from there by the difference of languages. Another historian - Alexander Polyhistor (I century BC) also wrote that all people in the past spoke the same language, but then they began to build a majestic tower in order to "get to heaven." And then the main god destroyed their plans, sending them a "whirlwind". After that, each tribe received a different language” (V.Yu.Koneles, “Descended from heaven and created people”).

And even at a very considerable distance from the place of the events described, there are similar legends.

“The story of [the god] Wotan is described in the book Quiche Maya, which was burned in 1691 by Nunez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapas. Fortunately, the bishop copied part of this book, and it was from this copy that Ordoñez learned the story of Wotan. Wotan allegedly came to America with a group of followers dressed in long robes. The natives greeted him friendly and recognized him as the ruler, and the newcomers married their daughters ... Ordoñez read in his copy that Wotan crossed the Atlantic four times to visit his hometown called Valum Chivim ... According to the same legend, during one of his trips Wotan visited Big city, where they built a temple to the very sky, although this construction was supposed to cause a mixture of languages ”(E. Gilbert, M. Cotterell,“ Secrets of the Maya ”).

However, when we deal with mythology and even admit the historicity of the events described in them, one must be very careful. It is far from always that legends and traditions can be taken literally, because time inevitably leaves its mark, often passing to us only very distorted echoes of distant events.

And in this case, we are faced with the fact that the legends and traditions of other peoples and continents also mention that people suddenly began to “speak different languages”, but at the same time there is no mention of the construction of a tower at all. It is curious that even the same Maya offer us a slightly different version than the one given above (which was clearly affected by the distortion of local traditions by the Catholic ideas of the Spanish invaders).

“As stated in the Popol Vuh, four men and four women who were in the Seven Caves suddenly realized that they could no longer understand each other's words, for they all spoke in different languages. Finding themselves in such a difficult situation, they left Tulan-Tsuyu and went in search of a more suitable place where they could worship the sun god Tohil ”(E. Collins,“ Gates of Atlantis ”).

There is a similarity of the main motive, but the details are completely different. Most likely, the tower as such has absolutely nothing to do with it and is only an introduced entourage element that is not related to the essence of the myth and to the real events behind it. Moreover, it turns out that Babylon - as a specific place of events - also has absolutely nothing to do with it, because in the Mayan tradition it is clearly a completely different place. However, this is also shown by more detailed studies of the myth of the Tower of Babel itself.

“Note that the action takes place in the country of Shinar. This name of Mesopotamia is used in the Bible most often when it comes to very ancient times. So, if the episode with the Tower of Babel contains a historical grain, then it belongs to the deepest antiquity. Shinar (Heb. Shinear) is, apparently, the designation of Sumer. It should be noted that the Jews were the only people who preserved the memory of this country (even ancient authors do not know about it) ”(E. Mendelevich,“ Traditions and Myths of the Old Testament ”).

If we develop the idea expressed in the above quotation, then we can come to the conclusion that in the biblical version, the “combination of space and time” that is popular in modern physics has been accomplished. The geographical localization of events here turns out to be only a kind of symbolic reflection of the time factor!..

A strange move?... Not at all! apparently, the terms "Babylon" and "Shennaar" do not mean at all specific place but only for a very distant period of time.

After such an “adjustment”, the biblical myth no longer contradicts the legends and traditions of other regions of the planet, while maintaining the commonality of the motive.

However, coordinating the biblical version with other sources in terms of spatio-temporal parameters does not solve other contradictions, among which one finds a seemingly insoluble contradiction of the Old Testament ... to itself!

“... I remind you (as Umberto Eco has already done) that even before the story of the Babylonian pandemonium, the Bible mentions the existence of not one, but many languages, and speaks of this as something taken for granted: “Here is the genealogy Noah's sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. After the flood, their children were born […]. From these the islands of peoples were settled in their lands, each according to his own language, according to his tribes, in his peoples ”(Genesis: 10,1,5) ”(P. Ricoeur,“ The Translation Paradigm ”).

How is it?.. Either “one language, one dialect”, then “each according to his own language” ... This is no longer just “inconsistency”. One proposition completely excludes the other!.. How to be?.. Is there a possibility at all when both such contradictory passages of a single source would simultaneously reflect the reality of the past?.. Strange as it may seem, it turns out that such a possibility exists!..

If we take into account the inevitable distortions of information about such ancient events - both due to their long transmission from generation to generation, and due to various kinds of "ideological edits" - and "squeeze all the water" out of the myth of the Tower of Babel and other similar myths, then “in the bottom line” you can get the following: once in the distant past, a certain event occurred, after which people ceased to understand each other.

But what exactly happened?.. And how to get out of the contradiction in the testimony of the number of languages? ".

It would seem, what is there to "understand"? .. After all, the myths seem to clearly point to a single spoken language. However, it is worth remembering that the concept of “language” can also be interpreted in a more expanded version - there is a language of gestures, a language of facial expressions, a language of fine art, etc., etc.

“The language of culture in the broadest sense of this concept refers to those means, signs, symbols, texts that allow people to enter into communicative relations with each other, navigate in the space of culture ... The main structural unit of the language of culture, from the point of view of semiotics, are sign systems. A sign is a material object (phenomenon, event) that acts as an objective substitute for some other object, property or relationship and is used to acquire, store, process and transmit messages (information, knowledge). This is a materialized carrier of the image of an object, limited by its functional purpose. The presence of a sign makes it possible to transmit information through technical communication channels and its various - mathematical, statistical, logical - processing ... The language is formed where the sign is consciously separated from the representation and begins to function as a representative (representative) of this representation, its spokesman "(I. Parkhomenko , A. Radugin "Culturology in questions and answers").

But the “sign” can be different!.. It can be a word spoken aloud, or maybe a written text!..

“At a relatively high stage in the development of human culture, sign systems of notation are formed: writing (a system of writing a natural language), musical notation, ways of recording dance, etc. ... The invention of sign systems of notation is one of the greatest achievements of human culture. Especially big role in the history of culture played the emergence and development of writing. Without writing, the development of science, technology, law, etc. would have been impossible. The appearance of writing marked the beginning of civilization” (ibid.).

Of all the many possible forms languages (in the extended interpretation of this term) we will be primarily interested in two - oral spoken language (and it is this that we will call “language” in the future) and writing (in a somewhat narrowed content of this concept).

It would seem, why carry out the division and even in some way the opposition of these concepts?.. After all, our system of writing is closely connected with oral speech. And this closest connection is familiar to us; she "entered into our flesh and blood" ...

However, firstly, there was not always that strict correspondence between writing and oral speech, which seems to us natural and often even "the only possible". And secondly, even now there are forms of writing that are not as closely related to oral speech as, for example, these lines ...

Now let's take a look at one quote:

“The fact that initially there was only one language is confirmed not only by the Bible and ancient authors. Mesopotamian texts repeatedly refer to tablets from antediluvian times. There are similar references to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (7th century BC), who knew how to read tablets “written in antediluvian times” ... ”(V.Yu. Koneles“ Descended from heaven and created people ”).

Coneles mixed up the two concepts and as a result received an erroneous conclusion about the existence of a "single language", meaning by it exactly the spoken language, but meanwhile we are talking about the "ability to read tablets", that is, writing!.. Apparently, this had place and in the course of various translations and rewritings of ancient legends and traditions, during which one concept was replaced by another due to the misperception of the extended term "language" (in its most general sense, including writing) as only spoken language.

And it turns out that in the myth of the Tower of Babel, as well as in other consonant legends and traditions, the words “they spoke the same language” actually mean not the presence of a single spoken language, but the presence of a single script! ..

Then the "insoluble" contradiction of the Old Testament to itself is easily resolved. People spoke different languages, but at the same time they could still understand each other, as they had a single script!

Could this be possible in principle?

Not only can, but even exists and has visible confirmation now in the country whose population makes up the lion's share of all mankind - in China. The diversity of languages in China is huge. Some researchers have counted as many as 730 different dialects in this country. This is not even Europe with its "polyphony". However, although people from different regions of China sometimes do not even understand each other's spoken language, they are quite capable of communicating with each other using a single script. And after all, for us, people of "outsiders", all this is a single "Chinese language"! ..

We will return to the topic of China later, but now we will give a couple more considerations that additionally tip the scales in the direction of the advanced position.

Firstly, a significant part of the conclusions of historians and linguists about the similarity of the ancient "languages" is based on the facts of the similarity of the written language of cultures - these languages themselves (in their oral, "sound" representation) are often long and irretrievably lost.

And secondly, there is a very revealing result in one of the studies of the texts of the Old Testament:

“One curious detail. The beginning of the story about the Tower of Babel in Russian translation is as follows: "On the whole earth there was one language and one dialect." This translation is incorrect. The original Hebrew says: “And there was one language in all the earth, with few words” [Gen. 11:1]” (E. Mendelevich, “Traditions and Myths of the Old Testament”).

An interesting phrase - "one language with few words" - isn't it? ..

On the one hand, one can see in it an indirect confirmation of the version expressed earlier when explaining the similarity of the languages of different peoples. Since the number of new words introduced by the gods along with the elements of civilization into the language of people is obviously less than the total number of words used in everyday life, a “single language with few words” is obtained, the commonality of which among different peoples is limited to a list of just introduced words.

On the other hand, there may be another interpretation of this phrase. Modern alphabetic writing has only a few dozen symbols - letters, with the help of which the whole variety of words of oral speech can be displayed. The number of characters in hieroglyphic or pictographic writing is obviously much greater than the number of letters in the alphabet. But pictograms and hieroglyphs (at their early stage) are signs that display the whole concept, that is, the word. And there are usually no more than several tens of thousands of such signs in these types of writing, which is obviously less than the number of words in oral colloquial speech. So it turns out “one language with few words”! .. Only writing appears in the role of “language”! ..

But so far all this is only theoretical reasoning and logical constructions. Are there any real facts that would confirm that different peoples actually have a single script (or at least so similar that peoples speaking different languages can understand it)? ..

It turns out that in recent decades, so many archaeological facts and research results have accumulated that the proposed assumption ceases to seem strange to us - those to whom the connection between the sounding and the written word seems inevitable and inseparable. However, these findings and studies provide so much unexpected information that they make us think about the dubiousness of other well-established stereotypes.

A few years ago in the means mass media flashed reports of the discovery in Central Asia of some "new, previously unknown civilization." In fact, all its “novelty” is generated only by the habit of academic science to hush up facts that are “inconvenient” for it, simply because they do not fit into the accepted picture of the past.

“...when journalists claim that this civilization has only just been discovered, this is not true. Its traces were first discovered by amateur archaeologist General Komarov in 1885. In 1904, his excavations were continued by the American Pompelli and the German Schmidt ... Further excavations were continued by Soviet archaeologists, but not where General Komarov was digging, but in other places - he, and then Pompelli and Schmidt acted not very competently and pretty spoiled the place excavation. Five years ago, an expedition of American archaeologists headed by the very famous scientist Lambert-Karlovsky, with whom we are very familiar, began to work at this place. From the very beginning, it also included Gibert, whose name is associated with the discovery of a stone with writings - a young, very talented scientist ”(from an Internet publication signed“ Doctor of Historical Sciences, leading Russian specialist on Central Asia, Boris Litvinsky ”).

That's it!.. For a whole hundred years, not a single school textbook, not a single publication accessible to the general public has a word about an entire civilization! with smooth side faces like the pyramids of Giza - only smaller...

“The lost civilization, judging by its remains, was very powerful. It occupied an area 500-600 km long and 100 km wide, which begins in Turkmenistan, crosses the Kara-Kum desert, stretches to Uzbekistan and, possibly, captures part of northern Afghanistan. After it, the foundations of monumental brick buildings with many rooms, huge arches remained. Since the real name of this country has not been preserved, archaeologists gave it their own - now it is called the Bactrian-Margian archaeological complex, after the later ancient Greek territories located in this area. Its inhabitants built cities, bred goats, grew cereals, knew how to burn clay and smelt various tools from bronze. The only thing they lacked for a complete gentleman's set was writing."

Why did such a civilization turn out to be “unknown” if it was discovered a hundred years ago?..

The fact is that it was impossible to squeeze this civilization into the picture of the past invented by historians. There are too many to review. Moreover, Pompelli and Schmidt dated their findings as far back as the 7th millennium BC - that is, 3-4 millennia earlier than the official dating of Ancient Egypt and the civilizations of Mesopotamia!!! What to do?.. The "answer" from the historians was trivial - a curtain of silence was lowered in front of the general public, and for the experts they "slightly corrected" the dating, declaring the conclusions of Pompelli and Schmidt erroneous. Now this civilization "dates" to the 23rd century BC. So - "easy, simple and tasteful" ...

Actually, only one find contributed to breaking the blockade of silence around the Central Asian culture, which brought the very “gentleman's set of civilization” to a complete set.

“In the 90s, Dr. Gibert began to dig a little, gradually reaching deeper, and therefore earlier, layers ... In June of the year, he was rewarded for his work during excavations under the premises, as it turned out, of the ancient administrative building of Anau. It was there that he found the symbols carved into a piece of shiny black stone, a type of coal, less than one inch (1 inch = 2.54 cm) across. Archaeologists believe that this was a seal commonly used in commerce in ancient times to mark cargo by its contents and owner.”

“Difficulties with comprehending a new element of this vanished culture - its possible writing - arose when specialists in ancient Chinese writing joined the research of a pebble found not far from Ashgabat, in the town of Anau. From the very beginning, the red icons on it were attributed to the similarity with the prototypes of hieroglyphs. But in this case, it turns out that this writing arose at least a thousand years before any kind of Chinese writing! And yet, independent research conducted by two experts - Drs. Kui Xigu of Peking University and Victor Mair of Pennsylvania - indicate that the ancient characters are very similar to those of the Western Han Dynasty, and this period is relatively recent - from 206 BC to 9 years after the birth of Christ.

And then it began! .. They put forward the version that the find was “alien” and it was simply dropped much later by merchants from the so-called Silk Road. Then they announced that it is generally impossible to draw conclusions about the presence of developed writing from a single find ...

However, at first, archaeologists refuted the first objection, confirming the local origin of the artifact, and then it turned out that there are more finds that speak in favor of the presence of writing in this civilization.

“The only other example of a possible written language of the BMAK people was reported two years ago by Dr. I.S. Klochkov from the Institute of Archeology in St. Petersburg. In the ruins of Gonurvit, he found a shard with four letters of unknown script and language. Other Russian researchers have found signs that people of the BMAK culture used symbols on pottery and earthenware.”

In general, while some are working in the field of downplaying the significance of the find, others are making efforts in the exact opposite direction. A common thing in science...

The same discrepancy takes place in the analysis of the icons themselves on the artifact. While some researchers categorically reject the similarity of the discovered inscription with the signs of Mesopotamia and India (Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa), others, on the contrary, find parallels, in particular, with ancient Sumerian writing. True, no one dares to dispute the “strange” similarity of the discovered signs with Chinese characters, although there are thousands of kilometers and thousands of years between the two civilizations (according to the dating accepted by historians). In this light, the following quote is intriguing:

“Studies have definitely shown that the earliest forms of Chinese writing, after 2000 BC, were borrowed from Sumerian writing. Pictographic signs not only looked similar, but were pronounced the same, and words that had several meanings in the Sumerian language were also polysemantic in Chinese ”(Alford,“ Gods of the New Millennium ”).

Let us leave aside the question of who borrowed what from whom. Something else is important for us here: if we take into account the “cross” similarity of the elements of written artifacts (including the similarity of early Sumerian writing with ancient Indian), we get the fact of the similarity of writing in four very distant regions - Mesopotamia, India, Central Asia and China.

This similarity allowed the researchers to put forward the following hypothesis:

“During the Fuxi era (2852-2752 BC), Aryan nomads invaded China from the northwest and brought with them a well-established script. But ancient Chinese pictography was preceded by the writing of the Namazga culture (Central Asia). Separate groups of characters in it have both Sumerian and Chinese counterparts. What is the reason for the similarity of the writing system among such different peoples? The fact is that they had one source, the collapse of which occurred in the 7th millennium BC. e." (A. Kifishin, "Branches of one tree").

Let us also leave aside the assumption of some "invasion" of some "Aryans". We only note that the author of the quotation comes out on the same date as Pompelli and Schmidt - namely: the 7th millennium BC. However, we will meet this date more than once in the future ...

But let's move on to "less doubtful" (from the point of view of academic science) finds...

“In 1961, the news of an archaeological sensation spread around the scientific world ... An unexpected find was discovered in Transylvania, in the small Romanian village of Terteria ... Three tiny clay tables caused general excitement. For they were dotted with mysterious picturesque signs, strikingly reminiscent (as the author of the outstanding discovery, the Romanian archaeologist N. Vlassa, already noted) of the Sumerian pictographic writing of the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. But archaeologists were in for another surprise. The found tablets turned out to be 1000 years older than the Sumerian ones! (B. Perlov, "Living words of Terteria").

“Twenty kilometers from Terteria is Turdash hill. An ancient settlement of farmers of the Neolithic period is buried in its bowels. The hill has been excavated since the end of the last century, but it has not been fully excavated. Even then, the attention of archaeologists was attracted by pictographic signs drawn on the fragments of vessels. The same marks on the shards were found in the Neolithic settlement of Vinca, related to Turdash, in Yugoslavia. Then scientists considered the signs to be simple marks of the owners of the vessels. Then the Turdash hill was not lucky: the stream, having changed its course, almost washed it away. In 1961, archaeologists appeared already on the Tarteria hill ...

When the excitement subsided, the scientists carefully examined the small tablets. Two were rectangular, the third was round. Round and large rectangular tablets had a round through hole in the center. Careful research showed that the tablets were made from local clay. Signs were applied only on one side. The writing technique of the ancient Terterians turned out to be very simple: the patterned signs were scratched with a sharp object on damp clay, then the tablet was fired. If such signs came across in the distant Mesopotamia, no one would be surprised. But the Sumerian tablets in Transylvania! It was amazing. It was then that they remembered the forgotten signs on the shards of Turdash-Vinci. They compared them with the Terterian ones: the similarity was obvious. And that says a lot. The writing of Terteria did not arise from scratch, but was an integral part of the widespread in the middle of the 6th - beginning of the 5th millennium BC. e. pictographic writing of the Balkan Vinci culture” (ibid.).

“... an expert-shumerologist A. Kifishin, after analyzing the accumulated material, came to the conclusion:

1. Terterian tablets are a fragment of a widespread writing system of local origin.

2. The text of one tablet lists six ancient totems that match the "list" from the Sumerian city of Jemdet-Nasra, as well as a seal from a burial site related to the Hungarian culture of Keresh.

3. The signs on this plate should be read in a circle counter-clockwise.

4. The content of the inscription (if it is read in Sumerian) is confirmed by the discovery of the dismembered corpse of a man in the same Terteria.

5. The name of the local god Shaue is identical to the Sumerian god Usmu. This tablet was translated as follows: “In the reign of the fortieth for the mouth of the god Shaue, the elder was burned according to the ritual. This is the tenth "..." (ibid.).

Thus, it turned out that the inscriptions are not only read "in the language" of a culture thousands of kilometers away, but also reveal the similarity of cultures in a number of parameters.

Rice. 195. One of the Terterian inscriptions

The subsequent finds not only removed all doubts about the local origin of the Terterian artifacts, but also provided the basis for a completely different view of the history of writing.

“In 1980, Professor Gimbutas reported that “at present, more than sixty excavations are known where objects with inscriptions have been found ... Most are located on the territory of Vinci and Tisza, as well as in Karanov (central Bulgaria). Objects with engraved or painted signs were also found in Cucuteni, Petresti, Lendel, Butmir, Bukka and others. These finds mean that “we no longer have to talk about the“ Vinci letter ”or the tablets of Tartaria, since“ it turns out that the letter was a universal feature of ancient European civilization ... ”(R. Eisler,“ Cup and Blade ”).

“About between 7000 and 3500 B.C. BC e. the ancient Europeans developed a complex social structure that included handicraft specialization. Institutions of religion and government were formed. Copper and gold were used to make tools and jewelry. There were even the beginnings of a letter. According to Gimbutas, “If we define civilization as the ability of given people to adapt to environment and develop the corresponding arts, technique, writing and social relations, then it is obvious that Ancient Europe achieved significant success ”...” (ibid.).

So, Europe also joined Mesopotamia, India, China and Central Asia - almost all of Eurasia, it turns out, had a similar script! ..

In parallel with the accumulation of European artifacts, a more thorough linguistic analysis of known Sumerian texts was carried out, which revealed their important feature.

“B. Perlov is certainly right when he asserts that Sumerian writing appeared in the Southern Mesopotamia at the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. somehow unexpectedly, in a completely ready-made. It was on it that the most ancient encyclopedia of mankind "Harrahubulu" was recorded, which fully reflected the worldview of the people of the X-IV millennium BC. e.

The study of the laws of the internal development of Sumerian pictography shows that by the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. pictographic writing as a system was in a state of decay rather than formation. Of the entire Sumerian writing system (numbering about 38 thousand characters and variations), a little more than 5 thousand were used, and all of them came from 72 ancient symbol nests. The process of polyphonization (that is, different sounds of the same sign) of the nests of the Sumerian system began long before that.

Polyphonization gradually corroded the outer shell of the complex sign in whole nests, then destroyed the internal design of the sign in half-decayed nests, and, finally, completely destroyed the nest itself. Symbol nests broke up into polyphonic bundles long before the arrival of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia.

It is curious that in the proto-Elamite writing, which existed simultaneously with the Sumerian, also on the coast Persian Gulf, a similar phenomenon is observed. The Proto-Elamite writing is also reduced to 70 nests-symbols, which broke up into 70 polyphonic bundles. Both the Proto-Elamite sign and the Sumerian one have an internal and external design. But Proto-Elamite also has pendants. Therefore, in its system, it is closer to Chinese characters” (A. Kifishin, “Branches of a Tree”).

Kifishin's train of thought is understandable: if there is a similarity in the writing of the two cultures, but at the same time, the Terterian artifacts date back 1000 years older than the Sumerian ones (and even the Sumerian writing itself should suggest some kind of long prehistory, since it has the characteristics of decay), so why not declare that the ancestors of the Sumerians came from the Balkans? .. It seems to be logical ... However, you can look at this problem from the other side.

Before the discovery of Terterian written artifacts, there was no need for any "resettlement" of the ancient Sumerians. With the discovery, an “urgent need” arose ... And if after some time written artifacts of a much earlier time are found on the territory of Mesopotamia? .. What then? .. Will we “resettle” the ancestors of the Sumerians back - from the Balkans to Mesopotamia? ..

Being within the framework of established stereotypes, the vast majority of researchers, in an attempt to explain the similarity of writing (and cultures in general), resort to the now fashionable "magic wand" - the hypothesis of mass migrations. But this is what is revealed: depending on the author (and on the data analyzed by this author), the ancient peoples run through the whole of Eurasia either from east to west, or from west to east; then "expand their influence" from south to north; then they are “invaded” from north to south ...

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, in search of the “ancestral home”, the researchers went through almost the entire mainland, and some even climb into Africa, since the early forms of ancient Egyptian writing also show similarities with the writing of Ancient Sumer…

But let's assume that these researchers eventually stop arguing with each other and together, having piled on, will find a "great-homeland" somewhere in Eurasia or Africa. What about other continents then?

“Mayan hieroglyphic characters in writing are organized into blocks, which, in accordance with the reading order, are arranged in columns of two ... Blocks in Mayan writing resemble the line on early Sumerian tablets that delimit word combinations, as well as the “red dots” in Egyptian manuscripts of the New Kingdom, which , as shown by N.S. Petrovsky, denote the end and beginning of the syntagma" (A. Davletshin, report at the IX International Conference "Lomonosov - 2002").

The situation becomes even more curious when taking into account the results of the analysis of the culture of the predecessors of the Maya - the Olmecs.

“American Sinologist (Sinologist) Mike Xu, a fellow at Texas Christian University… compared the Olmec written characters with the hieroglyphs of the ancient Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD). A striking thing was revealed to him: many hieroglyphs that existed in countries that lay on both sides of the great ocean were very similar. In a number of cases, these complex graphical icons matched! Many hieroglyphs of the Olmecs, who inhabited modern Mexico three thousand years ago, and the Chinese, who lived in the era of the Han Dynasty, look almost the same (Fig. 196): “temple” (1), “grave mound” (2), “vessel” (3 ), "a place for sacrifices" (4). Such a coincidence can hardly be accidental!” (Lost World 2/2001)

Rice. 196. Similarity of Olmec (left) and Chinese (right) writing.

And it would be fine if the matter was limited to only one Central American region.

Earlier we mentioned the cuneiform text on a bowl found in Bolivia and now stored in the La Paz Museum (see Fig. 190). This bowl can be considered evidence of ancient contacts between the inhabitants of two regions located almost on opposite sides of the globe. But after all, it can also have a local origin, in no way connected with Ancient Sumer. And then this is an artifact confirming the similarity of writing among two peoples so distant from each other! ..

There is other evidence of the similarity of written signs of various cultures.

“In South America, a huge egg-shaped block was found about 100 m long, 80 m wide and 30 m high. Its features, according to the description of A. Seidler, are as follows. “A part of the stone with an area of about 600 m² is covered with mysterious inscriptions and drawings that resemble Egyptian ones ... There are signs of the swastika and the Sun. These letters are reminiscent of Phoenician, ancient Greek, Cretan and ancient Egyptian "..." (V.Yu.Koneles "Descended from heaven and created people").

“Strikingly similar, for example, are individual signs of the mysterious writing of the proto-Indian civilization of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa with the signs of the writing of Kohau-rongo-rongo on the distant Easter Island ...” (B. Perlov, “The Living Words of Terteria”).

Theoretically, it is possible, of course, for a whole nation to rush about in a crowd across Eurasia and bring their culture and writing to new regions, although this is already beyond the scope of reasonable logic. But at the same time, how else can one manage to “encompass” other territories practically all over the planet, overcoming thousands of kilometers of ocean expanses?!

If, however, we follow the same path as with the myth of the Tower of Babel, and “squeeze all the water” out of numerous studies, stopping the parade of absurdity in search of the “ancestral home” that never existed, then “in the bottom line” will remain only the fact of the presence of traces of the once indeed a single script, which is quite consistent with the proposed version of the "decipherment" of the myth of the Tower of Babel. A fact that can already be considered practically proven. Proved not at all by the author of this book, but by archaeologists and linguists who themselves simply do not know about it ...

An interesting picture also emerges when archaeologists and historians analyze datings of artifacts with written signs applied to them. The finds of the last decades are taking researchers further and further into the depths of time.

Terterian artifacts point to the 6th–5th millennium BC (the Vinci culture, with which these finds are associated, dates back to the period 5300–4000 BC).

The discovery in Central Asia is now dated to the 23rd century BC, which is quite consistent with the established point of view about the appearance of writing at the turn of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. But do not forget about the initial version, which referred the Central Asian civilization as far back as the 7th millennium BC.

As they say, we write three, seven - in the mind ...

The roots of Sumerian writing also go, according to researchers, to the 7th millennium BC ...

But even more ancient dates are given in the following message:

"When did mankind invent writing? Until now, it was believed that this event, which was of crucial importance for human civilization, occurred about 6 thousand years ago. An archaeological find made by French scientists in Syria suggests that writing is "older" by at least 5 thousand years This is evidenced by rock carvings dating back to the 9th millennium BC, which were recently discovered in the area of Bir Ahmed on the banks of the Euphrates River. namely, abstract symbols and simplified drawings, which are in some connection with each other. So far, they have not been deciphered, but the fact that we are talking about a sign written language is undoubted. Already now we can say that a hitherto unknown principle of writing was used in the Syrian find. As you know, earlier scientists were faced with geometric and hieroglyphic writing. but they wrote in a different way: they carved stylized images of animals and symbols that were difficult to decipher, grouping them into texts in a special way” (R. Bikbaev, corr. ITAR-TASS. Cairo. Magazine "Anomaly. Ecology of the Unknown”, No. 1–2 (35), 1997).

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any more detailed information on the fact mentioned in the above quote. Therefore, there is no way to specify in what exactly the "unknown principle of writing" differs from the known ones; nor at least tentatively assess the reliability of the given dating (it is known that the dating of stone artifacts currently does not have a reliable proven methodology) ...

Can such an ancient date correspond to reality? ..

On the one hand, it seems that European finds shift the “epicenter” of writing to the region of Europe, where researchers already state the formation of a single community as far back as the 6th millennium BC. At the same time, if we “sum up” the conclusions of various researchers, then this community covered vast expanses - from modern Kyiv to central France and from the Baltic to mediterranean sea!..

On the other hand, the region of Mesopotamia, which is now deprived of priority in the origin of writing, is also not very willing to give up its positions. And here new finds are gradually shifting the ideas of historians about the origin of civilization further and further back in time. At least considered the most ancient of the currently known agricultural settlements is located in this region - in Jarmo in northern Iraq. According to the grains of cereals found there, it dates back to 9290 BC! Therefore, it is absolutely possible that even in the near future new written artifacts (in addition to the Syrian one mentioned just above) may be found here, which will “eclipse” the Terterian find in antiquity.

So even the already available archaeological data literally force historical science to slowly surrender its outdated positions under its onslaught and push back both the time of the emergence of ancient civilizations and the time of the appearance of writing farther and farther back - closer and closer to the period when, according to legends and legends, the gods ruled on Earth, who gave people both civilization and writing ...

Our ancestors are absolutely unanimous in their "testimonies" on the question of the origin of writing. Ancient legends and traditions unanimously assert that writing was given to people by the gods, who “invented” it.

According to the legends of the ancient Egyptians, their writing was invented by the god Thoth, who was generally a "jack of all trades" and "invented" almost everything related to intellectual activity. However, the art of writing was transferred directly to the Egyptians by Osiris as part of the entire "gentleman's set" of civilization. Further, the goddess Seshat was already “in charge” of writing ...

The ancient Sumerians were given writing by the god Enki, who invented it. According to some versions (later mythology), Enki only invented writing, and the god Oannes handed it over to people. As in Egypt, the goddess Nidaba was in charge of writing.

Writing was brought to Central America by the great god-civilizer, who among different peoples appears under different names. Either he is Quetzalcoatl, then Itzamna, then Kukulkan, then Kukumaku ... At the same time, many researchers tend to see a single character behind these multiple names.

Even the Incas, who had lost the art of writing, in their legends mentioned the “main” god Viracocha as the one who taught them this art…

Perhaps only China stands out from this series, where there are several different versions of plots dedicated to the origin of writing. Most often, the invention of hieroglyphs is attributed to the legendary person Fu Xi, who, although not called a god, is actually one in his deeds (here one must also take into account the “Chinese specifics”: according to their mythology, everything was regulated and controlled by Heaven; and certain people acted directly among people "wise men" - legendary figures). According to other versions of the legends, writing was introduced by the official Cang Jie under Emperor Huang Di ...

Be that as it may, whoever does not act as a person who “transfers” writing to the Chinese, all their legends and traditions agree on one thing - the hieroglyphs are bestowed by Heaven itself ...

From this, by the way, follows the widespread attitude towards writing as something sacred. Can there be any other attitude to the gifts of Heaven and the gods?..

However, ancient legends and traditions not only quite specifically name the source of the art of writing, but also make it possible to accurately determine the time of this event.

The Old Testament, however, gives only a vague formulation. In the biblical account, the builders of the Tower of Babel were “the sons of Shem according to their generations,” and Shem, as you know, was the son of Noah, who survived the Flood.

Actually, few of the researchers of the myth of the Tower of Babel doubt that it refers to events that took place at the dawn of the post-Flood civilization, but this does not give much. First, the concept of "post-Flood" is very vague. And secondly, the term “sons of Shem according to their families” is also vague and (as is often the case in the Bible) can be of a collective nature, meaning by no means the only generation of Noah’s grandchildren.

The myths of Ancient Sumer are somewhat more specific in this regard. So in the epic tale of the hero and king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, the role of writing is mentioned in a conversation between Gilgamesh and his father, who is in the kingdom of the dead:

“- But you told me about some secret tables. There was no such word in my time.

- Tables on which signs can record all human knowledge.

- Why are they? Or have you blackheads lost your memory, and now you are not able to remember knowledge by heart?

- By heart, we also remember. But how to convey a word over a long distance, if not with the help of a table? How to convey instructions to grandchildren if a person dies without waiting for their appearance? But how to convey a love message - not to force the servant to memorize the secret word? How to keep in memory a trade agreement, court verdicts for a long time? (according to the story-retelling of Valery Voskoboynikov "Brilliant Gilgamesh". M, 1996)

This very short piece of text is extremely informative. In addition to a fairly detailed description of the areas of application of writing, it has well-defined reference points for dating. And above all: Gilgamesh's father, Utnapishti, who caught the Flood and survived it, had no idea about the art of writing. But his son Gilgamesh already possesses this knowledge. Thus, we, firstly, get the "lower limit" of the introduction of writing (ignorance of its Utnapishti, that is, during the Flood and immediately after it); and secondly, we obtain a certain clarification of the Old Testament by dating the “upper limit” of the possible time range of this epochal event.

At the same time, there is no contradiction between the two generations in the Old Testament and only one post-Flood generation in Sumerian mythology. Firstly, it does not at all follow from the text of the Bible that Shem himself, whose “sons” appear in the myth of the Tower of Babel, had already died by the time of the events described or was not familiar with writing at all. And secondly, in both versions of the legends, the life expectancy of the “main characters” significantly exceeds our usual life expectancy (unfortunately, I am not yet ready to explain the reason for the appearance of such “outrageous” numbers).

Indirectly, the post-Flood dating of events is also confirmed by the legends and traditions of South and North America. The ancient ancestors of the Indians, “speaking”, according to local mythology, “the same language”, are in the “caves”, that is, in a place that may well be associated with shelter from the Flood ...

The testimonies of the Egyptians and the data of Manetho turn out to be much more specific in this matter. Writing to people, according to ancient Egyptian legends, was given by Osiris, whose reign falls (see earlier) around the middle of the tenth millennium BC. As you can see, with the discovery of the Syrian settlement, archaeologists have almost come close to this date...

The tenth millennium BC is an epochal moment in the history of mankind. At this time, we have something like a "revolution under outside influence" - the gods give people a single "gentleman's set of civilization" with a single script, which, as a "side effect", causes, in addition to the similarity of the main ongoing processes and the similarity of the elements of cultures in different regions, also the provision people (of different nations speaking different languages!) the opportunity to communicate with each other and understand (!) each other. A period is coming, which is often called the “Golden Age” in ancient legends and traditions - people live next to the civilizing gods, work quietly for them and use the knowledge given by these gods ...

But as you know, the "Golden Age" has sunk into oblivion, and people in different regions of the planet have ceased to understand each other. Consequently, certain events took place that interrupted the measured life and which found a peculiar reflection in the myth of the Tower of Babel. But what were those events?

Oddly enough, in the search for an answer to this question, we can be helped by ... the history of the development of writing, to which we now turn.

Two views on the history of writing

To begin with, let's look at the development of writing from the point of view that is established in academic science and which is presented to the general public as an "established truth." And in order not to “reinvent the wheel”, we will simply use the already existing presentation of the prevailing ideas about the history of writing from F. Klix’s book “Awakening Thinking” (may the reader forgive me for a long citation of a text that is rather difficult to understand, but this is indispensable). We only note that the use of these quotations and even the selection of certain provisions in them does not at all mean the author's agreement with Clix (rather, vice versa). More on that, however, a little further...

“The earliest form of cognitive representation is a visual-figurative representation of an object or event. Historically, the first means of graphic fixation of information had the same semi-pictorial character. On fig. 197 shows an ideogram describing (or depicting?) the military campaign of the Jiba Indians against one of the Sioux tribes. In this picture, (a) means the base camp, (b) the chief, (c) the enemy's tents, (e) the chief of the Sioux tribe. The fight took place on the bank of the river (d); (f) and (g) mean the bodies of the dead and captured trophies.

Rice. 197. Ideogram of the Jeba Indians

Similar image texts are found in abundance in caves, for example, in Siberia or Northern Spain. They originated tens of thousands of years ago. Of course, they still cannot be considered a written monument. At the same time, the presence of two important elements of any writing can be noted: the reconstruction of the content of thinking (a sequence of representations) is carried out in a materialized, symbolic form, and, in addition, it is necessary to know in advance the meaning of individual figures in order to correctly “read” the depicted “message” ...

The next stage, which is found in both Sumerian and ancient Egyptian culture, was a strong stylization, or standardization, of ideographic elements. This provided a more reliable recognition. Signs became more unambiguous, and their production depended less on individual skills. It became possible to send messages between people who do not know each other at all ...

It could also be argued… that the pictographic text… was more of a sequence of statements than a chain of isolated concepts. So, for example, in ancient Sumerian pictographic writing, the images of the mouth and food meant the verb “to eat”, the images of a woman and mountains meant “slave”, since slaves were captured in the northern mountainous regions, the signs of a man and a plow meant “plowman”, etc. Of course, such signs are more stage descriptions than words in our modern sense. But already in the ancient Sumerian and ancient Egyptian languages, graphic signs for concepts appear, in other words, pictographic representations of entire classes of objects.

This stage of development, which all currently known writings have passed, is characterized by limited expressive possibilities. A huge number of signs for concepts, which should be supplemented if a new concept is allocated with another individual sign. And besides, there were also special signs to indicate relationships between concepts. Significant difficulties arose in this case in the case of depicting rather abstract concepts that did not have specific referents ...

Effective knowledge and mastery of the natural environment is closely related to the ability to form ever more abstract classes of concepts. This is precisely what was hindered by the pictorial nature of the signs of pictographic writing. Of course, with the help of stylization and metaphorical symbolism, it is possible to achieve the transfer of abstract content by concrete visual means. But with the metaphorical use of signs, the ambiguity of their possible interpretation increases. The processes of reading (or recognition) become more difficult, and learning becomes much more difficult. Such difficulties should not be excessive - writing as an instrument of activity should be available to arbitrary control on the part of the subject. Instead of giving a universal means of expressing any mental results, this direction of writing leads to a clear dead end ...

For these reasons, pictographic writing was replaced by other forms of writing. This process was very slow and difficult. It lasted for about 2 thousand years. Such a long delay in the development of more effective forms of writing is perhaps due to the fact that, due to the self-evident visibility of specific images, they must have seemed the best means of conveying information about objects and events. Overcoming the pictographic stage was carried out by using numerous mixed forms. This development can be seen especially clearly in the evolution of Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, it is typical for almost all ancient languages (with the exception of Chinese, where ideological factors caused a delay in development for millennia) and proceeds according to approximately the same pattern in the case of Sumerian and Hittite cuneiform, Minoan writing, the writing of the peoples who inhabited Hindustan, as well as the ancient civilizations of the New World. …

… the need for exemption from the pictographic principle is justified. But in what direction should further development writing? In principle, there is only one alternative: the introduction of signs not for iconic, but for acoustic representations of thought, in other words, the introduction of signs that replace the sounds of speech. In hindsight, the solution to the problem seems extremely simple. In reality, the recognition of this principle ran into serious difficulties. Why? First of all, because it is completely unclear what these signs for sound complexes should look like. It could be assumed that this problem was solved by some brilliant scientist or philosopher. Apparently, there has never been such a genius anywhere...

The first solution found was to substitute images for sound configurations of individual words. It's about the principle of the rebus font. The decoding of the meaning from the text is carried out, as it were, on a detour: the signs themselves designate sound structures, and only these latter represent the visual signs of the concept. It is easy to understand that this principle for the first time also allows for the graphic fixation of abstract concepts existing in oral speech. To understand this type of writing, it is necessary to have in mind a double representation of the relationship: first, between graphic elements and sound structures; secondly, between sound structures and signs of a designated object or a group of designated concepts as an abstract concept ...

Solving the rebus, we connect the images of the jar and the notes, we get a “banknote”, fasting and spruce - we get a “bed”, a horse and a yak - we get “cognac”. These are no longer icons, but phonograms, signs for sequences of sounds denoting completely different conceptual features. The sign here loses its graphic resemblance to the designated thing. The connection between sound features and conceptual features is established only in the cognitive structures of memory...

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, both forms of representation coexisted for a long time. The corresponding phonograms are illustrated by the text shown in Fig. 198.

Rice. 198. Egyptian hieroglyphic text

In the upper group of hieroglyphs, the throne serves as a phonogram of the sounds "st", the semicircular loaf of bread - the accented sound "t", and the egg and the seated woman are determinatives, or determinants: the egg indicates feminine, figurine - in relation to the wife of the pharaoh. All sounds are consonants. The vowels were not recorded and had to be added when deciphering: "Aset" (Isis) is the name of the goddess. In the second group, the swallow denotes, on the one hand, the concept of “great” (“big, tall”), and on the other, a combination of the sounds “vr”. The image of the lips is an accented "r" and the bread is again a "t". Now you can read the word "veret", which means "great woman." The neck replaces the combination of sounds "mt", which is enhanced in the last consonant by the presence of a loaf of bread. The flag on the left, as a phonogram, replaces the sounds "ntr", but as an ideogram, it is a sign of God. It reads “mut-nether”, or “mother of god”. In the fourth group, the phonogram of the image of the basket is read as "nb" - "Mr." Bread adds a "t" sound. The lower sign as a phonogram is the sound combination "pt", and as an ideogram - a sign of the sky. We get "nebed ped" or "mistress of the sky", which is one of the titles of Isis ...

The use of phonograms, however, is also fraught with obvious difficulties. Although the procedure for filling with vowels could be made fairly unambiguous, the uncertainty of the final semantic interpretation remained too high. One and the same frame of consonants could be the same for several semantically completely different concepts. This is confirmed by a huge number of examples. We present only one of them. The word "m-n-x" had three meanings: 1) papyrus (in the sense of "plant"), 2) a young man, 3) wax.

In order to achieve greater unambiguity in reading, the so-called determinatives were introduced. In fact, they were something between generic concepts and semantic markers indicating the area of the semantic space in which the meaning of the word in a given context is localized. When papyrus was meant, this word was preceded by an ideographic sign that determined its relationship with plants. With the meaning "young man" a male kneeling figure was depicted, "wax" - a sign for substances and minerals.

Interestingly, there were special determinants indicating the relationship of the hieroglyph to abstract concepts or to metaphorical expressions. Similarly, the abstract concept of "age" was symbolized by the image of a man with his head down, the search process - by the figure of an ibis. In all these cases, we are talking about a kind of metaphorical stylization, which is based on a new use of the ancient pictographic elements of hieroglyphic writing...

The roots of Sumerian words were one-syllable. As a result, signs denoting different words also began to designate individual syllables. As for the expressive possibilities of the type, this had both negative and positive consequences. The main disadvantage was that the same syllable could have many different meanings. This ambiguity was reduced, as in ancient Egyptian writing, through the use of determinatives. So, all the words that denoted something wooden were accompanied by the sign "tree" ...

The relative advantage of single-syllable roots was the possibility of using agglutination - a method of forming derivative words and grammatical forms by phonetic "gluing" the original words. Separate syllables began to perform the function of affixes, modifying the meaning of the root. Prefixes had a particularly strong influence on the meaning of derivative words, which is still observed in such modern languages as German and Russian ...

The syllabic basis of the Sumerian language and the agglutination method of the formation of new words and graphic signs caused by it led to an extremely important consequence for the development of writing.

For 2500 years BC. e. ancient Sumerian writing consisted of approximately 2000 pictographic characters. Over the next 500 years, as a result of the introduction of sound symbolization and the transformation of ideographic elements into (mainly) determinants, the volume of signs required for communication decreased to 800. And this happened at a time when trade and property relations, law and government became much more complicated, received development of science and culture. This means that despite the decrease in the number of characters, the expressive possibilities of writing have increased. Or maybe it happened just due to the reduction in the number of characters? There is no doubt that this is exactly what happened! In the process of more intensive use of affixes to change the meaning, restructure and re-form words from similar syllabic components, combinatorial ways of systematic expansion of the lexicon were discovered without increasing the number of basic graphic signs. Thus, the problem of creating convenient tools for graphic expression and fixing a potentially infinite variety of thoughts and images was almost solved ...

The final solution to this problem was not found by the Sumerians. It is possible that the syllabic nature of the language prevented the last step in splitting words into phonemes; it may also be that, due to repeated conquests by foreigners, the introduction and borrowing of alien sound and semantic elements, the restructuring of the font according to the laws of optimal organization of cognitive processes became simply impossible. In any case, it can be stated that the next step in this historical process was committed in other regions of the ancient world...

The decisive step in this process was the alphabetization of the font. The Phoenician alphabet included 22 letters denoting consonants ... There are some assumptions about the pictographic past of these signs, but they have not received any reliable justification. Only an older alphabet consisting of 80 characters, which was found in Byblos (1300–1000 BC), and a similar alphabet, preserved after the destruction of Ugarit (1400 BC), are known. The described "standard" Phoenician alphabet was discovered during excavations in Byblos and dates back to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e.

…initial and main form human language is oral speech. With its help, you can express any conceivable content. This is due to the segmentation and combinability of sound units, which arose as a result of the destruction of genetically fixed sound generation programs many hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The discovery of the possibility of a similar solution to the problem of writing, that is, the possibility of moving to a graphic symbolization of units of the sound pattern of speech, was certainly not the result of the reflections of any genius. But after once the sign was put in place of the sound, this principle had to spontaneously make its way ...

Establishing a one-to-one correspondence between graphic configurations and all structures existing in the language increases the expressiveness of writing to the level of the expressive possibilities of oral speech. Everything that can be expressed in words can also be fixed in writing. In addition, written speech has become a flexible tool for expressing and transmitting all new formations of mental activity. These remarkable properties are due to the combinatorial principle of using alphabetic writing systems, since the combination of signs makes the system constructive: an infinite number of combinations can be formed by combining them into more or less long chains of words. At the same time, the difficulties of learning to write do not increase noticeably. The fact that the technical condition for writing and reading is the memorization of only two or three dozen simple symbols seems, given the gigantic expressive potential of writing, a real miracle.

Phew! .. So far finished with quoting ...

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but for some time words like “obviously”, “only”, “the only option”, etc., etc. began to alert me. Real life in its diversity is very noticeably different from “ the only possible high road" and quite often shows us that "obvious conclusions" can actually turn out to be banal delusions ...

Is pictographic and hieroglyphic writing really so “imperfect”?.. Are the “advantages” and “merits” of alphabetic writing so undeniable?.. Was the evolution of writing that took place so “inevitable”?..

Let's try to doubt this and look at different types writing from a slightly different perspective...

One of the main functions of writing is the transmission of information. And it is on this function that F. Klix focuses his attention. However, writing and spoken language also have other tasks!

“It is usually said that language is a “means of human communication”, without thinking about the emptiness of such a formulation. Why communicate anyway? In more detail, communication can be disclosed as an organization social interaction, coordination of activities. This is the communicative function of the language…” (V. Kurdyumov, “On the Essence and Norm of Language”).

Note that in order to solve any practical problem, for example, the construction of a tower, ensuring the coordination of joint activities becomes of primary importance ...

And here everything becomes not so “unambiguous” and “obvious”.

“... the very phenomenon of the diversity of languages (the term is borrowed from Wilhelm Humboldt) looks very mysterious. Indeed, why are there so many languages in the world? There are 5-6 thousand of them, according to the calculations of ethnologists. Darwin's theory of evolution, with its mechanism of adaptability to the environment in the course of natural selection, in this case does not explain anything, since the possession of an excessive number of languages not only does not benefit humanity, but, on the contrary, harms it. So, if, for example, we consider the situation within the framework of only one linguistic group, then it is easy to notice that the quality of language exchange within it depends on the degree of development of only one's "native" language. As for reaching the level of international contacts, here, too, any “linguistic waste” (in the words of Steiner) becomes unnecessary and only hinders mutual understanding” (P. Ricker, “Translation Paradigm”).

If the linguistic group is small (for example, in a small country), then there are no serious problems. And if the country is large, and in its different regions the inhabitants speak different dialects?.. Then the quality of language exchange, obviously, will be the worse, the stronger the dialect diversity. And here the task of coordinating activities falls primarily on writing, which to some extent levels dialect differences. This is done through the introduction of certain additional rules of writing, in which, as a result, two contradictory principles are formed. According to one of the principles of alphabetic writing, words should be written as they are pronounced; in accordance with another - the words should be written according to a certain "tradition" fixed in the spelling rules.

But when communicating between different peoples, it does not save, and this is too great a difference in languages ...

In general: in the issue of solving the problem of communication, the modern alphabetic writing system is forced to use all sorts of "tricks" from specially developed spelling rules to the entire translation industry.

However, in some cases, other forms of writing, built on radically different principles, are able to cope with the same task much more effectively. This is primarily about ideography, one of the varieties of which is hieroglyphics.

The term "ideography" corresponds to such a letter, the signs of which (ideograms or logograms) reflect not the sound, but the meaning of the word. This attachment not to sound (phonetics), but to the meaning (meaning) of words gives ideography a number of advantages.

“First of all, ideographic writing conveys quite fully and accurately the content of any verbal message, regardless of the degree of its concreteness or abstractness. In addition, elements of the utterance structure (word order, verbal composition, some grammatical forms, etc.) are transmitted (albeit incompletely)” (O. Zavyalova, “Labyrinths of the hieroglyph. From ancient oracle bones to modern cyberspace”).

Ideographic writing uses strictly fixed, stable in outline sets of characters, in the outline of which some, at least symbolic, resemblance to the depicted object can be preserved.

In addition, the lack of binding of ideograms to sound allows you to keep the signs of writing unchanged even with significant changes in the spoken language for a very long time. This is the case, for example, in the already mentioned China (some scholars believe that Chinese characters have existed for about 6000 years).

“It is logical that in order to convey, for example, the concept of “bird”, a person simply draws it. That is, on a rock (papyrus, parchment, clay), he fixes the concept, and not the sounds with which this concept is transmitted. This is the principle of hieroglyphic writing adopted in Ancient Egypt and is still used in Chinese today. Its obvious advantage is independence from pronunciation. A modern (literate) Chinese easily understands texts written a couple of thousand years ago. Hieroglyphic writing unites China: the difference between the northern and southern dialects is very significant. At one time, the leader and teacher of the Chinese proletariat, Mao Zedong, who was from the South, needed an interpreter (!) for agitation in Harbin and the northern provinces” (ibid.).

“There are a large number of Chinese dialects. Experts argue about their exact number. In total, linguists counted seven dialect groups, each of which is divided into several subgroups. (There are up to 730 dialects). The dialects of the south and north differ so much that the inhabitants of Shanghai and Beijing do not understand each other: the hieroglyphs are understood the same way, but pronounced differently. There are three dialects in Beijing alone - West City, East City, and areas south of Chang'an Dajie Avenue! Hieroglyphs, connected only with the meaning of words, allow a Pekingese to communicate not only with a Guangzhouian, but even with a Korean or Japanese, whose languages have a completely different grammar from Chinese” (ibid.).

“... hieroglyphs in China are not only a symbol ancient culture. From time immemorial, they ensured the unity of the nation in time and space. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, hieroglyphic writing allowed all educated people to read the ancient sayings of Confucius and compose poems according to medieval patterns. It has always linked together many Chinese dialects-languages. Their dissimilarity is so great that the inhabitants of different regions of the Middle State either verbally explained themselves to each other through “translators”, or “wrote” hieroglyphs on the palm of their hand, reading them with their own dialectal pronunciation” (ibid.).

The nature of such a high efficiency of Chinese writing in solving the problem of communication in comparison with alphabetic writing lies in the fundamental difference between the basic principles underlying the two options for transmitting information - semantic and phonetic (displaying sound, not meaning). It seems rather trivial to conclude that when using the semantic principle, there are no problems between languages, and when using the phonetic principle, a direct dependence on the similarity of spoken languages inevitably arises. And China confirms this conclusion...

We are so accustomed to using the phonetic principle that we consider it completely “natural” and “inevitable”, sometimes even attributing to them an “inseparable unity”. In one of the books, I even came across such a definition: “A letter is a system of descriptive signs used to fix sound speech” ... Already in the definition itself, by default, a connection with phonetics is laid! .. It is clear that the transition of writing to a phonetic basis under these conditions can seem (following F. Klix) quite “natural” and “inevitable”, while China is only a “lagging behind” country…

However, a closer look at a certain “naturalness” of phonetization (that is, the transition to reliance on sound, and not on meaning) of writing can reveal a number of “roughness”, “inconsistencies” and “oddities”.

If the connection of writing with the sounds of oral speech is so close and natural, then why and why does the difference between the letters of the alphabet and the sounds that these letters display persist for a long time? Just a hundred years ago, the alphabet in Russian was read as “az, beeches, lead, verb, goodness, there is ...” and so on. For many centuries, the letter (that is, the sign of writing), which (according to theory) was supposed to carry sound, actually displayed some concept! .. Moreover, echoes of this fact can be traced in many languages to this day. For example, in English language the letter “R” itself is read as an elongated Russian “a”, but in the word it has a completely different sound: after consonants it is pronounced like “r”, and after vowels it “disappears” altogether, only changing the sound of the previous vowel. Where is the phonetic connection here? ..

And with the aforementioned “disappearance” of letters, the picture is generally mysterious. In the same English language, in the word “night” (and a host of other similar words), when reading, two whole letters “g” and “h” disappear! letters are pronounced with just a couple (!) sounds.

Usually these "oddities" are explained either by some kind of "tradition" or by the requirements of spelling (which is also, in fact, a kind of "tradition").

It is, however, quite clear, "where the legs grow from here." If, in conditions of high variability of the oral spoken language, one strictly adheres to the phonetic basic principle, that is, follow the motto “as a hearer, so a writer”, then very quickly representatives of different regions (speaking similar, but still different dialects) will simply cease to understand each other . And when solving the problem of communication (that is, avoiding misunderstanding of each other) by observing some “tradition” or spelling rules, we are actually going to a direct violation of the principle of phonetic construction of writing!..

Another important point. Usually, a large number of signs of pictography and hieroglyphic writing are given as "proof of imperfection" of another approach to the construction of writing.

“Chinese writing is based on special signs - hieroglyphs, expressing meaning alone or together with others and very often (but not always!) Representing a single word. Most hieroglyphs have remained unchanged for over 2000 years. Some arose from drawings, for example, the hieroglyphs for "sun", "man", "tree". Others are a combination of several signs, for example, two "trees" mean "forest". However, most signs are abstract compositions.

Total number hieroglyphs are not exactly known. To read newspapers, it is enough to know 3000 characters. There are 8000 in the average dictionary, and big dictionary 17th century includes 47,000 hieroglyphs.

When pronouncing them, only diligent memorization helps, since there is no connection between the sign and its sound. Each sign corresponds to a separate syllable. However, the number of syllables is small, there are only 420 of them. Therefore, different hieroglyphs can sound exactly the same. To distinguish between them, there are tones of different heights. In literary Chinese, 4 tones are distinguished, and in regional dialects and dialects their number is much larger. So, in Cantonese there are 8 tones” (ibid.).

It would seem, really: try to learn all this! ..

However, there is still a certain “cunning” here ...

How long do we learn the alphabet?.. Well, a couple of months. Undoubtedly, this is much faster than learning thousands of characters of hieroglyphics. But then what do we do for another ten years? .. We learn grammar, spelling, syntax ... A lot of rules with a bunch of exceptions ... At the same time, very often these “rules” and “exceptions” do not lend themselves to any reasonable logic, and they have to be “stupidly memorized” … So how is it “easier” than learning several thousand hieroglyphs with a much more simplified grammar?.. And what do we gain with obvious losses in solving communication problems?!.

As another argument for the “progressiveness” of alphabetic writing (built on the phonetic principle), some “difficulties” of pictography and hieroglyphic writing are often cited when it is necessary to display a new or abstract concept. But, firstly, even in ancient Egypt, they did quite well with the task of displaying abstract concepts (which were even singled out in a separate category). And secondly, so what if I can write, for example, the word “descriptor” by sound?!. Without the help of an explanatory dictionary or other "original source", without clarifying the meaning of this term through other more "simple" and well-known words, I will not be able to solve the elementary task of communication - to convey the content of my idea even to a person who speaks the same language (with the exception of only those who already knows the meaning of this term).

(In this case, from the encyclopedic dictionary, you can find out that a descriptor is a lexical unit (word, phrase) of an information retrieval language that serves to express the main semantic content of documents. Here's the irony of fate - at first I wanted to give an example of another word, but opened the dictionary for clarification wording of its content and it was the “descriptor” that caught my eye.)

Quite indicative in this regard is the numerous so-called "special" literature, the contents of which the "non-specialist" is often forced to literally translate into a more familiar language - to perform work that sometimes requires no less effort than translation from a foreign language.

And vice versa, in pictographic and hieroglyphic writing, the introduction of a new symbol into use may well be accompanied by an explanation of the meaning of its content through the use of some already more well-known symbols as components of a new symbol.

So which writing system has the real advantage here?

Sometimes, as the “disadvantages” of hieroglyphic writing (for example, Chinese writing), the presence of several meanings for the same character is indicated, which makes reading difficult, since you need to choose one of several possible meanings of the sign. Say, the alphabetic system of writing allows to eliminate this "shortcoming". But does it really allow it?

Is it necessary to explain and illustrate the moment that the "field" in agriculture is not at all the same as the "field" in physics, where even the concept of "field of forces" differs in semantic content from the concept of "force field". If we take into account other semantic meanings of the term (more precisely: letter combinations) “field”, then they can be counted from a dozen! .. And in search of similar examples, one does not have to go far at all ...

Someone may object: they say, we can easily navigate in the choice of a specific semantic meaning of a word according to the text itself. But what does this mean? .. This means that to determine the meaning of “multiple-semantic” words, we use some neighboring words. Then how does this differ, say, from the use of special signs in hieroglyphic writing for similar purposes - determinatives in Ancient Egypt or phonetic keys that determine the tone of reading and the specific semantic content of Chinese characters? ..

So, the alphabetic writing system turns out to be not at all devoid of those alleged “shortcomings” that pictographic and hieroglyphic writing has. Does the alphabetical system have any special "advantages"? ..

Let us take the quotation, which, being transformed and modified, runs from source to source, as one of the main "illustrating examples of the advantage" of the alphabetic system.

“A noble Phoenician merchant stayed at home, and all trade was conducted by the owner of the ship. Returning home, he had to report to the merchant about the goods sold and bought, about all expenses and receipts, about profits. It is impossible to remember everything, you need to write down everything done right there on the spot. Therefore, the owner of the ship must be able to write. It is also necessary for the merchant to be literate, because he checks all records and reports, and sometimes he himself rides on a ship with his goods, he himself keeps accounts.

That is why in the Phoenician cities they began to create a writing system that can be easily learned. Neither Egyptian nor Assyro-Babylonian writing was suitable for this. The scribes of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria studied in schools for many years. The Phoenicians did not have time for this. Yes, and too many scribes would be required for the mass of merchant ships ”(R. Rubinshtein).

It is not clear why hieroglyphs or pictograms could not be used for these purposes?.. Moreover, the very essence of trading operations does not require a large number of terms. For the speed of recording, it is more convenient to use not alphabetic words, but symbolic designation - it is not without reason that stenographers are moving away from “purely” alphabetic recording towards using a certain system of special characters, actually returning to a kind of “hieroglyphics”.

Moreover, the communication of the Phoenicians with different peoples required precisely the universalization of signs (what takes place in hieroglyphic and pictographic, and not at all alphabetic writing), in order to level the difference between languages! ..

But we must also take into account that the settlements of the Phoenicians themselves were scattered along the entire coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This inevitably led to the fact that the language of some port city was influenced by the language of the natives. Consequently, the Phoenician language itself had to have many local dialects, which would only complicate mutual understanding even within the framework of a single Phoenician language with an alphabetical approach to writing ...

Taking into account all these considerations, the needs of the Phoenicians should have led to the exact opposite result - a return to pictographic-hieroglyphic writing.

By the way, the Chinese were no less skilled sailors (which there is a lot of evidence) and also traded a lot. But after all, they never took the path of transition to the phonetic structure of writing! ..

In general: the traditional explanation of the appearance of the alphabet is no good, and one must look for some completely different source of alphabetic writing and the reasons for its occurrence.

And finally, there is one more indirect "argument in favor" of the generally accepted point of view. Say, the complexity of hieroglyphic writing led to the fact that it remained the property of only a few "chosen ones"; and only the transition to the alphabet could make writing public.

But is the form of writing and the number of literate people so unambiguously related? ..

For example, China, without changing its written language as a whole, shows us in its history both periods of “limited accessibility” of writing and periods of “mass literacy of the population”. In Russia, just less than a hundred years ago, a campaign to eliminate illiteracy had to be carried out, although for a thousand years it had had alphabetic forms of writing ...

But even in antiquity there are examples that cast doubt on the established official point of view.

“Among the runic signs with which about four thousand currently known inscriptions were made, there are many letters similar to Latin, Greek and Etruscan. The Germans, who after the invasion of the Romans had repeatedly seen documents written in Latin, over time, probably redid the ancient runes, bringing them closer to a clear and harmonious form of Latin writing. Runes were used until the adoption of Christianity legitimized the Latin alphabet as official letter for church literature... Punctured runes were used throughout Scandinavia - even for private records. Although the runes did not become signs of popular writing ”(R. Rubinshtein)

But runes have a phonetic basis! ..

On the other hand, there are directly opposite examples for hieroglyphic writing:

“According to Dr. N. Grube, the majority of the Mayan people were at least partially literate. Hieroglyphs denoting the monarch, gods and numbers could be understood even by peasants ”(“ Maya Writing ”).

“Asteks, having a hard experience of semi-savage, marginalized humiliated by all, gave great importance level of education of all members of society. There was a whole system of "the art of educating and educating people", called tlakaupaualizli. Comprehensive schools, called telpochkalli, took care of the implementation of the training program. All young men upon reaching the age of 15 and regardless of social status had to take a course. The elite schools - Calmecac - received offspring of noble families and especially talented children who managed to prove themselves in telpochkalli. For them, it was a chance to improve their social status. In these "higher" schools, not only priests were trained, but also mathematicians, astronomers, scribes and interpreters of texts, teachers and judges. The curricula included such subjects as religion, philosophy, culture of speech, oratory, mathematics, astronomy and astrology, history, the foundations of morality and law, the routine of personal and social behavior” (G. Ershova, “Ancient America: flight in time and space”).

And how, in fact, does this differ from the situation in modern society? .. Almost everyone can read, but much less can write correctly ...

This means that the reasons for the availability of knowledge of writing and its prevalence lie not at all in its form, and they must be sought in a completely different area ...

So, from all of the above, it follows that there were practically no objective prerequisites for the transition from writing based on the semantic content of symbols to the phonetic principle of its construction, however, such a transition did occur. And if so, then there were some reasons.

What happened?..