History of Writing

A chapter from my first book, "Dawn and Sunset: A Tale of the Oldest Cities in the Near East", looks into the origins of cuneiform, arguably the earliest human script. A universal writing agent, it was invented by accountants to submit economic reports to their superiors.

ձեւագոյացման համեմատութեամբ շուրջ 20 գրային համակարգերի ավելի քան 300 գրանշանների
այդ թվում՝ սինայյան, փյունիկյան, եթովպական, ասորական, եբրայական, սինայիկյան, նաբաթեան, արաբական, հունական, լատինական, սլավոնական, աղվանական, վրացական, եւ այլ։
Իրականում սա դեռ անավարտ գործ է, սակայն մոտ ապագայում այն ավարտելու հույս չունենալով որոշեցի հրապարակել թերի վիճակով։ Խմբագրված չէ, ինչի համար հայցում եմ հնարավոր ընթերցողների ներողամտությունը։

"Kartvelian-Sumerian-Egyptian Linguoculturology" offers readers a unique opportunity to get acquainted with a new look at old problems, make use of novel ways of solving various issues, and building a logical, harmonious, and continuous picture of our past outlining, at the same time, its perspectives for future studies.
"Kartvelian-Sumerian-Egyptian Linguoculturology" is a scholarly “adventure” of the manuscript that was found in the Bamiyan caves (Afghanistan) and taken to the British Museum for assessment and possible purchase. The manuscript had tiny stone seals engraved carefully and attached to several pages of the manuscript whose upper registers featured two letter-signs of the Kartuli Asomtavruli alphabet – Ghani and Doni. A detailed paleographic analysis of the Bamiyan and Kartuli Asomtavruli letters made it necessary to include a number of scholarly fields into the study. These included Assyriology, Egyptology, historical linguistics, paleography, history, archaeology, ethnology, and Kartvelology.
A comprehensive scrutiny of various graphic and semantic issues of the Bamyian and Asomtavruli letter-signs through the mentioned fields uncovered concealed sacred and codified relations of the Kartuli Asomtavruli alphabet with the Phoenician and Greek alphabets, with Sumerian and Egyptian royal and divine insignia, various symbols, cuneiform letters, hieroglyphs, and many more. A complex methodology combining traditional linguistic and culturological methods with the means and techniques of the ancient esoteric science of the Kabbalah deciphered and uncovered the Kartvelian origin of numerous language items related to the discussed problems.
The work is in Georgian and has a long summary in English at the end.

In 15th-century Rus many kinds of documents were produced when administering justice: this is obvious both from the extant documents (on paper and birchbark) and from the lawcodes. But what about earlier period? The paper examines very few surviving documents (two graffiti, some texts on parchment and birchbark) together with several references in birchbark letters and legal documents. Most of these data date from the second half of the fourteenth century, although at least in three cases the decisions of court were written down in the thirteenth century. An analysis of the formulaic of those documents shows that there was no single tradition of writing such documentation in all Rus. It is safer to speak of local traditions of various regions which developed parallel and slowly.

Der Beitrag behandelt verschiedene Aspekte der altägyptischen Kursivschriften: Begrifflichkeiten, Materialität des Schreibens (Schreibwerkzeuge und deren Symbolkraft, Schreibrichtung und Strichfolge, Schriftträger und Layouts), Charakteristika der Schrift (Anfänge des Hieratischen, Zeichenrepertoire, Orthographien, Kontextuelle Unterschiede, Spätformen des Hieratischen, Stellung der Kursivhieroglyphen, Visualisierungen der historischen Entwicklung der Schriftarten), Stand und Aufgaben von Paläographien, Digitale Forschungsansätze, Aussichten (Ziele der "Digitalen Paläographie", Ziele der "Systematischen Analyse")

"In Written Words Alone…" On the 150-th Anniversary of the Birth of Academician Nikolay Petrovich Likhachev. Exhibition Catalogue. Edited by A.O.Bolshakov and E.V.Stepanova. Saint Petersburg, 2012. 600 pp.

The exhibition is dedicated to 150 years of the outstanding scholar and collector, Academician Nikolay Petrovich Likhachev (12 April 1862 – 14 April 1936). It has been organized jointly by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Institute for History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Although Likhachev’s main interests were in the realm of Russian history, he was convinced that it could not be divorced from universal history as its context. His method was based on the study of sources as inseparable unities of texts and material objects they are written on. He was a pioneer in a number of historical disciplines, such as Old Russian and Byzantine sphragistics; besides, he had an expert knowledge of diplomatics, palaeography, genealogy, numismatics and history of Russian and Byzantine icon painting.
Likhachev’s research was inseparable from his activities as a collector. His vast and profound knowledge helped him in selecting materials for his collection, which in turn could become an object of study. The formation of his collection took place during the three decades of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The goal of Likhachev’s meticulous and strictly systematic selection of objects for his collection was to recreate the history of writing, from the Ancient Orient to the nineteenth century. The collection was kept and exhibited in Likhachev’s house built for the purpose. World War I and then the Revolution of 1917 ruined all his plans concerning further studies of the collection materials. His collecting activities were practically put an end to; the collection itself was in jeopardy. In 1918, it was transferred to Petrograd Archaeological Institute; in 1925, it was reorganized into the Museum of Palaeography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1930, Likhachev was arrested and banished on a false accusation of having organized a counterrevolutionary organization. During his absence, the Museum of Palaeography was reorganized into the Museum (later, Institute) of the Book, Document and Script, with the aims much different from those of the creator of the collection. Having returned from exile in 1933, Likhachev could no longer pursue his research; he died two and a half years later.
In 1938, after the Institute of the Book, Document and Script had been closed, the collection became divided among several institutions. At present, some 34,000 Russian and Western European documents and manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Modern Period, as well as a collection of watermarks, leaflets, book covers and medieval Western European seals, plus Likhachev’s immense library (c. 80,000 volumes) are in the Archive of St. Petersburg Institute for History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The oriental manuscripts and documents are kept in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the Old Russian and Byzantine manuscripts and the early printed books are in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Hermitage Museum has c. 25,000 items from Likhachev’s collection, including ancient Oriental and Classical Antiquity materials (c. 2,500 and c. 600 items respectively), Byzantine, Old Russian, and Near- and Far Eastern works of applied arts (several hundred of these), the Byzantine and Old Russian sphragistic collections (over 6,000 and over 600 seals respectively), the numismatic collection (c. 15,000 coins) and a small number of Western European monuments.
Commemorating the renowned scholar, it was decided to combine the most interesting and significant items of Likhachev’s unique collection, now preserved at different institutions, and in this way to show the history of written documents and writing generally from the earliest times to the beginning of the twentieth century. The catalogue of the exhibition begins with three introductory articles devoted to Likhachev’s life and work (by Elena Stepanova), his collecting activities (by Lev Klimanov) and the history of the Museum of Palaeography (by Elena Piotrovskaya and Elena Meshcherskaya). Then follow 460 catalogue entries with detailed commentaries.
Part I of the catalogue presents specimens of ancient writing, of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greece and Rome. Part II includes documents and written monuments of Byzantium, Russia before Peter the Great and medieval and Renaissance Europe (liturgical and historical writings, official and private acts, ecclesiastical documents and autographs). Part III is devoted to Byzantine, Old Russian and medieval Western European pendant seals. Part IV contains documents of the Modern Period, those of Russia, from the eighteenth to early twentieth century, and Western Europe, from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Part V deals with oriental writing of the Middle Ages and the Modern Period, from Ethiopia and Arabia in the west to China and Indonesia in the east. Part VI includes numismatic materials of Classical Antiquity, Byzantium, Old Rus, medieval Western Europe and the Middle and the Far East. A considerable portion of materials in the catalogue are published for the first time. The catalogue has a supplement (by Lev Klimanov) with the annotated list of antiquaries, collectors and scholars with whom Likhachev was in contact when creating his collections."""

In The Divine Legation of Moses (1738-1741) William Warburton developed a complex theory of writing, suggesting among other things a relationship between hieroglyphic writing and zoolatry. In the same years the abbé Pluche maintained a singular explanation of the origin of idolatry in his Histoire du ciel (1739). He stated that all pagan religions originally arose from the misinterpretation of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. By doing so, he extended the relationship between religion and writing to the entire explanation of idolatry. Warburton's theory of writing was set to obtain a great deal of fortune in France, but also its application to the history of pagan religions by Pluche found some illustrious followers: first among them was Condillac, who reinterpreted it in the light of his own theory of language on the one hand, and of the new Enlightenment's views about the history of religion on the other.

Abstract: In this paper, I will discuss the
relation between the practice of writing
and the production of subjectivity in
Foucault’s works. This connection can
be approached from two points of view:
from its disintegrating function and
from its integrating function. In the first
place, I will analyze the texts in which
the binding between literature, madness
and death is clearly evident. This
connection is a constant in the whole of
Foucault’s career. The second function
interprets writing from the perspective
of the late notion of self-writing.
Keywords: writing practice, production
of subjectivity, literature, madness, selfwriting.

Se, all'alba del IV millennio, un archeologo rinvenisse le vestigia di una qualsiasi città dell'Italia contemporanea, soffocata, in quegli stessi giorni, da metri di pomici e ceneri vulcaniche, o, per non circostanziare geograficamente l'ipotetica catastrofe, dal fango, farebbe non poca fatica a decifrare la maggior parte dei segni e delle scritte di carattere alfanumerico che, inevitabilmente, rinverrebbe sui muri delle abitazioni e dei palazzi graziati dalla sciagura. E a poco, se non a nulla, gli potrebbero essere d'ausilio gli sforzi di altri studiosi: semiologi, antropologi, calligrafi, paleografi, filologi, linguisti, sociologi e storici riu-scirebbero a rendere solo apparentemente meno ardua l'impresa, che difficilmente po-trebbe essere compiuta in modo soddisfacente. Per questi specialisti infatti, anche se dotati della più raffinata sensibilità psicologica per l'uomo dei nostri tempi, non sarebbe per nulla facile ripetere l'exploit del gesuita Raffaele Garrucci, abile, verso la metà del XIX secolo, ad avviare lo studio e dunque la decriptazione dei cosiddetti graffiti "non autorizzati" che gli intonaci e le pietre di Pompei avevano salvaguardato per quasi duemila anni. Scritte realizzate liberamente e spontaneamente sulla pelle della città campana dai suoi stessi abitanti, dalla gente comune, ma anche dai cittadini di rango, che per con-tenuto si distinguevano da quelle ufficiali, cioè comandate o disposte dalle istituzioni amministrative o politiche. Frasi, parole, sigle eseguite nei più disparati caratteri, dipinte, tracciate a carbone o incise secondo una consuetudine comune a qualsiasi città romana dell'epoca, Urbe compresa.

The paper presents a comparative survey of early examples of administrative correspondence in Anglo-Saxon England and Rus. In Rus, due to Novgorodian birchbark documents, we can follow a variety of administrative letters from as early as the middle of the 11th century. As for England, before the late 9th century we have no traces of administrative correspondence. In the late 9th, the 10th and the early 11th centuries there are several administrative documents in epistolary form (includung those written in gospel-books and some writs of dubious authenticity) as well as some mentions of such documents and several seal-matrices. The 1040-1060s are the time when sealed writs certainly were issued. It is difficult to speak of the early Anlgo-Saxon kingdoms in this respect, but the comparison with the written culture of early Rus inclines one to think that primitive administrative correspondence could have existed from as early as the 7th century.

The paper examines origin and professional background of the scribes of the 18th century Bohemian manuscripts and follows the changes in the social structure of their readers, using the information from several hundred handwritten books and documents. Received data show that the number of scribes is rising immensely in the last decades of the 18th century. The most distinct growth might be observed within the number of scribes working in the rural areas. In the first half of the 18th century the most productive group of scribes are monks. In the last quarter of the century this role goes to teachers and parish priests. Their production, however, often has commercial or official character. Besides in the late period of the century strongly increases representation of craftsmen and farmers among the scribes. Also growth of the number of readers living in the countryside, especially women, might be observed. These changes seem to be the results of educational, administrative and Church reforms performed by Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the late 18th century.

Analisa-se a assinatura na sua dupla vertente de sinal de identificação e
elemento de validação de documentos e refere-se a evolução historiográfica da literacia através do estudo das assinaturas.
Desenvolve-se um estudo de caso através da análise da literacia da
comunidade carmelita descalça do Convento dos Cardaes em Lisboa

Abstract
The article entitled “The Crisis of Morality in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow” is translated from my Georgian article based on my PhD dissertation (Semantic and Functional Characteristics of Terminological Units in Literary Texts). It was published in Tsiskari #1, 1991. The paper aims to reveal the aesthetic-cognitive information hidden between the lines of this about-a-thousand-page-long literary masterpiece. Although the narrative is set against the background of WWII Europe, the true message of the novel is concentrated in the contextual use of terminological units, such as the adenoid, paranoia, dodo, preterit, etc. Adenoid is a concrete incarnation of Evil, while paranoia is the time of Adenoid-Evil’s reign, which sucks in everyone and everything into its bottomless crypt. It leaves no place for honesty, kindness, love or even the tiniest sight of morality. This 50-year-old* “scenario” is very true of our contemporary world – the world of Sars-Cov2 with the crisis of morality and the incessant struggle of the Evil to control the world.
* Gravity’s Rainbow was first published in 1973.

Rebus interpretation constitutes an essential factor in the
explanations about the development of writing, most
notably when dealing with the shift from an ideographic
system to a syllabic and / or alphabetic one. The present
paper discusses the main features which may be drawn
from the rebus concept, at the light of the analysis of data
from different cultural traditions, while at the same time
focusing on the difficulties posed by its extensive
generalization among linguists and philologists.

Keywords

Writing, Rebus Interpretation, History of Writing,
Ideographic Writing, Sumerian Writing, Catchword
Principle, Alphabetic Writing, Chinese Writing.

Սա Մոսկվայում կայացած աղվանագիտական գիտաժողովի իմ զեկուցումն է։ Որոշ եզրահանգումներ սակայն հետագայում մասամբ վերանայվել են «Հայոց տառերը» գրքում։
Это текст моего доклада на агвановедческой конференции в Москве. Некоторые заключения, однако, в дальнейшем были частично пересмотрены, в частности в книге «Армянские буквы».

"The history of writing in the Middle East (and...)is a long process from the first characters to the alphabetic letters. Language, sign and the human body must here be considered both historically and structurally. At the same time this will show how the writing systems of literate societies are analogous with the "theory of language" they developed". Intro I am very happy to have been invited in Bergen by Prof Arild Utaker ; I am very grateful to him. I must apologize to you for my English : it is easier for me to read than to write and to speak even if I like so much languages. As a researcher, before I became comparatist, I was and still am an Iranist, specialist of OP texts, language, writing, history of Acheamenids and mazdean religion. I became a specialist of Elamite : the first written language of Iran, not semitice, not IE : a linguistic isolate ; And at the end I am an hellenist. But, I am not a specialist of Sumerian, Akkadian, Phoenician Hebrew etc. I studied these languages in order to do comparatism. We will see quickly history of writing systems from the beginning in Irak /Iran up to the Greek alphabet. The historical process is well known : from pictography to alphabet. What does this historical process mean in terms of practice and relation of signs to language ? The same question should be put otherwise : in as much as speaking and listening to speech require the body, as writing and reading require it too, what are the relationships of the signs to the body ? If any, what is precisely the point of application, as physicists use the syntagm in mecanics : « the precise point at which a force is applied on the body or system receiving the force », of each category of signs ? Where does any category of signs as logograms, syllabograms, signs for consonants, or for vowels apply the semiological force on the human body ? Tghis question is not the only important question about writing systems and scripts : we will not deal with time. The historical process does not explain at all that great and less great literate civilizations flourished on the basis of their writing system. How did some of them develop writing at the beginning ? and how did they combine written signs with their understanding of the visible and the invisible, the human condition ? We must try to combine history and structure. The concept I seek to give consistence to is the concept of « theory of language » ? Not a very good expression. I am not telling that ancient societies had among their scholars philosophers who wrote treaties on language — the first one being, as far as I know, Plato'dialog « Cratylos ». I suggest that human beings did not always believe they were the masters of language, as we do. Since language is a pure given for a child and even for adults, its origin should be

These are the slides of the paper Minoan Linguistic Resources: The Linear A Digital Corpus (LaTech 2015). The paper describes the Linear A / Minoan digital corpus and the approaches we applied to develop it. We aim to set up a suitable study resource for Linear A and Minoan. Firstly we start by introducing Linear A and Minoan in order to make it clear why we should develop a digital marked up corpus of the existing Linear A transcriptions. Secondly we list and describe some of the existing resources about Linear A: Linear A documents (seals, statuettes, vessels etc.), the traditional encoding systems (standard code numbers referring to distinct symbols), a Linear A font, and the newest (released on June 16th 2014) Unicode Standard Characters set for Linear A. Thirdly we explain our choice concerning the data format: why we decided to digitize the Linear A resources; why we decided to convert all the transcriptions in standard Unicode characters; why we decided to use an XML format; why we decided to implement the TEI-EpiDoc DTD. Lastly we describe: the developing process (from the data collection to the issues we faced and the solving strategies); a new font we developed (synchronized with the Unicode Characters Set) in order to make the data readable even on systems that are not updated. Finally, we discuss the corpus we developed in a Cultural Heritage preservation perspective and suggest some future works.

The paper: https://www.academia.edu/14641910/Minoan_Linguistic_Resources_The_Linear_A_Digital_Corpus.

The paper contains an overview of the problems concerned with the so-called Tribal Hidage - a list of 34 Anglo-Saxon unities with their assessment in hides. The author agrees that the document is Mercian and argues that it had to have been created earlier than Offa changed the structure of his kingdom in the 770-780s, that is at some moment between the mid-7th and mid-8th centuries. Although the exact date and purpose of the document are unknown, one can deduce from it a certain political structure which appears to be archaic, segmentary and asymmetric.

Writing constitutes an essential invention in human History.
As a matter of fact, we are entitled to refer to History just
inasmuch as written records are firstly kept. Hence a
singular epistemological status is bestowed on writing.
Perhaps in no other context can we observe it as neatly as in
the place (or lack thereof) writing has found in Linguistics
since the modern foundations laid out by Ferdinand de
Saussure. The study of writing has been excluded from
Linguistics in its narrow sense ever since. The present paper
discusses, through the consideration of several significant
case studies, the conceptual advantages which the Theory of
Language and General Linguistics may draw from the
analysis of data from different cultural traditions.

KEYWORDS

Writing, Theory of Language, General Linguistics, Wilhelm
von Humboldt, Ferdinand de Saussure, Heymann Steinthal,
Iconic Notation, Hankul, Cree, Cherokee, Rongorongo

Almost all surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon writing are either on parchment/vellum or on stone, metal and the like. However, one can ask if Anglo-Saxons used for ephemeral writing any other, cheaper materials (something of the sort well attested in Roman Vindolanda or medieval Bergen and Novgorod). The paper aims at summarizing of what is known of other materials for writing in Anglo-Saxon England. These can include: 1) papyrus (its use for official documents has been supposed for seventh-century Kent); 2) wax tablets (there is one find of a tablet, many finds of styli, and some mentions and depictions); 3) lead (several examples of inscriptions on lead plates are known); 4) wood (writing on wood is supposed by R.I. Page on the base of the poem known as 'The Husband’s Message' as well as by analogy with other Germanians and later English tallies); 5) bone (several Runic and Roman inscriptions on bone are known). All this taken together makes plausible the suggestion that Anglo-Saxons used various materials for ephemeral writing, but it is significant that among these finds still there are no letters or administrative documents.

On dit souvent de la civilisation romaine qu’elle est une « culture de l’alphabet » : les lettres y sont d’abord conçues pour enregistrer la voix et conserver des sons, dans un idéal de transparence et de réversibilité absolue entre l’écrit et l’oral. Cette conception purement phonologique de l’écriture explique la longue résistance de la lecture à haute voix ; elle implique aussi que les Romains fassent une distinction très nette entre ce qui est du domaine de l’image et ce qui est du domaine du texte. Il existe cependant certains usages dans lesquels ces frontières s’estompent : les images sont agencées et combinées de façon à suggérer des mots et produire du sens ; les qualités graphiques de l’écriture sont exploitées. Prenant comme point de départ les premières lignes de la Vie de Cicéron, dans lesquelles Plutarque semble faire du célèbre homme politique romain un créateur de rébus,  nous analysons ici la façon dont, dans certains contextes (dons votifs, frappe monétaire, jeux lettrés au sein du banquet), les Romains d’époque républicaine et impériale ont exploré les capacités signifiantes de l’image et ses liens avec le langage. De la simple dédicace cicéronienne et du symbolisme des pièces de monnaie républicaines jusqu’à la création de vastes programmes iconographiques destinés à embellir les villas d’Antiquité tardive, ces pratiques, affranchies du phonétisme simple et du déchiffrement immédiat, explorent, toutes, les possibilités d’une écriture visuelle, une écriture de choses, qui repose sur des formes de transfert et des associations d’idées. Le recours à cette écriture d’images montre la nécessité de renoncer à une vision trop simpliste de la civilisation romaine.

The paper is an attempt in a comparative ananlysis of accounting documents, or registers, or buiseness lists, - lists of people, objects, sums, places, etc. used for administrative or economic purposes extant from pre-1066 England and pre-1400 Rus. In Rus such documents form approximately a tenth part of all birchbark documents (more than a hundred of texts) and are known from as early as the second half of the eleventh century. Some lists also are included into normative documents which list tribute or other similar obligations. As for England, only two documents of this kind predate the Benedictine reform of the mid-tenth century: the Tribal Hidage (the purpose of which is a subject to debate) and the Burghal Hidage. As for the second half of the tenth and the first half and the middle of the eleventh century some twenty extant documents can be listed. All of them belong to the records of religious houses but some are connected with the obligations demanded by the state. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon and the Rus extant material is rather different, but one can find many similarities in the content and the structure of particular documents.

Palamedes, the son of Nauplius, is reputed as the first inventor of writing, dice and pawns. He even boasts being the original inventor of a new way of living, having found technology, institutions and many devices for a better social life. He is a well-known figure of Trojan myth, even he is not cited in Homeric epics. His intellectual pride is echoed in tragic drams, in which he is the eponymous character, as well as in Second Sophistic writer Philostratus and latter sources. As far as concerns Palamedes´ discoveries, we may focus on the sacredness of writing and numbers. Hence, γράμματα also used as numerals are venerated in the worship of many oracular shrines, often linked with divinatory practice. In this realm, dice and pawns employed in board-games were also revered for prophetic ends and generally meant as randomizing agents. Palamedic inventions are, thus, commonly linked with divination. In turn, Palamedes himself is, clearly, depicted as a sophos. His extraordinary cleverness approaches him to a class of inspired men and seers, whose intellectual activity is to be looked for in very similar terms. However, we find no pseudonymous divinatory or magic books under the alleged name of Palamedes, while many alternative pseudepigraphies in Late Antiquity are drawn from famous seers of Heroic times such as Melampous or Mopsos. 
The boast of Palamedes as a genius inventor provokes him the jealousy of Odysseus, whose rivalry his said to underlie the treacherous plot that causes his own murder. Such a defy is a framework of a superior intelligence to be proven through a contest. From the Greek point of view, Palamedes is claiming primacy in developing the primus ego motif which normally involved being a bestower of a better order on the world.

“Writing Upwards” describes a genre of letter-writing between two very unequal correspondents. Humble subjects wrote individually to monarchs and other rulers, workers wrote to factory bosses, impoverished refugees wrote to relief committees, parishioners wrote to their clergy and also to God. Often, but not always, they wrote in pursuit of some personal advantage. They trusted in the power of a personal approach to by-pass bureaucratic procedures which seemed insensitive and obstructive. In order to ingratiate themselves, they borrowed or at least crudely imitated the language of their superiors. My paper draws on published research from Italy and elsewhere to identify the principal modes of “writing upwards,” whether deferential, demanding or downright abusive. In the case of the letters of Australian Aboriginal people to their administrators, new elements emerge: an appeal to shared Christian values, and the notion of a contractual obligation yet to be fulfilled.

In his major works, Å'ðn-ð Akbarð and Akbarnāma, Akbar's minister, Abø'l Faz[ l enters many comments of a philosophical and sociological nature. He believes in a hierarchical order of society, but in a manner more sophisticated than that of his predecessors; and he has also a profounder sense of the role of money, not as a dissolvent, but as an instrument of a differentiated society.

When HMS frigate 'Seringapatam', under Captain William Waldegrave, sailed from Rio de Janeiro to the south Pacific and then back to Peru between 1829 and 1832, it left a substantial documentary trail in its wake. Captain Waldegrave's logs were accompanied by his journal and remark books; another log was kept by Mr. Bennett, possibly the first mate; one of the midshipmen kept his own log and the ship's surgeon also wrote a journal. Similarly, HMS frigate 'Curacao', in service on the Pacific station during the Maori War of 1864-1867, generated a captain's log, a lieutenant's log, the surgeon's journal and the master's remark book, as well as two memoirs by individual sailors. Of course these brief inventories only indicate those documents which, for one reason or another, have survived and been preserved. Additional documentary records were required in navies and merchant marines during the nineteenth century to keep ships operational and satisfy their insurers. Furthermore, the 'Seringapatam' and the 'Curacao' were frigates in the British Royal Navy, and the documents mentioned above were thus created by naval crews; if we include the passenger ships of the nineteenth century as well - including emigrant and convict ships bound for Australia - the range of documentary production involved enters another dimension and increases accordingly. Passengers wrote correspondence and personal diaries (some of them well-known to historians), and contributed to the ships' newspapers which are less well-known and will be the focus of the second part of this article. The nineteenth-century ship was therefore a small world with a very dense documentary culture: writing was its life-blood. The intensive graphic culture of the ship provided the essential context for ships' newspapers.

An investigation of the chapters on runic vs Latin alphabet in the so-called 'Third Icelandic Grammatical Treatise' (13th century).  -- N.B. A new and more extensive study of mine on the same subject has appeared in 2016 with the title "Óláfr Þórðarson and the 'Norse Alphabet': A Thirteenth-Century Icelandic Grammarian's Account of Runic Writing" (see above in the list).