I’ve always thought of writing as something intellectual and romantic, so I was surprised (but also not surprised) to find out that writing was essentially invented to bolster and streamline business/ trade. Coming into this class, I knew what the first languages and writing systems were, but I never knew the reason why ‘writing,’ or symbol-making, came into existence.
The first symbols that were carved into the clay tablets — the ones copied from the impressions on the clay envelopes which housed the tokens — likely stood for a few goats, a bushel of grain, or a bolt of fabric. I don’t know what else I expected, since “cash rules everything around [us]”, yet the English major in me hoped that writing was borne out of the desire to improve communication or something of that nature.
The redeeming aspect of this, though, is that we took something that had no artistic use or purpose initially and turned it into something beautiful and prolific. What was once a method of tracking trade has now become one of the most sophisticated and respected forms of art. If you consider all the purposes writing has in our world today, it’s difficult not to be astounded. We write to communicate, to entertain ourselves, to entertain others, and to document our personal/ collective history.
