This volume is an important and innovative contribution to grammatology, if uneven in places. The editors accomplish their goal of highlighting script polygenesis and uncoupling the invention of writing from state formation. The volume is the outcome of the SCRIBO lecture series hosted by Ferrara’s ERC-funded INSCRIBE project (2018–2023), which aimed to elucidate the history of writing over an extensive geographic and chronological expanse for a wide audience (p. 1). The thirteen chapters, suitable for specialists, focus largely on the Aegean and Ancient Near East (eight), as compared to other regions (four), with one general chapter on decipherment, an imbalance which does not detract from the volume’s general import for grammatology. The chapters are organised into three thematic areas: invention, decipherment and perception, defined as the ‘contemporary perception of past perception’ (p. 2).
The volume’s first two chapters address the relationship between marking systems and scripts, one by M. Cartolano on Neolithic Ancient Near Eastern marked objects (Chapter 1) and the other by P. Demattè (Chapter 2) on the origins of Chinese writing. Cartolano’s is the only chapter focused on early writing in Mesopotamia, reflecting the editors’ conscious choice to shy away from traditional narratives and approaches in the history of writing, which almost always begin there (p. 3). The chapter applies results from cognitive studies to argue that non-phonetic marks on portable objects could facilitate ‘communication between different social entities’ despite not constituting writing strictō sensū (p. 10). Demattè’s well-illustrated chapter takes the most traditional approach, suggesting an evolutionary model for the development of the Shang script from Neolithic potmarks used for administration.
Two chapters on periods of script usage with limited datasets approach the evidence with opposing assumptions: A. Koller (Chapter 3) assumes the alphabet’s poorly attested first half-millennium reflects its limited usage, while W. Waal (Chapter 4) contends that the ‘literacy gap’ during the Late Bronze/Early Iron transition is illusory. Koller argues that the early alphabet is meagrely attested because it was ‘structurally a very difficult script to read’ and had limited practical applications (p. 60). He looks to cognitive studies to identify script features that hinder ease of reading, as measured by slower reading times. It is worth questioning the applicability of studies on highly literate modern readers to ancient ones and whether slower reading times reflect an inefficiency in a script. For instance, the slower reading times for Arabic readers can be explained not by an inefficiency caused by the limited representation of vowels, as suggested by Koller, but by the phonological and grammatical mismatches between native Arabic dialects and Modern Standard Arabic, as argued in E. Saiegh-Haddad (‘Correlates of Reading Fluency in Arabic: Diglossic and Orthographic Factors’, Reading and Writing 18 [2005], 559–82). These concerns aside, Koller’s chapter is a refreshing antidote to rhetoric emphasising the alphabet’s efficiency while ignoring its limited use during its first half-millennium.
In contrast to Koller, Waal posits that the so-called ‘literacy gap’ between Linear B usage in the Late Bronze Age and alphabetic writing in the Iron Age should be shortened on both sides. Trained as a Hittitologist, Waal embraces two non-mainstream positions in Mycenology and Classics: (1) Linear B was used on perishable materials during the post-palatial period (p. 72) and (2) the alphabet came to the Aegean before the eleventh century (p. 81). Because Waal is writing from outside her field, the chapter would have benefited from stronger editorial intervention. For instance, Waal’s Linear B argument overlooks an important rebuttal by A.P. Judson (‘The Tablet-makers of Pylos: an Experimental Investigation into the Production of Linear B Tablets’, ABSA 118 [2023], 147–70) to a similar line of argumentation already presented by Waal (‘Distorted Reflections’, in: M. Bianconi [ed.], Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and the Ancient Near East [2021]). The awkward phrasing indicating that Linear A ‘was used on the Greek mainland and several of the Aegean islands’, and Linear B was used in ‘Greece and the Aegean islands’, without explicitly mentioning Crete, is misleading (p. 75). The suggestion that the Uluburun diptychs might have been inscribed with Mycenaean numerals is highly speculative, based on poor photographs and drawings of the original (p. 77).
A. de Voogt’s wonderful chapter (Chapter 5) on the Caroline Islands sets the fascinating story of script invention there against the backdrop of the grammatological orthodoxies it challenges: the persistent myth that scripts need a centralised state (p. 100) and that sign creation tends towards iconicity. The script is important because it is one of the few whose process of adaptation and transmission is documented. De Voogt shows how Woleai speakers, who live in a decentralised political and social structure, adopted script and engineered new sign forms in accordance with a variety of circumstances and principles (p. 98). A truly delightful example is the adaptation of four signs from the Japanese script into the Caroline Islands script, the same four signs that spell out Nippon and would have appeared frequently on objects imported from Japan (p. 97).
Chapters by I.-X. Adiego, M. Valério and C.M. Prager et al. address decipherment efforts. Adiego (Chapter 6) offers an accessible account of the successes and pitfalls in the history of decipherment. He characterises decipherment as part art and part science combining good method with good luck, risk-taking and intuition. He advocates for a narrow definition of decipherment as the identification of a script’s sign values, which can occur with or without the identification of the underlying language. This narrow definition has good precedent in scholarship (p. 109), but I am not convinced of its general utility. Surely Michael Ventris would not have been venerated as the decipherer of Linear B if he had only identified the script’s sound values. Nevertheless, the chapter will serve as a great resource for anyone interested in the history and method of decipherment.
The chapter by Valério (Chapter 10) presents his work on deciphering the Rongorongo script and exhibits the combination of method, risk-taking and intuition advocated for by Adiego. Providing a line-by-line explanation of his proposed decipherment of Rongorongo Tablet C, Valério advances the ingenious hypothesis that ‘when phoneticism is applied to … languages rich in homophony, rebus – not acrophony – is the preferred strategy’ for script invention (p. 222). His decipherment of the document rests on the theory that the text’s underlying language is the homophone-rich Rapanui language and that the script is logophonetic.
A chapter by Prager et al. (Chapter 11) demonstrates the myriad ways the IDIOM project is harnessing digital technologies to assist in recording and deciphering the approximately 40% of Mayan hieroglyphs that remain undeciphered. They detail their project’s impressive holistic approach to the Maya hieroglyph corpus, which includes several projects like the Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan (p. 228) and the Maya Hieroglyphic Text and Image Archive (p. 239). Not only are many of these projects monumental in scale, but they also carefully consider the semantic, communicative and archaeological aspects of texts. The chapter provides scholars of both undeciphered and deciphered scripts with a treasure trove of ideas for digital approaches to their own corpora.
The remaining chapters by J. Weingarten, G. Baldacci, Montecchi, S. Finlayson and L. Godart focus on Aegean scripts. By and large, the five contributions employ methodologies informed by advances in archaeology and grammatology. Finlayson’s chapter (Chapter 12) in particular speaks to wider questions about ancient readers and writers. Inspired by being trapped at home with her books during COVID lockdown, Finlayson sets out to describe the haptics of Bronze Age Aegean reading practices. After a brief overview of the cognitive processes involved in reading (pp. 253–5), Finlayson discusses what evidence for reading looks like archaeologically and notes the absence of evidence for Aegean Bronze Age readers. She concludes that ‘reading and writing might not always be so tightly bound together’ (p. 267). Godart’s chapter (Chapter 13) is a polemic in favour of redating the Pylos tablets to the Late Helladic IIIA2 (end) or IIIB1 (early) rather than the current consensus dating of LHIIIC Early 1. A response by J.L. Davis et al. (‘The Dates of the Final Destruction of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos’, in: J. Bennet et al. [edd.], KO-RO-NO-WE-SA [2024], pp. 527–43) suffices as a critique. It will be fascinating to see how the debate evolves in the coming years.
A useful chapter by Baldacci (Chapter 8) lays to rest any speculation that the Phaistos Disc was a forgery. The contribution contextualises the text’s inscription method and sign shapes through comparison with relief potmarks, Phaistos Impressed Fineware and subsequently discovered similar inscriptions, such as the Arkalochori axe (p. 169). Kanta et al. (‘An Archaeological and Epigraphical Overview of Some Inscriptions Found in the Cult Center of the City of Knossos (Anetaki Plot)’, in: J. Bennet et al. [edd.], KO-RO-NO-WE-SA [2024], pp. 27–43) suggest a further connection with the Anetaki Ivory, which was published after the present volume and lends further support to Baldacci’s argument. Weingarten (Chapter 7) contributes to a growing consensus within the study of Cretan Hieroglyphs (CH) that all signs on CH inscriptions, including non-phonetic ones, should be interpreted as potentially meaningful. She applies this same concept to seals, with a new methodology that considers all elements on a seal face (p. 145). She is particularly interested in the ‘cat face sign’ (predecessor to the LA/B ma sign), which she argues functions in CH as a logogram dealing with wool and/or cloth. Montecchi (Chapter 9) interrogates the assumed ‘linearity’ of LA, building on the observation in Ferrara (The Greatest Invention [2022]) that a core group of LA signs borrow from the ‘iconic’ CH script. She likewise explores the role of acrophony and onomatopoeia in the creation of new LA signs, as well as real-life ‘physical referents’ (p. 175). In searching for multiple sources for LA signs and in identifying varying principles driving their formation, Montecchi recalls de Voogt’s account of Caroline Islands sign creation. In both cases, inspiration for sign shapes came from multiple sources including ‘pure imagination’ (p. 98) and the highly relatable joy of onomatopoeia (p. 172) rather than sober bureaucratic necessity.
Overall, the volume successfully advances the study of writing beyond the state (and the state of the art) and promotes new interdisciplinary methodologies. The application of cognitive studies is especially prominent, though their relevance for ancient writing is not always convincing. Nevertheless, most chapters constitute innovative contributions which should be of long-lasting significance to grammatology.
