The Story of the Alphabet

The author traces the origins and evolution of written signs from mnemonic and pictorial marks through ideographic and phonetic stages, surveying picture-writing, cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics (and their hieratic and demotic forms), East Asian character systems, Aegean and Cretan inscriptions, and later alphabetic scripts including Phoenician-derived, Greek, runic, and ogham forms. Archaeological discoveries and comparative evidence are used to reassess older theories about sources and diffusion, while chapters consider practical functions of writing—record keeping, ritual, and memory—and the technological and cognitive changes that produced conventional letter systems.