The significance of a basic medium to its civilization is difficult to appraise since the means of appraisal are influenced by the media, and indeed the fact of appraisal[15] appears to be peculiar to certain types of media. A change in the type of medium implies a change in the type of appraisal and hence makes it difficult for one civilization to understand another. The difficulty is enhanced by the character of the material, particularly its relative permanence. Pirenne has commented on the irony of history in which as a result of the character of the material much is preserved when little is written and little is preserved when much is written. Papyrus has practically disappeared whereas clay and stone have remained largely intact, but clay and stone as permanent material are used for limited purposes and studies of the periods in which they predominate will be influenced by that fact. The difficulties of appraisal will be evident, particularly in the consideration of time. With the dominance of arithmetic and the decimal system, dependent apparently on the number of fingers or toes, modern students have accepted the linear measure of time. The dangers of applying this procrustean device in the appraisal of civilizations in which it did not exist illustrate one of numerous problems. The difficulties will be illustrated in part in these six lectures in which time becomes a crucial factor in the organization of material and in which a lecture is a standardized and relatively inefficient method of communication with an emphasis on dogmatic answers rather than eternal questions.
I have attempted to meet these problems by using the concept of empire as an indication of the efficiency of communication. It will reflect to an important extent the efficiency of particular media of communication and its possibilities in creating conditions favourable to creative thought. In a sense these lectures become an extension of the work of Graham Wallas and of E. J. Urwick.
Much has been written on the developments leading to writing and on its significance to the history of civilization, but in the main studies have been restricted to narrow fields or to broad generalizations. Becker[16] has stated that the art of writing provided man with a transpersonal memory. Men were given an artificially extended and verifiable memory of objects and events not present to sight or recollection. Individuals applied their minds to symbols rather than things and went beyond the world of concrete experience into the world of conceptual relations created within an enlarged time and space universe. The time world was extended beyond the range of remembered things and the space world beyond the range of known places. Writing enormously enhanced a capacity for abstract thinking which had been evident in the growth of language in the oral tradition. Names in themselves were abstractions. Man's activities and powers were roughly extended in proportion to the increased use and perfection of written records. The old magic was transformed into a new and more potent record of the written word. Priests and scribes interpreted a slowly changing tradition and provided a justification for established authority. An extended social structure strengthened the position of an individual leader with military power who gave orders to agents who received and executed them. The sword and pen worked together. Power was increased by concentration in a few hands, specialization of function was enforced, and scribes with leisure to keep and study records contributed to the advancement of knowledge and thought. The written record signed, sealed, and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the extension of government. Small communities were written into large states and states were consolidated into empire. The monarchies of Egypt and Persia, the Roman empire, and the city-states were essentially products of writing.[17] Extension of activities in more densely populated regions created the need for written records which in turn supported further extension of activities. Instability of political structures and conflict followed concentration and extension of power. A common ideal image of words spoken beyond the range of personal experience was imposed on dispersed communities and accepted by them. It has been claimed that an extended social structure was not only held together by increasing numbers of written records but also equipped with an increased capacity to change ways of living. Following the invention of writing, the special form of heightened language, characteristic of the oral tradition and a collective society, gave way to private writing. Records and messages displaced the collective memory. Poetry was written and detached from the collective festival.[18] Writing made the mythical and historical past, the familiar and the alien creation available for appraisal. The idea of things became differentiated from things and the dualism demanded thought and reconciliation. Life was contrasted with the eternal universe and attempts were made to reconcile the individual with the universal spirit. The generalizations which we have just noted must be modified in relation to particular empires. Graham Wallas has reminded us that writing as compared with speaking involves an impression at the second remove and reading an impression at the third remove. The voice of a second-rate person is more impressive than the published opinion of superior ability.
Such generalizations as to the significance of writing tend to hamper more precise study and to obscure the differences between civilizations in so far as they are dependent on various media of communication. We shall attempt to suggest the roles of different media with reference to civilizations and to contrast the civilizations.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Essays by the late Mark Pattison, collected and arranged by Henry Nettleship (Oxford, 1889), ii, pp. 400-1.
[2] Francis Edward Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent (Chapel Hill, 1944), p. 278.
[3] Monthly Repository, 1834, p. 320. Cited ibid., pp. 278-9.
[4] Thomas Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents (London, 1873), p. 270.
[5] James Bryce, Studies in History and Jurisprudence (London, 1901), pp. 254-5.
[6] For a discussion of the background of political organization see F. J. Teggart, The Processes of History (New Haven, 1918).
[7] This does not refer to the mechanical spoken word which apparently Hitler had in mind in Mein Kampf. ‘I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken than the written word. The greatest changes in the world have never been brought about by the goose quill. The power which set sliding the great avalanches of a political and religious nature was from the beginning of time, the magic force of the spoken word.’
[8] See H. M. Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge, 1926).
[9] See Emery Neff, A Revolution in European Poetry 1660-1900 (New York, 1940), ch. ii.
[10] See Otto Jesperson, Mankind, Nation and Individual from a Linguistic Point of View (Oslo, 1925), pp. 5-13.
[11] Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth (New York, 1946), p. 38.
[12] Cited Jesperson, Mankind, Nation and Individual (Oslo, 1925), p. 139.
[13] Herbert Spencer, Philosophy of Style; An Essay (New York, 1881), p. 11.
[14] Cited Graham Wallas, The Great Society (London, 1914), p. 263.
[15] For a discussion of conditions favourable to historical writing see F. J. Teggart, Theory of History (New Haven, 1925).
[16] See C. L. Becker, Progress and Power (Stanford University, 1936); see also A. C. Moorhouse, Writing and the Alphabet (London, 1946).
[17] Edwyn Bevan, Hellenism and Christianity (London, 1921), p. 25.
[18] See Christopher Caudwell, Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry (London, 1937), p. 51.
B. EGYPT
The Nile, with its irregularities of overflow, demanded a co-ordination of effort. The river created the black land which could only be exploited with a universally accepted discipline and a common goodwill of the inhabitants. The Nile acted as a principle of order and centralization, necessitated collective work, created solidarity, imposed organizations on the people and cemented them in a society. In turn the Nile was the work of the Sun, the supreme author of the universe. Ra—the Sun—the demiurge was the founder of all order human and divine, the creator of gods themselves. Its power was reflected in an absolute monarch to whom everything was subordinated. It has
been suggested that such power followed the growth of astronomical knowledge by which the floods of the Nile could be predicted, notably a discovery of the sidereal year in which the rising of Sirius coincided with the period of floods. Moret has argued that as early as 4241 B.C. a calendar was adopted which reconciled the lunar months with the solar year, and that the adoption marked the imposition of the authority of Osiris and Ra, of the Nile and the Sun on Upper Egypt. The great gods of the fertile delta imposed their authority on the rest of Egypt and their worship coincided with the spread of political influence. Universal gods emerged in certain centres, their influence was extended by theologians, and diffusion of worship supported the growth of kingdoms. The calendar became a source of royal authority. Detachment of the calendar from the concrete phenomena of the heavens and application of numbers which provided the basis of the modern year has been described by Nilsson as the greatest intellectual fact in the history of time reckoning.
Achievement of a united monarchy by material victories and funerary beliefs and practices centring in the person of the king produced a social situation of which the invention of writing was the outcome. The position of the monarch was strengthened by development of the idea of immortality. The pyramids and the elaborate system of mummification carried with them the art of pictorial representation as an essential element of funerary ritual.
The divine word was creative at the beginning of the universe and acted on gods, men, and things in a fashion reminiscent of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John. ‘I created all shapes with what came out of my mouth, in the time there was neither heaven nor earth.’[19] In fixing the tradition of magic rites and formulae in the Old Kingdom the God Thoth,[20] as the friend, minister, scribe, and keeper of the divine book of government, of Ra became the Lord of ritual and magic. He represented creation by utterance and production by thought and utterance. The spoken word possessed creative efficiency and the written word in the tomb perpetuated it.[21] The magical formulae of the pyramids assumed the productive and creative power of certain spoken words.
In the handbooks of temple structure and adornment of sacred shrines which probably made up a large part of temple libraries, Thoth was the framer of rules of ecclesiastical architecture. No essential difference existed between pictorial decorations and hieroglyphic script. Thoth represented intelligence and was ‘Lord of the Divine Word’. He was the unknown and mysterious, the lord of scribes and of all knowledge, since the setting down of words in script suggested the possession of mysterious and potent knowledge in the scribe who ‘brought into being what was not’. Formulae of sacred ritual, collections of particularly effective formulae, and books of divine words were attributed to Thoth as the inventor of language and script. Beginning with drawing and literature in the decoration of temples and tombs in the use of figures as definitions of living beings and objects, the pictorial principle was extended and adapted to the need of expressing non-pictorial elements into a hieroglyphic system by 3500 B.C. Hieroglyphics was the Greek name for sacred engraved writing. From about 4000 B.C. the names of kings, wars, political events, and religious doctrines were written. The earliest documents were names and titles on sealings and vases, notes of accounts or inventories, and short records of events. Seals and wooden tablets with primitive script recorded the outstanding events of the Abydos reign. Writing gradually developed toward phoneticism and by the time of Menes (about 3315 B.C.)[22] many picture signs had a purely phonetic value and words were regularly spelled out.
As the founder of the first dynasty at Thinis, Menes developed the theory of the absolute power of kings. A new capital was built at Memphis at the balance of the two lands to the north and to the south. As the successor of Horus and Osiris and as their living image the king was identified with them in every possible way in order to ensure eternal life. From about 2895 B.C. to 2540 B.C. autocratic monarchy was developed by right divine. The pyramids of about 2850 B.C. suggested that the people expected the same miracles from the dead as from the living king. All arable land became the king's domain. After 2540 B.C. royal authority began to decline and the power of the priests and the nobles to increase. The difficulties of the sidereal year in which a day was gained each year may have contributed to the problems of the absolute monarch and hastened the search for a solar year possibly discovered by the priests. The Sun Ra cult was exalted to the rank of chief God and the king was lowered from the Great God to the Son of Ra and to the Good God. The king as a Sun-god was a man who did not work with his hands but merely existed and, like the sun, acted on environment from a distance. The Sun was law and imposed it on all things, but law was distinct from the Sun as it governed even him. Recognition of this fact has been described as implying the discovery of government.[23] In Heliopolis as the centre of priestly power, the doctrine was developed in which God was conceived of as an intelligence which has thought the world and expresses itself by the word, the organ of government, the instrument of continuous creation, and the herald of law and justice. An order of the king was equivalent to an act of creation of the same kind as that of the demiurge. The command of the superior obeyed by dependents was reinforced by the mystery of writing as a reflex of the spoken word. Centralization of the gods favoured the growth of political ideas.
After a period of political confusion from 2360 B.C. to 2160 B.C. a new political order emerged in which the absolute monarch was replaced by the royal family. The clergy of Heliopolis established a new calendar and imposed it on Egypt. Extension of privileges to the priestly class brought a transition to oligarchy. The royal domain was broken up in favour of a feudal clergy and royal officials. The Theban kings (2160-1660 B.C.) restored order and prosperity. After 2000 B.C. religious equality was triumphant. The masses obtained religious rights and corollary political rights. The Pharaohs gave up their monopoly and accepted the extension of rights to the whole population. Admission of the masses to religious rights and to everlasting life in the next world was recognized along with civic life in this world. Power was essentially religious and extension of direct participation in worship brought increased participation in the administration of stock and the ownership of land. The management of royal lands was farmed, partial ownership of houses and tombs was permitted, and free exercise of trades and administrative offices was conceded. Peasants, craftsmen, and scribes rose to administrative posts and assemblies.
The profound disturbances in Egyptian civilization involved in the shift from absolute monarchy to a more democratic organization coincides with a shift in emphasis on stone as a medium of communication or as a basis of prestige, as shown in the pyramids, to an emphasis on papyrus. Papyrus sheets dated from the first dynasty and inscribed sheets from the fifth dynasty (2680-2540 B.C. or 2750-2625 B.C.). In contrast with stone, papyrus as a writing medium was extremely light. It was made from a plant (Cyperus papyrus) which was restricted in its habitat to the Nile delta and was manufactured into writing material near the marshes where it was found. Fresh green stems of the plant were cut into suitable lengths and the green rind stripped off. They were then cut into thick strips and laid parallel to each other and slightly overlapping on absorbent cloth. A similar layer was laid above and across them and the whole covered by another cloth. This was hammered with a mallet for about two hours and the sheets welded into a single mass which was finally pressed and dried. Sheets were fastened to each other to make rolls, in some cases of great length. As a light commodity it could be transported over wide areas.[24] Brushes made from a kind of rush (Juncus maritimus) were used for writing. Lengths ranging from 6 to 16 inches and from 1/16 to 1/10 of an inch in diameter were cut slantingly at one end and bruised to separate the fibres.[25] The scribe's palette had two cups, for black and red ink, and a water-pot. He wrote in hieratic characters from right to left, arranging the text in vertical columns or horizontal lines of equal size, which formed pages. The rest of the papyrus was kept rolled up in his left hand.[26]
Writing on stone was characterized by straightnes
s or circularity of line, rectangularity of form and an upright position, whereas writing on papyrus permitted cursive forms suited to rapid writing. ‘When hieroglyphs were chiselled on stone monuments they were very carefully formed and decorative in character. When written on wood or papyrus they became simpler and more rounded in form.... The cursive or hieratic style was still more hastily written, slurring over or abbreviating and running together ... they ceased to resemble pictures and became script.’[27] ‘By escaping from the heavy medium of stone’ thought gained lightness. ‘All the circumstances arouse interest, observation, reflection.’[28] A marked increase in writing by hand was accompanied by secularization of writing, thought, and activity. The social revolution between the Old and the New Kingdom was marked by a flow of eloquence and a displacement of religious by secular literature.
Empire and Communications Page 2