Among the rulers of late Naqada times was one buried at Abydos in a large tomb that archaeologists call U-j. When German archaeologists led by Günter Dreyer excavated it in the late 1980s, they found something remarkable: over a hundred tiny labels of bone and ivory, each carved with a few signs.
Key idea
Why it works
What the signs look like
Some U-j labels show animals, plants, mountains or buildings; others carry numbers. Several signs already look like later hieroglyphs, and some may already stand for sounds, not just pictures. That is the key step that turns pictures into writing: using a sign for its sound. Later Egyptian writing mixes sound signs with word signs in just this way.
Egypt and Mesopotamia
Writing also appeared in southern Mesopotamia, at Uruk, at about the same time, around the late 4th millennium BC. Did one invent it and the other borrow the idea? The two scripts look completely different and were used in different ways, and the Egyptian evidence is now at least as early as the Mesopotamian. Scholars still debate whether there was any influence; many now think writing developed independently in both places.
Worked example: Why the date matters
- Radiocarbon and the style of the finds date tomb U-j to about c. 3200 BC or a little earlier.
- That is about as early as the earliest Mesopotamian writing.
- So simple borrowing became much less likely, and independent invention became a serious possibility.
Answer: They made Egyptian writing about as old as Mesopotamian writing, reopening the question.
Common mistake