Writing it helps us perform all sorts of activities everyday
Easy to assume that writing has always been around
but like most things it had to be invented
Have you ever written something down so you can remember it later on
Maybe here a good song on the radio
and you decide to write it down on a piece of paper
or perhaps you're going shopping and you decide to write a shopping list
Well in a sort of similar way this is why
people started to write thousands of years ago
The earliest examples of writing are probably
on clay tablets like these written with the script Cuneiform
They were made in the Middle East in what is now Iraq
about five thousand years ago
If you were a leader of a big old city
you probably want to keep track of what's going on
So you're going to write things down
like how much money you're giving people
or how much stuff you got in storage
Well this tablet here does just that
It's a record of all the beer rations given to workers
and look here this is somebody drinking some beer
Tell you what I bet my dad would like to get paid in beer
One of the most famous types of ancient writing
is of course hyeroglyphs
used by the Egyptians thousand of years ago
Like other early forms of writing
the hyeroglyphs look like pictures
but they're actually mostly signs that represent
the sounds of the Egyptian language
And I'm going to meet a modern day scribe
to find out how they did it
Hello Paul how you doing?
Good
Thank you very much for letting me come to your studio
Could you show me through what you got here
So this is papyrus
and I have a selection of different tools used for writing
reeds, woody reeds, bamboo, quills and rushes
which is what we're going to use for writing
And this is what they wrote with?
Possibly
What I'll do is I'll just dip some of this ink in
and hold the tube vertically
and that gives you a nice edge
Do you think I could make one with you?
Yes so a few things to remember
keep the rush vertical and very lightly
don't squeeze it and gently write on...
Let it flow
Right, here we go
Oh my goodness. It's really big , what's happening now?!
It's a set up
I blame my tools
Oh yes
So what are you thinking Paul? Do you think I make a good a scribe?
I think you should quit while you're ahead
Some types of writing become forgotten over time
and can no longer be read
No one knows what is written on these small stone seals
They come from a great ancient civilisation that existed
about three thousand five hundred years ago
in the Indus valley, in what is now known as India and Pakistan
I wonder what they say
Another type of script in use across the world today is Arabic
like this example we have here
Now Arabic is the language of the Islamic holy book, the Quran
and unlike what you might be used to
Arabic reads right to left
One thing about Arabic is it can be very beautiful
and artists have used it for hundreds of years
to make paintings, to cover objects in wood
and to decorate buildings
like these tiles from Iran used in mosques, palaces and shrines
Did you know the oldest type of writing still in use today is Chinese
it's thousands of years old
Because we can understand written messages from the past
we can often read about things that were never intended to be seen by others
like these Roman tablets found in the North of England
Some of them are just personal notes like an invite to a birthday party
or announcing the delivery of some socks or pants
The amazing thing about writing is that it has allowed humans
to do something quite special
and that is to record different ideas, events, messages and emotions
without having somebody to be physically there to communicate them
And like the messages we can read from the past
perhaps what you write today could also be read
in hundreds or thousands of years time in the future
Hey! Unknown error, what?!
You must restart your computer
Can't believe it!