German Museum of Books and Writing "Signs - Books - Networks"

Back to the graphical presentation

• 

  Overview of the languages of the world

  Iglhaut + von Grote, courtesy of www.mapsofworld.com

  40.000 BCE

  Human language developed into the form that we know today.
• 

  Image of a bison in the cave at Altamira, Northern Spain. According to most recent research results, the paintings are up to 40,000 years old.

  Rameessos / Wikimedia Commons

  40000 BCE

  The oldest known cave paintings in Europe are produced in what is northern Spain today.
• 

  An overview of the writing systems of the world

  www.kreationswelt.de

  6.600 BCE

  Artefacts in China are furnished with writing-like characters – the so-called Jiahu font.
• 3500 v. Chr.

  invention of the flattened tissues of the papyrus plant as a writing material in ancient Egypt
• Ca. 3400 v. Chr.

  oldest preserved characters
• 

  The obelisk of the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III. (858-824 BCE), a replica of the original kept at London’s British Museum, photograph: Punctum, Bertram Kober

  Replik: Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

  3.200 BCE

  The emergence of Sumerian proto-cuneiform.
• 

  Frieze tile from the Pharoah’s residence with the phrase “he who conquers the foreign land”, Egypt, around 1300-1100 BCE

  Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

  3100 BCE

  The Egyptian hieroglyph script emerges.
• 3000 v. Chr.

  development of early scripts through the reduction of rock art motifs (ideograms)
• 

  Ushabti figurine for passage to the world of the dead, 1550–1070 BC, photograph by: Punctum, Bertram Kober

  Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung

  c. 2.000 BCE

  Ushabtis are used in Ancient Egypt as funerary objects.
• 1700 v. Chr.

  emergence of the first alphabet (22 characters) in North Semitic Palestine and Syria