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• Location: Palermo, Sicily
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Rock carvings; durable representations of objects, ideas, and feelings. -
Crafting either a petroglyph or pictograph was typically determined by availability of a "paint," hardness of the rocks, and availability of tools to create the design. (King, n.d.).
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• Location: Gilf Kebir Plateau of the Libyan Desert
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Cave paintings; archiving real-life events, objects, and ideas. -
• Location: Akaddian, Babylon
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Wedge imprints; used for contracts, accounting, and records. -
Mesopotamian cylinder seals, which applied cuneiform, were used to provide a forgery-proof method for sealing important documents, and in some cases sealing house doors to prevent burglaries. (Meggs & Purvis, 2011, pp. 12).
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• Location: Ancient Phoenicia
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Early Linear script; used simplified pictographic symbols, but without any pictorial meaning. -
• Location Discovered: Thebes, Egypt
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Ancient coffin; used for ceremonial burial tombs. -
• Location Discovered: Theban Necropolis, Egypt
• Current Location: Egyptian Museum, Cairo
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Oval frames; used to encase Egyptian glyphs of royal family names. -
• Location Discovered: Kurna, Egypt
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Sacred Egyptian picture writing; ancestor of major modern scripts. -
• Location Discovered: Luxor, Egypt
• Current Location: Egyptian Museum, Cairo
• Designer: Egyptian Scribes
• Innovation: Stone or wooden slab; used to inscribe and commemorate key events and government laws. -
The word Alphabet originates from the first two letters from the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. (Meggs & Purvis, 2011, pp. 22).
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• Location: Ancient Greece
• Designer: Ancient Greeks
• Innovation: Geometric structure and arrangement to create symmetry. -
• Location: Ancient Rome
• Designer: Ancient Romans
• Innovation: Early form of traditional alphabet with only 21 letters. -
• Location: Kufa, Iraq
• Designer: Muslim Academy at Kufa
• Innovation: Vigorous curving, horizontal Arabic script. -
The golden age of Athens (c. 500 BCE) was the high point of Greek culture, when democracy, or “people rule,” began to be practiced period Aristotle called democracy “a state where freemen and poor, being in a majority, are invested in the power of the state” The vote of the majority became law. (Meggs & Purvis, 2011, pp. 27).
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• Location: Rome, Italy
• Designer: Ancient Romans
• Innovation: Roman capital letter script; thick vertical strokes and geometric square proportions. -
• Location: Unknown
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Square capitals; thick and thin strokes with majestic symmetry and clear readability. -
• Location: Vatican City, Rome at the Biblioteca Apostolica
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Early calligraphy; narrow, flowing script to allow for a larger quantity of writing. -
Ptolemy V of Alexandria and Eumenes II of Pergamum were engaged in a fierce library-building rivalry. Therefore, Ptolemy placed an embargo on papyrus shipments to prevent Eumenes from continuing his rapid production of scrolls. Parchment, a writing surface made from the skins of domestic animals was invented to overcome embargo. (Meggs & Purvis, 2011, pp. 31). Parchment was much more durable than papyrus and was not as susceptible to environmental decay.
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• Current Location: Cambridge University Library
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Ancestor of the modern book made from folded and stitched parchment. -
• Location: Columban monastery, United Kingdom
• Designer: Unknown
• Innovation: Broad, rounded letter script using all capital letters. -
• Location: Korea
• Designer: Jiphyeonjeon (Hall of Worthies)
• Innovation: Korean scientific writing system; letters inside an imaginary rectangle forming syllabic blocks. -
• Innovation: Deciphered hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone.
• Designer: Léon Cogniet, portrait painter.