| # | Polity | Coded Value | Tags | Year(s) | Edit | Desc |
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Written records began being kept from the seventh century, including charters, king lists, historical works, and annals. “Kings were the most important benefactors of the religious houses within their kingdoms and naturally figure prominently in the archives of religious communities both through the records of their benefactions and in ‘historical’ records, such as saints’ Lives and annals, produced by individual religious houses. Religious houses might also act as repositories for the archives of their royal families and produce classes of records such as kinglists and genealogies for them.”
[1]
“It is usually accepted that contemporary annals began to be kept in Wessex at some point in the seventh century, and Stenton suggested that the Chronicle entry for 648 marked the beginning of a contemporary record of events. Entries are reasonably regular from 648 until 757 when they become extremely sparse until the accession of Egbert (802).”
[2]
“This process of re-valuation has, however, encouraged several authors to imagine that sub-Roman Britain, in its entirety, retained a significant political, economic and military momentum across the fifth century and even the bulk of the sixth. This in large part stems from attempts to develop visions of an Arthurian era of British success against the incoming Anglo-Saxons, as suggested by the Historia Brittonum of 829–30, and the Annales Cambriae of the mid-tenth century.”
[3]
[1]: (Yorke 1990: 20) York, Barbara. 1990. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203447307. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/YXTNCWJN [2]: (Yorke 1990: 128) York, Barbara. 1990. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203447307. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/YXTNCWJN [3]: (Higham 2004: 3) Higham, Nick. ‘From Sub-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England: Debating the Insular Dark Ages’, History Compass 2, no. 1 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2004.00085.x. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XZT7A79K |
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Languages spoken in this polity were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which Karagwe formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’.
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No references found in the consulted literature to a written form of Nri that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet. “If these are the problems to be faced in languages that have written form hundreds of years ago one cannot imagine what problems there are in dealing with languages whose written forms are yet to be established.”
[1]
[1]: Onwuejeogwu, M. A. (1975). Some Fundamental Problems in the Application of Lexicostatistics in the Study of African Languages. Paideuma, 21, 6–17: 10. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/IISK3KCM/collection |
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There are not any evidence suggesting that the writing system has been already invented.
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“Although the ancient people of the Southwest didn’t have a written language, they had effective ways to communicate.”
[1]
[1]: (“Chaco Culture - Communication”) “Chaco Culture” NPS Museum Collections, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/chcu/index6.html. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/NMRVDA5I |
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No writing system in Allada the year before Whydah became independent, so likely the same in Whydah: “Another question arising from the incidence of credit in both the local economy and the overseas trade is the nature of the indigenous system of recordkeeping. In Allada the local people, it was noted in 1670, in the absence of writing used knotted strings to keep records of various matters, including commercial transactions (“the price of goods”). Several later accounts allude to other mechanical devices for keeping financial (and fiscal) records in Dahomey.”
[1]
[1]: Austin, Gareth, et al. “Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, p. 144: 33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SPXH2IUW/collection |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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We are unsure about the use of written lists on reservations.
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Certainly absent.
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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"None of the native peoples developed a system of writing comparable to that of the Mayas, and much less would the Spaniards encounter a native empire such as that of either the Aztecs or Incas. By 1500 A.D., the most advanced of the indigenous peoples were two Chibcha groups: the Taironas and the Muiscas."
[1]
[1]: (Hudson 2010, 5) |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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None of the native peoples developed a system of writing comparable to that of the Mayas, and much less would the Spaniards encounter a native empire such as that of either the Aztecs or Incas. By 1500 A.D., the most advanced of the indigenous peoples were two Chibcha groups: the Taironas and the Muiscas."
[1]
[1]: (Hudson 2010, 5) |
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The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
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“Since the end of the 15th century, a great deal of material about Benin has been supplied by sailors, traders, etc., returning to Europe. However, information on the Edo people before this date is very difficult to obtain, as there was no written record and the oral record is at best rather fragmentary.”
[1]
“The theme of this study presses the sources for the reconstruction of Benin military history to its limits because written documents scarcely exist, except for the reports and accounts of European visitors.”
[2]
[1]: Bondarenko, Dmitri M., and Peter M. Roese. ‘Benin Prehistory: The Origin and Settling down of the Edo’. Anthropos 94, no. 4/6 (1999): 542–52: 542. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/Y4V3D623/collection [2]: Osadolor, O. B. (2001). The Military System of Benin Kingdom, c.1440–1897. University of Hamburg, Germany: 27–28. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/N4RZF5H5/collection |
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The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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Few, if any, people in Latium could read such things had they existed and they likely did not exist because there was no state bureaucracy or developed religion that would provide a reason to produce them.
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Few, if any, people in Latium could read such things had they existed and they likely did not exist because there was no state bureaucracy or developed religion that would provide a reason to produce them.
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The following refers to the Ashanti and colonial periods: ’In order to meet the clerical service required for these forms, there is attached to the important Tribunals a Registrar’s office where summonses and all other processes are taken. The Registerar has charge of the cause list and the Records Books.’
[1]
We have assumed here that clerical work was introduced during the Ashanti period and performed by foreigners. European traders certainly used lists for commercial purposes, but so far no information on equivalent Akan practices has been found.
[1]: Danquah, J.B. 1928: 97; Literacy Database |
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The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which Buhaya formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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"The lack of archival and administrative texts, which were already decreasing during the Second Dynasty of Isin, is a clear reflection of the administrative chaos of the time."
[1]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 469) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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"The lack of archival and administrative texts, which were already decreasing during the Second Dynasty of Isin, is a clear reflection of the administrative chaos of the time."
[1]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 469) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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The following quote characterises the people of Tanganyika (the broader region of which the Fipa formed part) as "pre-literate" in the early 19th century. "We do not know what inland Tanganyikans believed in the early nineteenth century. They were pre-literate, and the religions of pre-literate peoples not only leave little historical evidence but are characteristically eclectic, mutable, and unsystematic."
[1]
[1]: (Iliffe 1979: 26) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SB2AJMVC/collection. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. |
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"The great organisations of the first phase of urbanisation rose to prominence without writing. The latter developed relatively quickly as a response to these institutions’ needs."
[1]
Liverani says the so-called "urban revolution" of the Uruk phase occurred 3800-3000 BCE.
[2]
[1]: (Leverani 2014, 73) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 69-70) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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“The question as to the manner in which a record of the age of these children was kept by a people who had no writing, poses itself here.”
[1]
[1]: HERSKOVITS, M. J. (1932). POPULATION STATISTICS IN THE KINGDOM OF DAHOMEY. Human Biology, 4(2), 252–261: 258. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/8T74FM7D/collection |
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The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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The following quote suggests that a Yoruba written alphabet was invented in the nineteenth century. "Àjàyí[...] returned in 1841 to the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. Now officially known as Samuel Crowther, he [...] was the architect of Yorùbá modernization through his efforts as a linguist to reduce the Yorùbá language to writing, a major revolution in Yorùbá cultural and intellectual history. His accomplishments in this regard included the translation of the Bible into Yorùbá and the development of the first Yorùbá dictionary."
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020: 391) |
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“In Allada the local people, it was noted in 1670, in the absence of writing used knotted strings to keep records of various matters, including commercial transactions (“the price of goods”).”
[1]
[1]: Austin, Gareth, et al. “Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, p. 144: 33. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/SPXH2IUW/collection |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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The Book of Settlements seems to fit this category: ’As Hastrup points out (1985:189) the principal of allodial or adal land, family ownership of land, was not transplanted to Iceland, for one reason, because there was no history of prior occupation on which to base such claims. She agrees with those who argue that the reason for the writing of Landnámabók, the Book of Settlements, which lists many settlers, their land claims, genealogies, and events of the Settlement Period, in the twelfth century was to provide evidence for claims to hereditary rights in land (p. 192). This work was written some time after the first recording of law began in 1117. The collection of laws is known as Grágás. According to this code, [Page 246] written nearly two-hundred years after the establishment of the Alþing and the adoption of an oral code of laws, land ownership was individual (Hastrup 1985:189). Hastrup argues that there was a contradiction between the legal code of individual ownership and informal concepts of family ownership which developed during the period after the settlement.’
[1]
’1000 is probably correct if we include imported books and documents.’
[2]
[1]: Durrenberger, E. Paul 1988. “Stratification Without A State: The Collapse Of The Icelandic Commonwealth", 245 [2]: Árni Daniel Júlíusson and Axel Kristissen 2017, pers. comm. to E. Brandl and D. Mullins |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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"As we have seen, to secure their essential ties, the ancient states, lacking writing and money, relied on kinship, trust, and personal relationships, which were periodically rekindled by direct contact and exchanged words."
[1]
Languages spoken in this polity were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[2]
[1]: (Chrétien 2006: 178) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/FXCVWDRI/collection. [2]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Scholars use oral tradition to help reconstruct life in the Segou kingdom.
[1]
The polity may not have used written documents but there were written documents in the semi-autonomous, Islamic ’marka’ towns, populated by Soninke and other Mande-speakers.
[1]: (Monroe and Ogundiran 2012) J Cameron Monroe. Akinwumi Ogundiran. Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa. J Cameron Monroe. Akinwumi Ogundiran. eds. 2012. Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa: Archaeological Perspectives.Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. |
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"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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Mnemonic devices may have played a role prior to Russian role, but the information is unclear (see above).
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c500 CE and after: "It may be assumed that by then some of the Juan-juan already lived a settled life and practised agriculture. The original sources repeatedly mention that their khagans obtained ‘seed millet’ from China (some 10,000 shi each time). This shows that the Juan-juan society and state had gradually developed from nomadic herding to a settled agricultural way of life, from yurts to the building of houses and monumental architecture, from the nomadic district to towns. They had invented their own system of writing and developed their own local culture and Buddhist learning flourished."
[1]
[1]: (Kyzlasov 1996, 317) |
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Languages spoken in Rwanda were turned into "written artefacts" only in the colonial period: "Before the arrival of the Europeans, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi were already employed in both kingdoms – Ikinyanduga in southern Rwanda and Ikiruundi in central Burundi – yet with a lot less linguistic unity in the two kingdoms than in (post)colonial times. The missionary and colonial interventions, therefore, rather focused on lexicon, resulting in status planning initiatives and contributing to the compilation of dictionaries, favouring a specific dialect over others. [...] The most salient and visible adaptations were a part of the primarily orthographic alignments of textualisation processes (turning languages into written artefacts)."
[1]
[1]: (Nassenstein 2019: 16-17) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/QUT3P5UT/collection. |
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"According to the Sanguo zhi [Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms], because Kebineng’s lands were near the Chinese border, many Chinese people (Zhongguo ren 中國人) fled the warlord depredations of late Han and Three Kingdoms China to join Kebineng, teaching the Xianbei how to make Chinese-style arms and armor, and even introducing some literacy."
[1]
Kebineng’s reign started in 230 CE.
[1]: (Holcombe 2013, 7-8) |
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Russian administrators composed clerical documents: ’The people became rapidly impoverished, and the order of the voivode to the clerk Evdokim Kurdiukov in 1685 already mentions the arrears in the treasury and orders the yassak gatherers to treat the people in arrears in the following way: from them who have no cattle take, because of their povetry and extreme need one cherno-cherevyya and one sivodushatyya fox from each, and for a sable, two red foxes from each. This same document orders him to make a census of the people, and their goods and cattle: collect the taxes for the current year, 193 (1685) in full, and collect the arrears for the past years, from each as much as possible. Similar censuses were taken earlier also, and their character may be judged by the census of Grishka Krivogornitsyn in 170 (1671) “for the Meginsk volosts” There we find mentioned not only the taxes and the amounts in arrears, but also the houses, wives, number of workers in the family. There is information about those who have died and those who have run away. Moreover the name and clan of every person is given. The personal and clan nicknames, of course are very much corrupted in these notes, and changed to conform with the Russian style, but it is not hard to determine what they actually are. The yassak books and these censuses were the materials out of which was later created the present system of Yakut self-government.’
[1]
But the Sakha probably had little to no access to these.
[1]: Sieroszewski, Wacław 1993. “Yakut: An Experiment In Ethnographic Research”, 780 |
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"There are no written records of any description to throw light on the history of West Africa before 900 A.D."
[1]
"The West Africans who laid the foundations of their medieval empires during the centuries before 900 C.E. did not develop a written language they could use to record historical events."
[2]
Oldest example of writing in West Africa c1100 CE tomb inscription at Gao.
[3]
[1]: (Bovill 1958, 51) Bovill, E W. 1958/1995. The Golden Trade of the Moors. Oxford University Press. Oxford. [2]: (Conrad 2010, 13) Conrad, D. C. 2010. Empires of Medieval West Africa. Revised Edition. Chelsea House Publishers. New York. [3]: (Davidson 1998, 44) Davidson, Basil. 1998. West Africa Before the Colonial Era. Routledge. London. |
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Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
||||||
|
Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[1]: Marcus and Flannery (1996) Zapotec Civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. |
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Glyphs dating to this period have been deciphered as either calendrical dates or the names of prisoners. Sources do not suggest that evidence for other types of writing has been found.
[1]
[2]
[1]: Spencer, C. S. and E. M. Redmond (2004). "Primary state formation in Mesoamerica." Annual Review of Anthropology: 173-199, p179 [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London, p130 |
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Written records were introduced by colonial authorities and missions.
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The first written records in the Valley of Oaxaca are from the Rosario phase (700-500 BCE).
[1]
[2]
Written records are therefore coded as absent for this period.
[1]: Flannery, K. V. and J. Marcus (1983). "The Cloud People." New York. [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London. |
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The first written records in the Valley of Oaxaca are from the Rosario phase (700-500 BCE).
[1]
[2]
Written records are therefore coded as absent for this period.
[1]: Flannery, K. V. and J. Marcus (1983). "The Cloud People." New York. [2]: Marcus, J. and K. V. Flannery (1996). Zapotec civilization: How urban society evolved in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley, Thames and Hudson London. |
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"Notably, none of these documents is a poem, a hymn, a collection of sayings, a mythological narration, a chronicle, a manual, or indeed any other sort of literary or technical composition."
[1]
[1]: (Robin 2015: 92) Robin, Christian Julien. 2015. “Before Himyar: Epigraphic Evidence for the Kingdoms of South Arabia.” In Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher, 91-126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: https://www-oxfordscholarship-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654529.001.0001/acprof-9780199654529-chapter-3. |
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Possehl states that there was no writing before the urban phase in the Indus valley.
[1]
While seals have been found in Mehrgarh III layers, these show no evidence of script or writing.
[2]
[1]: Gregory L. Possehl. The Indus Civilization. A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, Altamira, 2002, p. 51. [2]: , C. A. (in press) Chapter 11, Case Study: Mehrgarh. In, Barker, G and Goucher, C (eds.) Cambridge World History, Volume 2: A World with Agriculture, 12,000 BCE - 500 CE. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. |
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"The Indus civilization flourished for around five hundred to seven hundred years, and in the early second millennium it disintegrated. This collapse was marked by the disappearance of the features that had distinguished the Indus civilization from its predecessors: writing, city dwelling, some kind of central control, international trade, occupational specialization, and widely distributed standardized artifacts. [...] Writing was no longer used, though occasionally signs were scratched as graffiti on pottery."
[1]
[1]: (McIntosh 2008, 91-92) Jane McIntosh. 2008. The Ancient Indus Civilization. Oxford; Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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[1]
c2000-1500 BCE the neighbouring Babylonians "constructed tables to aid calculation."
[2]
"To relieve the tedium of long calculations, the Mesopotamians made extensive use of mathematical tables. These included tables for finding reciprocals, squares, cubes, and square and cube roots, as well as exponential tables and even tables of values of n3 + n2, for which there is no modern equivalent."
[3]
[1]: Potts 1999, 163 [2]: J J O’Connor, J J. Robertson, E F. December 2000. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Babylonian_mathematics.html [3]: (Joseph 2011, 142) Joseph, George Gheverghese. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (Third Edition). Princeton University Press. |
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[1]
c2000-1500 BCE the neighbouring Babylonians "constructed tables to aid calculation."
[2]
"To relieve the tedium of long calculations, the Mesopotamians made extensive use of mathematical tables. These included tables for finding reciprocals, squares, cubes, and square and cube roots, as well as exponential tables and even tables of values of n3 + n2, for which there is no modern equivalent."
[3]
[1]: Potts 1999, 163 [2]: J J O’Connor, J J. Robertson, E F. December 2000. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Babylonian_mathematics.html [3]: (Joseph 2011, 142) Joseph, George Gheverghese. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (Third Edition). Princeton University Press. |
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"Precise stratigraphic excavations conducted in recent decades have allowed us to trace developments at Susa in the Uruk phase, notably of an accounting system that preceded the slightly later appearance of writing."
[1]
"documents"
[1]
Lake Uruk phase (second half fourth millennium BCE) administrative tablets show: lists divided into categories such as professions, birds, vases, plants..
[2]
"everything points to the direct influence of Mesopotamian accounting procedures on Susa in Late Susa II times."
[3]
[1]: (Amiet, Chevalier and Carter 1992, 4) Amiet, Pierre. Chevalier, Nicole. Carter, Elizabeth. in Harper, Prudence O. Aruz, Joan. Tallon, Francoise. eds. 1992. The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. Metropolitan Museum of Art. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 78) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. [3]: (Potts 2016, 66) Potts, D T. 2016. The Archaeology of Elam Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. |
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"Clay tablets with Proto-Elamite writing also occur at Anshan in an association with a large building embellished with paintings."
[1]
"Proto-Elamite influence even spread across the great eastern desert of Lut to Shahr-i Sokhta, where the Proto-Elamite accounting system is found in use by people whose cultural affinities lay not with the Proto-Elamite world but with the inhabitants of Turkmenia and the region south of the Hindu Kush mountain range."
[1]
Lake Uruk phase (second half fourth millennium BCE) administrative tablets show: lists divided into categories such as professions, birds, vases, plants..
[2]
[1]: (Amiet, Chevalier and Carter 1992, 4) Amiet, Pierre. Chevalier, Nicole. Carter, Elizabeth. in Harper, Prudence O. Aruz, Joan. Tallon, Francoise. eds. 1992. The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. Metropolitan Museum of Art. [2]: (Leverani 2014, 78) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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|
The Book of Settlements seems to fit this category: ’As Hastrup points out (1985:189) the principal of allodial or adal land, family ownership of land, was not transplanted to Iceland, for one reason, because there was no history of prior occupation on which to base such claims. She agrees with those who argue that the reason for the writing of Landnámabók, the Book of Settlements, which lists many settlers, their land claims, genealogies, and events of the Settlement Period, in the twelfth century was to provide evidence for claims to hereditary rights in land (p. 192). This work was written some time after the first recording of law began in 1117. The collection of laws is known as Grágás. According to this code, [Page 246] written nearly two-hundred years after the establishment of the Alþing and the adoption of an oral code of laws, land ownership was individual (Hastrup 1985:189). Hastrup argues that there was a contradiction between the legal code of individual ownership and informal concepts of family ownership which developed during the period after the settlement.’
[1]
’1000 is probably correct if we include imported books and documents.’
[2]
[1]: Durrenberger, E. Paul 1988. “Stratification Without A State: The Collapse Of The Icelandic Commonwealth", 245 [2]: Árni Daniel Júlíusson and Axel Kristissen 2017, pers. comm. to E. Brandl and D. Mullins |
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’he [Toyotomi Hideyoshi] ordered censuses taken in all villages to prevent military men from taking refuge in them’
[1]
‘Unusually precise records describing how wounds were inflicted in battle from 1333 through 1600 enable us to trace the dissemination of weapons. One can precisely chart how weapons were used from 1333 onward because battle reports (kassen chūmon) and “petitions for reward” (gunchūjō) record how wounds were inflicted.’
[2]
[1]: Totman, Conrad. 1993. Early Modern Japan. University of California Press. Berkeley; London.p.45. [2]: Ferejohn, John, and Frances Rosenbluth, (eds.) 2010.War and State Building in Medieval Japan. Stanford University Press.p.126 |
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’The extant catalogue lists almost 1,400 scrolls of Chinese dynastic histories and almost 2,000 scrolls of books on rites and ceremonies. More emphasis is given to belles lettres than to the classics - reflecting a T’ang taste that was especially congenial to the Japanese - and a number of books by Chinese authors appear in it that are not listed in continental bibliographies, several of which have been discovered at Tun-huang. And probably there were other books not deemed worthy of being entered into an official bibliography: handbooks, practical books of various sorts, and volumes to amuse and instruct the less educated, women, and children.’
[1]
[1]: Shively, Donald H. and McCullough, William H. 2008. The Cambridge History of Japan Volume 2: Heian Japan. Cambridge Histories Online Cambridge University Press.p.345-346 |
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[1]
The high literacy rate in the Tokugawa period (calculated at around 40% of the population) aided the proliferation of written works.
[2]
[1]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.243. [2]: Deal, William E. 2005. Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan. Oxford University Press.p.229. |
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According to Miriam Stark, ’[i]ndividuals increased their karma for the next life by establishing temples or making donations to extant temple (see also Hagesteijn 1996:189, passim). Entrenched and aspiring elite members recorded their temple offerings in stone. Such activity is clear in the earliest dated Khmer inscription (K. 600) from Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia. This inscription lists donations to the temple/foundation by two elite individuals: nine males, nine females, two children, eighty head of cattle, two buffalo, ten goats, forty coconut trees, and two rice fields (Vickery 1998:227)’,
[1]
and ’most indigenous inscriptions record the beneficence of aspiring elite individuals’
[2]
, and ’[g]enealogies frequently appear in royal inscriptions [...]’
[3]
’Exceptions are several important Sanskrit inscriptions, which include lists of gifts or temple supplies (e.g., inscriptions of the Jayavarman VII period - the hospital stelae; K. 273/ 1186, K. 908/1191 and K. 180/ 948; and the bilingual inscriptions, K. 254/1126 and K. 235/1052. In a few instances, Khmer authors use Sanskrit in the opening formulae of texts. In Pre- Angkorian texts, there may be short imprecatory passages, usually at the end, which are all or partly in Sanskrit.’
[4]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2006, p.160-161) [2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 144) [3]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.161) [4]: (Lustig 2009, p. 107) |
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|
According to Miriam Stark, ’[i]ndividuals increased their karma for the next life by establishing temples or making donations to extant temple (see also Hagesteijn 1996:189, passim). Entrenched and aspiring elite members recorded their temple offerings in stone. Such activity is clear in the earliest dated Khmer inscription (K. 600) from Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia. This inscription lists donations to the temple/foundation by two elite individuals: nine males, nine females, two children, eighty head of cattle, two buffalo, ten goats, forty coconut trees, and two rice fields (Vickery 1998:227)’,
[1]
and ’most indigenous inscriptions record the beneficence of aspiring elite individuals’
[2]
, and ’[g]enealogies frequently appear in royal inscriptions [...]’
[3]
’Exceptions are several important Sanskrit inscriptions, which include lists of gifts or temple supplies (e.g., inscriptions of the Jayavarman VII period - the hospital stelae; K. 273/ 1186, K. 908/1191 and K. 180/ 948; and the bilingual inscriptions, K. 254/1126 and K. 235/1052. In a few instances, Khmer authors use Sanskrit in the opening formulae of texts. In Pre- Angkorian texts, there may be short imprecatory passages, usually at the end, which are all or partly in Sanskrit.’
[4]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2006, p.160-161) [2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 144) [3]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.161) [4]: (Lustig 2009, p. 107) |
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|
"…as the classical sources reveal, a wide range of Phoenician works—on subjects ranging from history and law to religion and philosophy—did once exist. The references, by and large, are Roman in date and refer primarily to Carthage and its later literary tradition. The Phoenician cities in the east, however, also possessed extensive archives of an historical and economic nature that were housed and maintained by the palaces and temples. In the Report of Wenamun, King Zakarbaal of Byblos consults such ancestral records, written on papyrus scrolls…"
[1]
I have seen claims that the Greek term biblion for book was derived from the city name Byblos, because of the vast quantities of Egyptian papyrus imported there.
[1]: Markoe (2000:110). |
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|
According to Miriam Stark, ’[i]ndividuals increased their karma for the next life by establishing temples or making donations to extant temple (see also Hagesteijn 1996:189, passim). Entrenched and aspiring elite members recorded their temple offerings in stone. Such activity is clear in the earliest dated Khmer inscription (K. 600) from Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia. This inscription lists donations to the temple/foundation by two elite individuals: nine males, nine females, two children, eighty head of cattle, two buffalo, ten goats, forty coconut trees, and two rice fields (Vickery 1998:227)’,
[1]
and ’most indigenous inscriptions record the beneficence of aspiring elite individuals’
[2]
, and ’[g]enealogies frequently appear in royal inscriptions [...]’
[3]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2006, p.160-161) [2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 144) [3]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.161) |
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|
’There can hardly be any doubt that the polities within Cambodia from the 7th to the 13th centuries were mainly agrarian, their development of written records very high for the period, these records largely concerned with economic and administrative matters, and that by the Angkor period temples had political and economic managerial functions. The notable Southeast Asian societies without an impressive epigraphic tradition, such as Funan, Srivijaya, Ayutthaya, and Pregu, were preeminently maritime trading polities.’
[1]
’The archaeological hardware of these vital centuries is provided by the surviving temples, reservoirs and rice fields, but the social software has to be teased out of the surviving inscriptions. Carved onto stone stelae, these were inscribed in Sanskrit and old Khmer languages. Nearly all relate to the foundation and administration of a temple. They regularly refer to a ruler or the title and name of a local grandee associated with the temple foundation and its maintenance. The Khmer text includes information on rice fields, their boundaries, donations of surplus products to the temple, and the number and duties of individuals assigned to its support.’
[2]
’From 550 AD, a network of powerful chiefdoms emerged in the interior of Cambodia, under the generic name Chenla. By this period, paramounts were setting up inscriptions to record their august genealogies and achievements. These were carved in Sanskrit, but some texts were written in Old Khmer. These provide us with a vital glimpse of the religious beliefs under the veneer of Hindu worshi’
[3]
’The Sanskrit text began with a eulogy of the king, if it was a royal foundation, followed by a list of donations, such as workers and land, which was written in Khmer.’
[4]
[1]: (Vickery 1998, 99) [2]: (Higham 2014, 830) [3]: (Higham 2011, 475) [4]: (Higham 2014b, 293) |
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’There can hardly be any doubt that the polities within Cambodia from the 7th to the 13th centuries were mainly agrarian, their development of written records very high for the period, these records largely concerned with economic and administrative matters, and that by the Angkor period temples had political and economic managerial functions. The notable Southeast Asian societies without an impressive epigraphic tradition, such as Funan, Srivijaya, Ayutthaya, and Pregu, were preeminently maritime trading polities.’
[1]
’The archaeological hardware of these vital centuries is provided by the surviving temples, reservoirs and rice fields, but the social software has to be teased out of the surviving inscriptions. Carved onto stone stelae, these were inscribed in Sanskrit and old Khmer languages. Nearly all relate to the foundation and administration of a temple. They regularly refer to a ruler or the title and name of a local grandee associated with the temple foundation and its maintenance. The Khmer text includes information on rice fields, their boundaries, donations of surplus products to the temple, and the number and duties of individuals assigned to its support.’
[2]
’From 550 AD, a network of powerful chiefdoms emerged in the interior of Cambodia, under the generic name Chenla. By this period, paramounts were setting up inscriptions to record their august genealogies and achievements. These were carved in Sanskrit, but some texts were written in Old Khmer. These provide us with a vital glimpse of the religious beliefs under the veneer of Hindu worship.’
[3]
’The Sanskrit text began with a eulogy of the king, if it was a royal foundation, followed by a list of donations, such as workers and land, which was written in Khmer.’
[4]
[1]: (Vickery 1998, p. 99) [2]: (Higham 2014, p. 830) [3]: (Higham 2011, p. 475) [4]: (Higham 2014b, p. 293) |
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’There can hardly be any doubt that the polities within Cambodia from the 7th to the 13th centuries were mainly agrarian, their development of written records very high for the period, these records largely concerned with economic and administrative matters, and that by the Angkor period temples had political and economic managerial functions. The notable Southeast Asian societies without an impressive epigraphic tradition, such as Funan, Srivijaya, Ayutthaya, and Pregu, were preeminently maritime trading polities.’
[1]
’The archaeological hardware of these vital centuries is provided by the surviving temples, reservoirs and rice fields, but the social software has to be teased out of the surviving inscriptions. Carved onto stone stelae, these were inscribed in Sanskrit and old Khmer languages. Nearly all relate to the foundation and administration of a temple. They regularly refer to a ruler or the title and name of a local grandee associated with the temple foundation and its maintenance. The Khmer text includes information on rice fields, their boundaries, donations of surplus products to the temple, and the number and duties of individuals assigned to its support.’
[2]
’From 550 AD, a network of powerful chiefdoms emerged in the interior of Cambodia, under the generic name Chenla. By this period, paramounts were setting up inscriptions to record their august genealogies and achievements. These were carved in Sanskrit, but some texts were written in Old Khmer. These provide us with a vital glimpse of the religious beliefs under the veneer of Hindu worship.’
[3]
’The Sanskrit text began with a eulogy of the king, if it was a royal foundation, followed by a list of donations, such as workers and land, which was written in Khmer.’
[4]
[1]: (Vickery 1998, p. 99) [2]: (Higham 2014, p. 830) [3]: (Higham 2011, p. 475) [4]: (Higham 2014b, p. 293) |
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They had writing and so it was likely used to assist organization.
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c582 CE: "The First Turkic Khaganate officially split into the Western and the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. In the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, the Sogdian language and script was used for chancellery purposes and inscriptions."
[1]
[1]: (Hosszú 2012, 285) Hosszú, G. 2012. Heritage of Scribes: The Relation of Rovas Scripts to Eurasian Writing Systems. Rovas Foundation. |
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c500 CE and after: "It may be assumed that by then some of the Juan-juan already lived a settled life and practised agriculture. The original sources repeatedly mention that their khagans obtained ‘seed millet’ from China (some 10,000 shi each time). This shows that the Juan-juan society and state had gradually developed from nomadic herding to a settled agricultural way of life, from yurts to the building of houses and monumental architecture, from the nomadic district to towns. They had invented their own system of writing and developed their own local culture and Buddhist learning flourished."
[1]
[1]: (Kyzlasov 1996, 317) |
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Genealogical registers of noble ancestry (including important marriages, and sometimes important life events of individuals) were recorded in stone during this period. Some examples have been found in tombs.
[1]
[1]: Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. p184 |
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Genealogical registers were recorded in the previous periods (IIIB-IV),
[1]
and lists assumed to have continued in existence during this period.
[1]: Flannery and Marcus (1983) The Cloud People: divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Academic Press, New York. p184 |
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Secular and clerical authorities collected taxes from commoners: ’With like energy he preached the crusade to the Holy Land which had been urged at the Council of Bergen. People were prevailed upon to pay an extra tax of one öln vadmál year for the period of six years to defray the expenses of the undertaking. Bishop Jörund of Hólar was also encouraged by Arni’s example to collect all sorts of dues for the church, and to enforce the provision of the church laws.’
[1]
’This was made especially manifest by the new procedure introduced at this time of summoning people to Norway for trial. [...] The king’s officers also travelled about collecting the royal revenues with greater severity that had hitherto been customary. They reproved the people for appealing to the bishop, and in some cases forbade them to pay as large church dues as the bishop had demanded.’
[2]
This suggests the presence of registers.
[1]: Gjerset, Knut [1924]. "History of Iceland", 219 [2]: Gjerset, Knut [1924]. "History of Iceland", 220 |
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The Constabulary relied on ad hoc devices rather than written lists when administering government plantations, but there was a literate minority using attendance books: ’The producer’s half of the income from the coffee was paid, not on delivery, but at the end of each year. The official in charge of the scheme visited each village to make the payments. The ordinance required that payment was to be made in proportion to days worked and, as the village constable who was in charge of the plantation was almost invariably illiterate, some of them kept an “attendance stick” for each man. A notch was cut in the stick for each day of absence other than that caused by illness or the death of a close relative. When the government officer visited the village to make the payments the constable produced the attendance stick of each man as he came up for payment. Some constables relied on memory to inform government officers of absentees, but the few literate ones (e. g. at Sombo) were provided with attendance books.’
[1]
[1]: Crocombe, R. G. 1964. “Communal Cash Cropping Among The Orokaiva”, 15 |
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Due to likely existence of bureaucracy.
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Contracts. "The principal collection of Sogdian documents available to us from 8th century Sogdiana—the documents from Mount Mugh—were found in 1933 in Tadjikistan. This collection is made up of the archives of one of the great Sogdian nobles who resisted the Arabs, Dèwà“tì‘, the lord of Panjikent and self-proclaimed king of Sogdiana. It is made up primarily of letters dealing with the struggle against the Arabs and the administration of his agricultural domains, but also contains a few contracts (for marriage, the purchase of a burial plot, et cetera)."
[1]
[1]: (de la Vaissière 2005, 161) |
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e.g. astronomical: Ulughbeg’s "compendium of data, called the Zij or collection of astronomical tables, was clearly a collaborative work involving especially Kashi. In nearly three hundred pages of charts and quantitative data, it fixed with precise figures the locations of 992 stars. The star catalog included in the Zij was more comprehensive than any previous catalog, and far more precise."
[1]
[1]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
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e.g. used in governor’s administration
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Clerical officials regularly drew up dispatches, tax lists, and so forth.
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archival buildings?
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Catasti (population lists) were compiled in the Papal State for taxation purposes from the early 16th century.
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Twelve Tables laws 450 BCE.
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Twelve Tables laws of 450 BCE.
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Census; encyclopaedias. “Military and fiscal reorganisation under the Bourbons in the eighteenth century created new sources for the demographic historian. Taxes on income led to inventories of the manpower of the Crown of Aragon, listing in some cases individuals and not just households. This was the model which the marquis of Ensenada tried to follow in Castile between 1750 and 1754, listing persons and ages in one of the most complete censuses for any pre-industrial population (though the proposed income tax could not be implemented). The famous Enlightened minister, the count of Aranda, was responsible in 1768 for the first survey of Castile and his native Crown of Aragon together. But the first modern census of Spain as a whole is reckoned to be that of his successor, the count of Floridablanca, in 1787.”(Casey 2002: 20) Casey, James. 2002. Early Modern Spain: A Social History. New York: Routledge. https://www.zotero.org/groups/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/2SNTRSWT “Putting the new economic doctrines into practice, Carlos III and Aranda ordered dramatic new public works such as the Canal of Aragon, they inaugurated regular stagecoach service to the major cities, and they established a royal school of agriculture at Aranjuez. Through their efforts, Spain had its first census in 1786, before even Britain.”(Bergamini 1974: 93) Bergamini, John D. 1974. The Spanish Bourbons: The History of a Tenacious Dynasty. New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons. https://archive.org/details/spanishbourbons00john. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/5A2HNKTF “The great Encyclopedie, which had its troubles in France, was banned in 1759; but copies of it were available in Madrid, and lesser scientific encyclopedias were widely circulated.”(Bergamini 1974: 93) Bergamini, John D. 1974. The Spanish Bourbons: The History of a Tenacious Dynasty. New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons. https://archive.org/details/spanishbourbons00john. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/5A2HNKTF
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Dictionaries; encyclopeadia. “In 1883 under the patronage of Crown Prince Rudolf, the government of Austria-Hungary initiated a vast project to make visible the diversity and dimensions of empire. The goal was to collect studies of the empire’s highly diverse geology, flora, fauna, and populations in a set of illustrated volumes to be made available for public subscription: the so- called Kronprinzenwerk.”
[1]
“The work of Josef Jungmann (1773-1847) had more specific philological value in regard to the Czech language. As prefect of the Academic Gymnasium in Prague he wrote a textbook on style in Czech and translated several works by Milton, Pope, Goethe, and Chateaubriand into Czech. Much of his lifework was focused on the compilation of a Czech-German dictionary in five volumes.”
[2]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 8) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW [2]: (Kann 1974: 385) Kann, Robert A. 1974. A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/RP3JD4UV |
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e.g. Yellow Register Archives in Nanjing.
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e.g. Census.
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e.g. within the bureaucracy.
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e.g. Bureaucratic use.
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e.g. Used by bureaucracy.
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E.g. Sima Qian’s "Shiji" genealogical tables and ruler lists.
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Government administration would have produced lists.
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used by the state
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used by the state.
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Presuming that as in previous ages, administrative records were written.
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Inferred in previous polities.
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Inferred for pe
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[1]
"land register, a text recording the measures of individual administrative districts, their borders, gods and imperial functionaries."
[2]
[1]: Roux 1998, 148 [2]: (Leverani 2014, 159) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East. History, society and economy. Routledge. London. |
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inferred continuity with earlier periods
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inferred continuity with earlier periods
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"In 1851, the first modern institution of higher education was founded. Dar ul-Funun, a polytechic institute, was founded by Amir Kabir, the Prime Minister from 1848 to 1851, better known as Iran’s first reformer, to educate students in medicine, engineering, geology, and military sciences."
[1]
[1]: (Maranlou 2016, 144-145) Sahar Maranlou. Modernization Prospects For Legal Education In Iran. Mutaz M Qafisheh. Stephen A Rosenbaum. eds. 2016. Experimental Legal Education in a Globalized World: The Middle East and Beyond. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle upon Tyne. |
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Advanced, literate, scientific culture.
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e.g. used by government
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According to Miriam Stark, ’[i]ndividuals increased their karma for the next life by establishing temples or making donations to extant temple (see also Hagesteijn 1996:189, passim). Entrenched and aspiring elite members recorded their temple offerings in stone. Such activity is clear in the earliest dated Khmer inscription (K. 600) from Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia. This inscription lists donations to the temple/foundation by two elite individuals: nine males, nine females, two children, eighty head of cattle, two buffalo, ten goats, forty coconut trees, and two rice fields (Vickery 1998:227)’,
[1]
and ’most indigenous inscriptions record the beneficence of aspiring elite individuals’
[2]
, and ’[g]enealogies frequently appear in royal inscriptions [...]’
[3]
’From its earliest appearance, the Khmer language adopted a great many lexical terms from Sanskrit (Bhattacharya 1991: 6; Pou 2003: 283). However, the content of the Khmer inscriptions differ markedly from the Sanskrit ones. They are not addressed to gods, but to a temporal audience: authorities and officials, relatives of the founders, and in their broad imprecations, to the world in general. The authors tend not to express a political agenda here, in that they do not praise or assert power. The Khmer inscriptions seem more like legal documents - they often record the history of endowments made to foundations and they establish the ownership of land, setting out the rights of the foundation and the founder’s family. Vickery (1985) has suggested that many such texts in the 10th and 11th centuries have a certain political agenda on the part of the authors, who often appear to be concerned with their claims to titles and land. The texts may list and describe in detail the property of the foundation, record the donors, the circumstances under which land was acquired, the price paid, and settlement of disputes by courts. They may note the weight, quantity and material of temple ‘treasure’ or objects used in exchanges, the rice production of foundation lands, sometimes their location and dimensions. Requirements for continuing support for divinities and temple personnel may be set out and personnel might be listed, sometimes by name, gender, dependents, duties or place of origin, or else as totals. The texts may also refer to imposts or immunities granted to the foundations. The king is frequently acknowledged in inscriptions authored by individuals other than rulers, and a date is often recorded. The king is depicted as having a key role in state administration, establishing inquiries and being at least nominally responsible for legal decisions, ordering building works to be initiated, etc. There is an emphasis on the role of the ruler or of his predecessors in giving land, granting permission to purchase it or materially supporting the foundation, presumably placing the founder and his relatives under some future obligations. The authors record the merit, accrued by the ruler through his generosity, which is mostly dealt with poetically in the Sanskrit texts. Inscriptions written by rulers in Old Khmer are edicts relating mostly to matters of law, temple administration or land allocation and taxation. The texts are somewhat formulaic, though of varying length. Presumably, wealthier temples had more resources warranting recording, and had more literate scribes to produce the texts.’
[4]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2006, p.160-161) [2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 144) [3]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.161) [4]: (Lustig 2009, p. 108) |
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State bureaucracy.
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Used by government.
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Within bureaucracy.
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e.g. star tables produced at the astronomy in Maragha.
[1]
[1]: Beatrice Forbes Manz, ‘The Rule of the Infidels: The Mongols and the Islamic World’, in David O. Morgan and Anthony Reid (eds), The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 3. The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 155. |
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Muslim officials working for the king would likely have drawn up lists.
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Due to likely existence of bureaucracy.
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Libraries and archives existed.
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likely what bureaucrats would do with writing
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By government, traders etc.
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Used by government administrators.
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These included tribute tabulations and tax receipts from India.
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"The ’archival library’ in the palace of Ai Khanoum"
[1]
would have contained all sorts of literature. The Greek cultural world endured beyond the collapse of the successor states. Lexicography, astrological diaries, market prices and records also existed within the wider Greek world. Evidence from inscriptions indicate interaction with the wider literary traditions. This was especially true in regards to the Seleucids and later Arsacid literary traditions.
[2]
Even the chronology of the period is in question by some scholars.
[3]
[1]: (Staikos 2004) Staikos, K. 2004. The History of the Library in Western Civilization: From Minos to Cleopatra. Hes & de Graaf Publishers. [2]: Sherwin-White, Susan M. From Samarkhand to Sardis: a new approach to the Seleucid empire. Vol. 13. University of California Pr, 1993. [3]: Seldeslachts, Erik. "The end of the road for the Indo-Greeks?." Iranica antiqua 39, no. 0 (2005): 249-296. |
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"the former nomadic invaders came into possession of vast territories inhabited by settled agricultural peoples with a culture and traditions dating back many centuries, just as had been the case with the Tokharians ... who created the Kushan Empire. It seems likely that the administrative and government structure created by the Kushans was left largely intact under the Kidarites."
[1]
[1]: (Zeimal 1996, 132) Zeimal, E. V. The Kidarite Kingdom In Central Asia. in Litvinsky, B. A. ed. and Iskender-Mochiri, I. ed. 1996. History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume III. The crossroads of civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750. pp.123-137. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001046/104612e.pdf |
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inferred continuity with earlier periods in the region
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government + literacy
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literacy + government
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"normally it is only after writing comes to be used for display that archaeology begins to find traces of it. Because administrative documents were almost certainly written on perishable materials like bamboo and papyrus, we will probably never find them."
[1]
The administrative system must have used written lists, such as for items to procure for ritual occasions or building projects.
[1]: (Wang 2014, 179) Wang, Haicheng. 2014. Writing and the Ancient State: Early China in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. |
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"The building of monumental architecture and the production of elite objects would have been inconceivable without some sort of systematic management of the city’s resources. ... A similar response to administrative needs at Erlitou is certainly a possibility."
[1]
"normally it is only after writing comes to be used for display that archaeology begins to find traces of it. Because administrative documents were almost certainly written on perishable materials like bamboo and papyrus, we will probably never find them."
[2]
An incipient administrative system may have used a basic list such as for the procurement of needed resources.
[1]: (Wang 2014, 178) Wang, Haicheng. 2014. Writing and the Ancient State: Early China in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. [2]: (Wang 2014, 179) Wang, Haicheng. 2014. Writing and the Ancient State: Early China in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. |
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"During the Spring and Autumn Period, the powerful states such as Qin and Chu set up a new administrative system of provinces and counties ... These governors in the provinces and counties comprised the first bureaucracy in Chinese history."
[1]
[1]: (Zhang 2015, 144) Zhang, Qizhi. 2015. An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture. Springer. |
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The Shang had tablets
[1]
to write on so their bureaucracy would very likely compiled lists, such as for resources to acquire. They also wrote on perishable materials, such as bamboo and silk.
[1]
[1]: (The Shang Dynasty, 1600 to 1050 BCE. Spice Digest, Fall 2007. http://iis-db.stanford.edu/docs/117/ShangDynasty.pdf) |
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Clear that each Warring State kingdom kept records and produced a great deal of political, philosophical, and religious work; most literature from this period was destroyed in various wars however, and ultimately systematically destroyed by Qin and later Han Empires, though parts of the works produced in this period were adapted or transmitted to later authors.
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"Demotic ostraca discovered in a temple attest to the villages’ existence from the late 26th to early 30th dynasties. The texts - still unpublished - often record transactions with water. Farmers bought the right to have water flow into their fields for a number of days and promised part of their yields in return. The contracts are dated in the traditional Egyptian way according to the regnal years of kings. They include both Persians and those who ruled when Egypt was independent from the empire. The changes in government did not affect how the records were kept."
[1]
[1]: (Van de Mieroop 2011, 307) |
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[1]
One of the first written ’documents’ were numerical tablets, discovered e. g. at Uruk, Susa, Godin and Jebel Aruda.
[2]
Most of the archaic texts had administrative character and were used as ’as an instrument in the management of economic transaction’
[3]
However, there are few exceptions, there were found also the texts which were dedicated to educate scribes and were used as ’copy book’.
[4]
[1]: Nissen et al. 1993, 11 [2]: Cooper 2004, 75-76 [3]: Nissen et al. 1993, 30 [4]: Nissan et al. 1993, 30 |
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The earliest phonetic hieroglyphic writing was found in the tomb J at the Abytos Cemetary U - on the pottery vessels and small bone/ivory labels
[1]
. They are dated to Naqada IIIA. But it should be noticed that already in Naqada I, signs similar to hieroglyphs have been found, especially on the pottery vessels (pot marks). However "none of these signs hints at the existence of phonograms, phonetic complements or detenninatives" and "the absence of an important component of the hieroglyphic writing system does not allow us to designate these signs as "hieroglyphic writing""
[2]
. It can be rather treated as an abstract symbolic system
[3]
[1]: Köhler, E. C. "Theories of State Formation". [in:] Wendrich, W. [ed.]. Egyptian Archaeology. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. pg: 41. [2]: Kahl, J. "Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an Analysis of Systems". Archeo-NiI 11 (2001); 122, 124. [3]: Meza, A. 2012. ANCIENT EGYPT BEFORE WRITING: From Markings to Hieroglyphs. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation. pg: 25. |
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Classifications: “In May 1576 Philip issued a detailed list of forty-nine questions which were to be answered by all officials in America. The questionnaire covered every conceivable topic from botany and geography to economy and religion. The answers, the famous ‘geographic relations’, began to come in from 1577 and trickled through for ten years more.”
[1]
[1]: (Kamen 2002, 353) Kamen, Henry. 2002. Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power, 1492-1763. London: Penguin Books. https://www.zotero.org/groups/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/5IIFB6KQ |
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|
"Aksumite rulers who often spoke and read in Greek, put great store in written documents and in libraries to keep them".
[1]
"The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, around 50 CE, "describes the ruler of the region, King Zoscales, as ’well versed in Hellenic sciences’. This would naturally require fluency in Greek, the lingua-franca of the ancient economy."
[2]
No data on written documents but it is likely that they existed, especially in Greek along the parts of the coast engaged in trade with the Greek-speaking world, if not also further inland at the capital Aksum in Ge’ez - or its precursor language - with documents relating to the local religion and the state.
[1]: (Murray 2009) Stuart A P Murray. 2009. The Library: An Illustrated History. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. [2]: (Glazier and Peacock 2016) Darren Glazier. David Peacock. Historical background and previous investigations. David Peacock. Lucy Blue. eds. 2016. The Ancient Red Sea Port of Adulis, Eritrea: Results of the Eritro-British Expedition, 2004-5. Oxbow Books. Oxford. |
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SCCS variable 149 ’Writing and Records’ is coded as ‘1’ or ‘None’, not ‘Mnemonic devices’, or ‘Nonwritten records’, or ’True writing, no records’, or ‘True writing; records’ We have assumed there that native petty officials would have handled lists and classifications when working with the colonial administration.
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’In order to meet the clerical service required for these forms, there is attached to the important Tribunals a Registrar’s office where summonses and all other processes are taken. The Registerar has charge of the cause list and the Records Books.’
[1]
[1]: Danquah, J.B. 1928: 97; Literacy Database |
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Most documents written in Cretan Hieroglyphic have an administrative purpose containing lists of agricultural commodities, people and livestock.
[1]
[2]
[1]: Karnava, A. 2000. The Cretan Hieroglyphic Script of the Second Millennium BC: Description, analysis, Function and Decipherment Perspectives (Ph.D: University of Bruxelles), 240-41 [2]: Tomas, H. 2010. "Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A," in Cline, E. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, Oxford, 345-46. |
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"There is a sharp increase in written finds from Canaan dating to the Late Bronze Age. In fact, more than 50 percent of the Akkadian tablets that have been found in the southern Levant date to this period. Within this corpus, one can add the Amarna archive, which includes many [diplomatic] letters from Canaan. Excavations at Syrian sites including Emar, Alalakh, and Ugarit have revealed several rich archives, and it is tempting to assume that large Canaanite urban centers to the south of these sites had similar bureaucratic system that included administrative archives. Nevertheless, written finds from Late Bronze Age Canaan are scarce, and it seems that documents were limited to administrative needs. This differs from the situation in Syria, where writing was also used for literary purposes (Schniedewind 2004, 40-41)."
[1]
[1]: Shai/Uziel (2010:74) |
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Post-Mauryans in Krishna valley: "Amaravati inscription of this period records the existence of a royal scribe (rajalekhaka). This may indicate that record-keeping started to play an integral part in local political administration as well as in commercial activities in this period."
[1]
[1]: (Shimada 2012, 118) Shimada, Akira. 2012. Early Buddhist Architecture in Context: The Great Stupa at Amaravati (ca. 300 BCE-300 CE). BRILL. |
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The primary evidence of the writing in use during the period are the inscriptions of Asoka. The two major writing systems seem to have been Brahmi and Kharosthi, but as these are stone pillars coding the presence of other types of writing is problematic. The survival of the Arthashartra, a political manual of statecraft for a king would seem to indicate a larger literary tradition.
[1]
[1]: Singh, Upinder, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. (New Delhi, 2008), p. 320 |
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The Ilm al-Miqat astrological literature led to the creation of vast tables, ranging from simple tables compiled in Baghdad in the ninth century CE to measure solar or stellar altitudes effect on prayer time to more sophisticated tables dictating what tens of thousands of entries for finding the time of day or night by the sun or any star on multiple latitudes.
[1]
[1]: Young, M. J. L., John Derek Latham, and Robert Bertram Serjeant, eds. Religion, learning and science in the’abbasid period pp. 285 |
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"Within the land of Sumer and Akkad, the administration of the dynasty of Isin continued along the same lines as in the Kassite period."
[1]
Accounting records were used in the Kassite period.
[2]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 462) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. [2]: (Liverani 2014, 368) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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"Price lists were also an integral part of these codes (from the one of Ur-Nammu to the one of Eshnunna; see Text 11.2). [...] Consequently, royal steles were left in market-places as references for the fair prices established by the king."
[1]
[1]: (Liverani 2014, 200) Liverani, Mario. Tabatabai, Soraia trans. 2014. The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. London: Routledge. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/7DRZQS5Q/q/liverani. |
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c2000-1500 BCE the neighbouring Babylonians "constructed tables to aid calculation."
[1]
[1]: J J O’Connor, J J. Robertson, E F. December 2000. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Babylonian_mathematics.html |
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"Apart from this ’Chronicle’, there exists some Neo-Elamite inscriptions of the late 8th and the 7th centuries BC, a few documents in Elamite from the same period (mostly concerning loans and not very informative) and an archive of the shops of the royal craftsmen, dating from the very end of the existence of independent Elam, viz. the 6th century BC."
[1]
[1]: (Diakonoff 1985, 19) |
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"Apart from this ’Chronicle’, there exists some Neo-Elamite inscriptions of the late 8th and the 7th centuries BC, a few documents in Elamite from the same period (mostly concerning loans and not very informative) and an archive of the shops of the royal craftsmen, dating from the very end of the existence of independent Elam, viz. the 6th century BC."
[1]
[1]: (Diakonoff 1985, 19) |
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"For an insight into the forms of Parthian taxation we can now look to the ostraca found in the citadel at the royal capital of Nisa. Almost 2,500 ostraca have been found since 1948 in the former wine-storage rooms at Nisa. All the documents date from the mid-second (no. 257 is of the year 97 = 151/150 B.C.) to the late first century B.C. and record payments of rent or taxes in kind, in this case wine."
[1]
[1]: (Raschke 1976, 824-825) Raschke, Manfred G. in Haase, Wolfgang ed. 1976. Politische Geschichte (Provinzen und Randvölker: Mesopotamien, Armenien, Iran, Südarabien, Rom und der Ferne Osten). Walter de Gruyter. |
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"For an insight into the forms of Parthian taxation we can now look to the ostraca found in the citadel at the royal capital of Nisa. Almost 2,500 ostraca have been found since 1948 in the former wine-storage rooms at Nisa. All the documents date from the mid-second (no. 257 is of the year 97 = 151/150 B.C.) to the late first century B.C. and record payments of rent or taxes in kind, in this case wine."
[1]
[1]: (Raschke 1976, 824-825) Raschke, Manfred G. in Haase, Wolfgang ed. 1976. Politische Geschichte (Provinzen und Randvölker: Mesopotamien, Armenien, Iran, Südarabien, Rom und der Ferne Osten). Walter de Gruyter. |
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administrative and tax documents.
[1]
[1]: (Lambton 2011) Lambton, Ann K S. 2011. CITIES iii. Administration and Social Organization. Encyclopedia Iranica. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cities-iii |
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For example, the Mnesimachos inscription, where Mnesimachis listed the land grants he’d received from Antigonos and the annual tribute from each grant of land.
[1]
[1]: Aperghis, G. G. 2004. The Seleukid Royal Economy: The Finances and Financial Administration of the Seleukid Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p137 |
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e.g. the Loḡat-e Fors , the first monolingual dictionary of Persian; manuals detailing the techniques of composing verse.
[1]
"Secretarial manuals describe the compilation of census and property registers that decided land rights and set just taxation levels."
[2]
[1]: Daniela Meneghini ’SALJUQS v. SALJUQID LITERATURE’ http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/saljuqs-v [2]: (Darling 2013, 95) Darling, Linda T. 2013. A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East: The Circle of Justice from Mesopotamia to Globalization. Routledge. |
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[1]
c2000-1500 BCE the neighbouring Babylonians "constructed tables to aid calculation."
[2]
"To relieve the tedium of long calculations, the Mesopotamians made extensive use of mathematical tables. These included tables for finding reciprocals, squares, cubes, and square and cube roots, as well as exponential tables and even tables of values of n3 + n2, for which there is no modern equivalent."
[3]
There is very little known regarding the Shimashki dynasty, and there are found only few inscription, lists and seals with names of lugal or ensi of Elam and Anshan from this dynasty (e. g. Imazu, Idaddu I, Ebarti II).
[4]
[1]: Hinz 1971, 654 [2]: J J O’Connor, J J. Robertson, E F. December 2000. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Babylonian_mathematics.html [3]: (Joseph 2011, 142) Joseph, George Gheverghese. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (Third Edition). Princeton University Press. [4]: Potts 2012, 42-43 |
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Preiser-Kapeller says present.
[1]
E.g. tax assessment known as the kataster, "a central tax list covering all the cultivatable land".
[2]
[1]: (Preiser-Kapeller 2015) Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) [2]: (Haussig 1971, 174) Haussig, H W.trans Hussey, J M. 1971. History of Byzantine Civilization. Thames and Hudson. |
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Preiser-Kapeller says present.
[1]
E.g. tax assessment known as the kataster, "a central tax list covering all the cultivatable land".
[2]
[1]: (Preiser-Kapeller 2015) Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) [2]: (Haussig 1971, 174) Haussig, H W.trans Hussey, J M. 1971. History of Byzantine Civilization. Thames and Hudson. |
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Molla Lutfi (Bayezid II period) classification of sciences and geometry.
[1]
"Legal and financial records."
[2]
[1]: (http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/science.asp) [2]: (Imber 2002, 149) Imber, Colin. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650. The Structure of Power. PalgraveMacmillan. Basingstoke. |
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Molla Lutfi (Bayezid II period) classification of sciences and geometry.
[1]
"Legal and financial records."
[2]
[1]: (http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/science.asp) [2]: (Imber 2002, 149) Imber, Colin. 2002. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650. The Structure of Power. PalgraveMacmillan. Basingstoke. |
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"Ulughbeg, a grandson of Timur, briefly ruled Central Asia and was an educator and astronomer. His tables of the movements of stars were long unsurpassed for accuracy".
[1]
[1]: (Starr 2013) Starr, S. Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press. Princeton. |
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"In the second half of the 1st millennium B.C., beside the monumental script of the inscriptions, another, ’cursive’ (or ’miniscule,’ abbreviated below as minusc.), script of everyday documents such as private letters, contracts, and magic texts developed. Discovered in 1973, this script was difficult to decipher. Only thirty minuscule documents have been published, out of an estimated number of several thousand. Almost all published miniscule texts are Sab. and date from the 2nd-3rd centuries C.C., most of them coming from the city of Nashshan in the Wadi Madhab."
[1]
[1]
[1]: (Kaye 2007, 168) L E Kogan. A V Korotayev. Epigraphic South Arabian Morphology. Alan S Kaye ed. 2007. Morphologies of Asia and Africa. Volume 1. Eisenbrauns. Winona Lake. |
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"In the second half of the 1st millennium B.C., beside the monumental script of the inscriptions, another, ’cursive’ (or ’miniscule,’ abbreviated below as minusc.), script of everyday documents such as private letters, contracts, and magic texts developed. Discovered in 1973, this script was difficult to decipher. Only thirty minuscule documents have been published, out of an estimated number of several thousand. Almost all published miniscule texts are Sab. and date from the 2nd-3rd centuries C.C., most of them coming from the city of Nashshan in the Wadi Madhab."
[1]
[1]
[1]: (Kaye 2007, 168) L E Kogan. A V Korotayev. Epigraphic South Arabian Morphology. Alan S Kaye ed. 2007. Morphologies of Asia and Africa. Volume 1. Eisenbrauns. Winona Lake. |
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Dresch mentions tax registers: ’From the summary histories one forms an impression of steadily increasing disorder through the next twenty years, until ’the people of San’a’ and others’ invited the Turks again to take the city ’after they had tired of the chaos which prevailed there, the dominion of men from the tribes, the cutting of the roads, and the lack of any ordered security’ (al-jirafi 1951: 205-6). A more recently available, and more detailed, source gives a different impression (al-Hibshi 19 80: 29 6 ff.). But the Turks seem in any case to have had designs on the highlands: they had increased their forces on the coast ’until stores were coming ashore with San’a’ printed on every load’ (ibid. 315), and when they finally arrived, in 1872, they demanded the tax registers which would reveal to them the administration and resources of the whole country (al-Wasi’I 1928: IIO). They were to remain in highland Yemen until 19 18.’
[1]
[1]: Dresch, Paul 1989. "Tribes, Government and History in Yemen", 217 |
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Anatomy studied, so must have needed these. Account from 1472 AD ‘Then after the Qur’an I studied the Quranic readings, individually and collectively, under my maternal uncle ... Then I studied Arabic under my maternal uncle and others. I studied also in particular under him arithmetic, algebra, anatomy, surveying, God’s ordinances and fiqb with the result that I derived benefit from all these disciplines’
[1]
[1]: G. REX SMITH, ‘THE TAHIRID SULTANS OF THE YEMEN (858-923/1454-1517) AND THEIR HISTORIAN IBN AL-DAYBA’, ‘’Journal of Semitic Studies’’, Volume XXIX, Issue 1, 1 March 1984, p. 151 |
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"At the same time, a first generation of botanists and medical specialists, such as Georg Marcgraf and Willem Piso in Brazil, Jacobus Bontius in Java, Georgius Everhardus Rumphius on Ambon and Hendrik van Reede tot Drakenstein in Malabar, created detailed inventories of the non-European flora and fauna."
[1]
[1]: (Emmer and Gommans 2020: 81-82) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/AI9PPN7Q/collection. |
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“Furthermore, the practice of recording orally the names and genealogies of the kings of Kanem seems to have existed since the 9th century. The introduction of Islam and the Arabic script codified this tradition by making it possible to write down the names of the kings. This list or chronicle of kings, the diwan or girgam, was written from the 13th or 16th century until the19th and contained the names of 67 kings from the 9th to the 19th century. It constitutes one of the most important sources for the history of Kanem-Bornu and has been extensively used by historians of the empire.”
[1]
[1]: Hiribarren, Vincent. “Kanem-Bornu Empire.” The Encyclopedia of Empire, edited by Nigel Dalziel and John M MacKenzie, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016: 3. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/KNHK5ANQ/collection |
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Lists, tables, and classifications likely produced by literate, high-ranking mercantile minority. "In southern Senegambia, where non-Manding populations predominated, Manding was a prestigious language of the pagan aristocracy and, on the other hand, the language of the Muslim merchant network of Jakhanke. The existence of Manding Ajami in that area was already attested in the first half of the 18th century (Labat 1728; cited by Giesing & Costa-Dias 2007: 63), long before the pagan rule of the ñàncoo elite of the Kaabu was definitely smashed by Muslim Fulbe troops from Fuuta Jalon. In any case, the emergence of Ajami is not related to the establishment of a Muslim political power in this area: the main holders of Islamic writing in the area, the Jakhanke merchants, were for centuries integrated into the social system of the Kaabu confederation and often served as advisers and intermediates for the political elites."
[1]
"A number of terms have been used in this volume to refer to the usage of Arabic script for languages other than Arabic. Crosslinguistically, such writing systems are often termed ‘Arabic literature’, ‘Islamic literature’ or ‘Islamic writings’, and locally they are known by a large number of names, such as Wolofal, or Kiarabu. The term Ajami in particular (or variations, such as Äjam, Ajamiya, etc.), derived from the Arabic word ʿaǧam ‘non-Arab; Persian’, has gained some degree of popularity in academic literature and is also encountered as a self-denomination for these writing systems in some languages, such as Hausa."
[2]
[1]: (Vydrin 2014: 201-202) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/E8Z57DNC/collection. [2]: (Mumin and Verstegh 2014: 1) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/PVIK4HGV/collection. |
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"In the field of religion and culture, the nineteenth century is said to have witnessed the golden age of Islam in the Futa Jalon. It was the century of great scholars and the growth of Islamic culture. All the disciplines of the Quran were known and taught: translation, the hadiths, law, apologetics, the ancillary sciences such as grammar, rhetoric, literature, astronomy, local works in Pular and Arabic, and mysticism. Nineteenth-century European visitors were highly impressed by the extent of the Islamization, which was visible in the large number of mosques and schools at all levels, the degree of scholarship, the richness of the libraries, and the widespread practice of Islamic worship. All this seems to have been facilitated by the use of the local language, Pular, as a medium of teaching and popularization of Islamic rules and doctrine."
[1]
[1]: (Barry 2005: 539) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/SU25S5BX/items/6TXWGHAX/item-list |
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“The Persian records of the Nawab in the Tamilnad Archives, Madras, contain letters, government orders, accounts, service records of officials. There is also a diary maintained by Kishanchand, a trusted munshi of Mohammed Ali. It covers a period of about two years ending with February 1785.”
[1]
[1]: (Ramaswami 1984, 329) Ramaswami, N.S. 1984. Political History of Carnatic Under the Nawabs. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/7F5SEVNA/items/PTIS9MB4/collection |
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Records for weather and climate were kept alongside crop and pastoral records. Census records kept in manuscript form. Ecclesiastical parish records.
[1]
[1]: (Prestwich 2005: 4-5, 591) Prestwich, Michael. 2005. Plantagenet England 1225-1360. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XTBKFDCI |
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The following quote implies that indigenous writing emerged in the region in the 19th century. "The first documented autochthonous, Mande script to appear in West Africa was the one created by Duala Bukere from Grand Cape Mount County in Liberia who created a Vai syllabary in 1833, which has been standardized to 212 characters (Dalby, 1967: 14-18). [...] Appearing first in the region, the Vai syllabary became the prototype for other writing systems that were created in the inter-wars among indigenous peoples in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Speakers of southern Mande languages such as the Mende (1921) and the Kpelle (1935), and speakers of the Kru languages such as the Bassa (1920-25) have based their writing systems on the syllabary (Dalby, 1967: 2-4)."
[1]
[1]: (Oyler 2001: 75) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/collections/GWWIKDDM/items/X7HQWWH9/collection. |
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Scientific studies, census records.
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Division lists were kept by parliament as to how people voted.
[1]
[1]: (Bucholz et al 2013: 334) Bucholz, Robert, Newton Key, and R.O. Bucholz. 2013. Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=1166775. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XQGJH96U |
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Written records began being kept from the seventh century, including charters, king lists, historical works, and annals. “Kings were the most important benefactors of the religious houses within their kingdoms and naturally figure prominently in the archives of religious communities both through the records of their benefactions and in ‘historical’ records, such as saints’ Lives and annals, produced by individual religious houses. Religious houses might also act as repositories for the archives of their royal families and produce classes of records such as kinglists and genealogies for them.”
[1]
“This process of re-valuation has, however, encouraged several authors to imagine that sub-Roman Britain, in its entirety, retained a significant political, economic and military momentum across the fifth century and even the bulk of the sixth. This in large part stems from attempts to develop visions of an Arthurian era of British success against the incoming Anglo-Saxons, as suggested by the Historia Brittonum of 829–30, and the Annales Cambriae of the mid-tenth century.”
[2]
[1]: (Yorke 1990: 20) York, Barbara. 1990. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203447307. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/YXTNCWJN [2]: (Higham 2004: 3) Higham, Nick. ‘From Sub-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England: Debating the Insular Dark Ages’, History Compass 2, no. 1 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2004.00085.x. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/XZT7A79K |
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Dictionaries; songbooks. “In Carniola it was largely members of the clergy who had put together the very first “Alpine Slavic” or “Carniolan- language” grammars, dictionaries, schoolbooks, and songbooks in the period 1815–1848.”
[1]
[1]: (Judson 2016: 150) Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, USA; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/BN5TQZBW |
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Registers; government records. “Mawlây Ismâ’ïl bethought himself of this solution when he was organizing the Wadâya militia, as mentioned above. One of the secretaries of the Makhzen was M u h a m m a d ibn al-Kâsim ’Alïlïsh;16 whose father was also secretary to al-Mansür the Sa’âdï. ’The king had a militia of slaves’ he said to Mawlây Ismâ’ïl, ’and I possess the book in which m y father recorded their names’. He showed him this register, and told him that there were still a great many of these slaves in the Marrakesh area and that he would be able to collect them together and enter their names again in a special register in order to make them do military service.”
[1]
[1]: (Ogot 1992: 225) Ogot, B. A. 1992. ed., General History of Africa: Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century., vol. V, VII vols. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/24QPFDVP |
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Government documents.
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Natural history and classifications were popular from the beginning of the period. Directories. Government reports on the Empire, its people and lands.
[1]
[1]: (Marshall 2006: 88, 170) Marshall, P. J. ed. 2006. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II The Eighteenth Century. Vol. 2, 5 vols. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/HGG2PPQQ |
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“Kalākaua’s and Gibson’s “New Departure” into pan-Oceanianism also involved intensified data and item collecting. Building on St. Julian’s correspondence and reports, including Reeve’s invaluable 1857 gazetteer, Gibson’s department was interested in extending its knowledge of the region. A 1989 index of registered maps lists about a hundred maps of Oceania other than the Hawaiian Islands in the Hawaiian Government Survey’s collection, most of them British and US naval charts, others manuscript maps, some of them possibly made by Hawaiian expeditions to these islands.”
[1]
[1]: (Gonschor 2019: 94) Gonschor, Lorenz. 2019. A Power in the World: The Hawaiian Kingdom in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/FB64GREZ |
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The Soviet Union was known for its meticulous and comprehensive record-keeping, which was a crucial aspect of its centralized planning and administration. This systematic approach to documentation covered various spheres of governance, economy, and society:
Economic Planning: Central to Soviet record-keeping was the detailed documentation associated with their Five-Year Plans. Population Census: The Soviet government conducted regular censuses, gathering detailed information about the population. Party Records: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union maintained extensive records of its members. Military Documentation: The Soviet military kept thorough records on personnel, equipment, and operations. Scientific and Academic Research: In the field of science and academia, research and studies were often accompanied by detailed records, including data tables and classifications, especially in natural and social sciences. "The October Revolution of 1917 had as monumental an impact in the realm of archival administration as it did in most other aspects of society and culture, for it brought to Russia the most highly centralized archival system and the most highly state-directed principles of management, preservation, and utilization of documentary records that the world had seen." [1] [1]: Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, “Archives in the Soviet Union: Their Organization and the Problem of Access,” The American Archivist 34, no. 1 (1971): 27–41, accessed November 24, 2023, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40291294. Zotero link: 4VUGMNII |
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Government and Administrative Records: The Russian bureaucracy, particularly from the time of Peter the Great onward, was known for its detailed and extensive administrative practices. This included keeping records of populations, tax collections, land ownership, military conscription, and other state-related activities.
Economic and Trade Data: Merchants, trading companies, and state organizations involved in commerce would maintain lists and tables for inventory, trade transactions, customs duties, and other economic data. Scientific and Academic Classifications: In the field of science and academia, Russian scholars and institutions would use lists and tables for various purposes, including classification in natural sciences (like botany, zoology, and geology) and in compiling statistical and research data. Religious and Ecclesiastical Records: The Russian Orthodox Church, an integral part of the empire’s social fabric, maintained records in the form of lists and tables, including parish registers, records of ecclesiastical decisions, and theological classifications. [1] [1]: “Государственный Архив Российской Федерации - ГАРФ - Главная Страница,” accessed December 18, 2023, https://statearchive.ru/.. Zotero link: 25IR6P7G |
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Boyar Dumas Records: The Boyar Duma, a council of nobles advising the Tsar, kept records of their proceedings and decisions. These included lists of attendees, decisions made, and other administrative details.
[1]
[1]: Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689 (Princeton University Press, 1983) Zotero link: 8ZXZMT6C |
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"The conventional yardstick used to differentiate people was language. Foreigners as a category were called the people of the ’12 languages’ or ’40 languages’. In the 1830s, these were partly catalogues in a display at Bangkok’s Wat Pho, with 27 different peoples each portrayed on a door panel and described in an accompanying poem."
[1]
[1]: (Baker and Phongpaichit 2009, p. 62) |
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Preiser-Kapeller says present.
[1]
E.g. tax assessment known as the kataster, "a central tax list covering all the cultivatable land".
[2]
[1]: (Johannes Preiser-Kapeller 2015) Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) [2]: (Haussig 1971, 174) Haussig, H W.trans Hussey, J M. 1971. History of Byzantine Civilization. Thames and Hudson. |
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"According to the Sanguo zhi [Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms], because Kebineng’s lands were near the Chinese border, many Chinese people (Zhongguo ren 中國人) fled the warlord depredations of late Han and Three Kingdoms China to join Kebineng, teaching the Xianbei how to make Chinese-style arms and armor, and even introducing some literacy."
[1]
Kebineng’s reign started in 230 CE.
[1]: (Holcombe 2013, 7-8) |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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"Literacy entered Uganda for the first time with the introduction of Islam in the late 1860’s and for nearly a decade instruction in Islam was progressing and flourishing at the royal court. When literacy was introduced into the kingdom of Buganda, it was confined to speakers of Arabic and Kiswahili. "
[1]
[1]: (Pawliková-Vilhanová 2014: 145) Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/T7IMKZJJ. |
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No information found in sources so far.
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The following quote suggests that this era has left behind few written texts. "Historical information on those emerging years of the empire is dim and has to be carefully extracted from the accounts of Arab writers (Levtzion and Hopkins 1981), the scanty internal evidence in the Kanem-Borno king lists (Lange 1977), and the few fragments of internal scripts that have been recorded by the German traveler Heinrich Barth (1857-59; Lange 1987) and the British colonial officer Richmond Palmer (1967; 1970)."
[1]
[1]: (Gronenborn 2002: 103) |
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Lists, tables, and classifications have not been mentioned in the sources consulted.
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Prior to the colonial period, the Achik were illiterate. Were any of the Laskars literate and did they use lists and tables? ’Some of the Garos are of the opinion that they had their own alphabetic system of writing their language in some hoary past but this is not proved till now; it is really doubtful if the Garos had their own alphabet ever. ... the Garos of the interior hills were mostly illiterate who are even now mostly illiterate. After the district came under the administration of the British the foreign missionaries introduced Roman characters of writing and this facilitated them to translate the holy Bible into Garo and preach Christianity there. The Garos now write in Roman characters but even then all the letters of the English alphabet are not necessary to write the language’.
[1]
[1]: Choudhury, Bhupendranath 1958. “Some Cultural And Linguistic Aspects Of The Garos”, 50 |
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likely used by government officials
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Literate culture.
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