Alphabetic Labyrinth

164 Pages·1995·33.1 MB·English

by  Drucker

WITH 339 ILLUSTRATIONS

HE sein
LPHABETIC wntoc
LABYRINTH cncinssiation

Johanna Drucker

THAMES AND HUDSON
ote
be len read hi
publi peo. roth than
thin which i

©1995 Thame and Hudson LL

io ppc ton 999

sop ing oa ote

1 clap ord or

To my Father,
Boris Drucker,
who showed me that the letters were pictures,
and

to all my nieces and nephews

from:
Alex,
Annie,
Avery,
Buty,
Christopher,
Dona,
Eliza,
Jessica,
Kieran,
Lauran,
Matthew,
Matthew,
Paul,
Teddy,
Whitney

Zachary
‘Acknowledgments:

Many thanks are due tothe colleagues, felends and family who provided
advice on preliminary deafes of this manuscript: Natale Kampen, for
‘ongoing commentary and discussion; Dik Obbink for references inthe
CClasial period Andrew Gregory for translation fom Latin and many
details; Brad Freeman fr fist readings; Paula Gerson for her conser
"ous help on the medieval period Gino Lee for continual counsel on the
history of calligraphy and peining, as well at technical advice; Emily
MeVarish fr interest in a much eater proposal. Also thanks are due to
Bertrand Augst and Tony Dubovsky under whose generous sponsorship
and suppore the orginal rescarch fr this project was fist undertaken at
the Universiy of California a Berkeley in 1980. Mare Trib provided add
tional support at tha time Julian Boyd provided references and advice on
sections concerned with the late Renaissance, particulary the work of
John Wilkins. Much appreciation to Robin Middleton, through whose
‘machinations this bok became moe than apropos inal affectionate
‘hanks to Jane and Bors Drcker fr thir enthusiam and careful eading
of various portions ofthe draft manuscript

‘TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE ALPHABET IN CONTEXT

HE ALPHABET IN CLASSICAL HISTORY,
PHILOSOPHY AND DIVINATION

GNOSTICISM, HERMETICISM. NEO-PLATONISM
AND NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM: THE ALPHABET IN
THE HELLENISTIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA

(CALLIGRAPHY ALCHEMY AND ARS
‘COMBINATORIA IN THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

RATIONALIZING THE ALPHARET
‘CONSTRUCTION, REAL CHARACTER AND
PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGES IN THE

NATIONALISM: THE ALPHABET IN THE 18TH

THE ALPHABET IN THE 19TH CENTURY

20TH CENTURY: ECLECTICISM. TECHNOLOGY
AND THE IDIOSYNCRATIC IMAGINATION

Nores

ECH AND NARRATIVES

*®
From the invention of letters the machinations of the
art began to operate; falsity and error daily
litigation and prisons had their beginnings,

he relations of life were
defined, and laws were fixed; governors had a lasting

ule t0 refer to; scholars had authorities to venerate

the historian, the mathematician, the astronomer, can
ters, Were there not letters to

ind as-a token of the good, heaven rained down ripe
ain the day that chey were firs invented,

Henry

of the Art of Writing, 1853
THE ALPHABET IN CONTEXT

In some form or other the letrs we recognize as the alphabet have bee in
continuous use for more than thre thousand years, Current the alpha
bets more widespread than anyother system of writen language full
ccoune of its origin and development has only been pieced together dur
ing the 20h century and the obscurity ofthis history though the many
cence ofits use has fostered much speculation about the origin and
symbolic value ofthe leters. Ths, in addition to serving as an efficent
tmeans of representing many spoken languages, the alphabet has also
served as ast of symbols whove distinct visual characteristics have pro
| voted plenitude of imaginative projections. Thee symbolic int

ion ofthe visual forms ofthe eters ofthe alphabet provide arch ecord
of cultural history and ideas which iterweave che domaine of philosophy
and religion, mysticism and magic linguini and hamnanintc inquiry. The
investigation of alphaber symbols forms the central focus of this tod

) but afew parameters and terms must be defined before proceeding with
icuesion ofthat materia
First i is important to define the term alphabet and understand the

characteristics which distinguish che alphabet rom other forms of wri
| Secondly, the concept of alphabet symbolism, or the interpretation ofthe

alphabet as symbolic form, neds ear demarcation, Finally a brief ont
Tine of ocr

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The phen conet

‘wo paralel histories: on, attudes towne the funtion of language, and
the other the concept ofthe aymbol

Language has conventionally been con
‘munication. Writing is generally considered a mote oF less adequate

dered an instrument of com

means of transcribing language so hat it may serve its communicative
function. Bat throoghout history, the leters ofthe alphabet have occa
Sioned imaginative speculation about the possible hidden value oftheir
visual form. In oractlar and ritual practices, mystic and kabbalisic doc
tine Gnostic and humanistic belies, che letters have been considered as
fundamental element of the cosmos, or of divine or human knowledge
The auributes of ther visual forms have been asigned valu which
extend far beyond their capacity to function asthe orthogeaphy (mere
spelling o spoken sound) and instead hae allowed them to be construct
a indices of che most profound mysteries ofthe universe. While most of
the historical symbolic values attached t eter forms in thes interpreta

‘ons would be discounted by contemporary schoaes, the history of such
conceptions provides 2 fascinating insight into the history of idess. The
incepreation ofthe lever ‘eas produced by the orale at Delphi and
<eciledin a recoed by Plaarch may have litle to el ws about the conerete
storia lineage of the ith

much abe

Gree concepts of symbolic oem
As writen forms, the leters of the alphabet have been used for cen
‘uses in the production of writen and printed document. Many visually
inventive versions of leer forms have been produced, and a a device for
the arrangement of pct

tion of calligraphic artists, ype designers, and matics. I shall not dell
extensively hereon alphabet use that i purely decorative in nature, of

a elements the alphabet has enoyed the aten

attaches no extra meaning ovale tothe character of the lets or gies
no insight into inellectual thought. Instead the fous ofthis stay has
been on the interpretation ofthe alphabet asa symbolic matrix

ters are assumed to encode in thei visual shape the history oftheit of
ins, of some fundamental cosmologieal oF philosophical truth, or some
nyse or ritual power. This research mores far ail fom the domain of
archacological debate and linguistic inquiry ineo the realm of imagination
and philosophical speculation, bu the framework for understanding these
symbolic interpretations must be established inthe history ofthe serious

and systematic iui into the actual origin ofthe alphabet
Fewer than s dozen instances of the invention of writing are recorded
in human history Of these, most occured in and around the ancient New
nse cuneiform in Sumer (3100 BC all dates given here are general
Pror-Elamite (3000 BC), Hitt hieroglyphs (1500 BC), Egyptian hiro
tlyphics (3000 BC), and che Cretan-Minoan pictographic. and lneas
serpts (2000 BC, but witha considerably elie date forthe carved seals
from which they are derived). OF other ancient writing ystems, inclading

the ghphs of pre-Columbian America (he eatest examples date to
300 AD), Indus valley serpts (2000 BC), Easter Island protowriing and

=

other miscellaneous attempts of brief duration, only Chinese characters

have survived into contemporary use
The alphabet was probaly invented berween 1700 and 1500 BC by
speakers of a Semitic language inthe geographic area which serves as 4
bridge between the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The
teem Semisic dates fom the 18th centory AD, when it was derived by
European scholars from the name Shem, one ofthe sons of Nosh, oeler
to the group of languages of which Arabic and Hebrew ae now the best
known living examples. Contrary to popular ws
cic, racial or eultwal group, but a inguin family whe
dominated the region between the Sinai to the south, through the area
known asthe Levant along the coast of the Mediterancan, north through

it doesnot desctbe an

fe members

present-day Syria and Asia Minor, and eat to the mouth ofthe Tigris and

Euphrates valley (There ate exceptions, and the regi

cally homogeno

instance, as did the His)
The people who occupied thi region were known as Canaanites after

nwa not linguist
the Persians spoke an Indo-European language, for

the biblical designation of ancient Palestine asthe land of Canaan, The
but conventionally inclades che

term Canaanite is rather loosely used
Phoenicians early Hebrews, andthe Semite-peskig peopl of Palestine

In philological terms, Canaanite indicates one ofthe two main branches

‘ofthe northwestern Semitic language, of which the other is Aramaic

branches were represented by early alphabets, The Phoenician, who were
responsible for the stabilization and spread of the alphabet, were a
Canaanite group who spoke a Semitic language, occupied the coastal
regions, and had extensive maritime trade routes throughout, the
Mediterranean berween 130 and $00 BC

1s company with Chinese characters which made thee fie appear

ance in North China around 1700 BC, the alphabet provides the forms by

which all ving Languages ate writen, Almost wi

existing wring system derives from one o the other ofthese sources. Al
‘other writen forms have disappeared iter under the influence of cultural
exchange, coloization, assimilation, or linguistic evolution. Thus all
alphabetic weting, whether Cyrille, Devanagari, Arabic, Habre Lai,
Greek, Tibetan, Javanese of Bengal, or any ofthe many other alphabetic
forms, dvives fom a common source inthe Sina inthe second mile
um BC. The non-alphabetic Chinese characters provide the wt forms
for the rest of the worlds languages, beginning withthe Tibeto-Chinese

language for which hey were invented
Tn spite ofthe vas variety in contemporary visual appearance which is
the res of centuries of specialized adaptation, all alphabetic forms share

the same origin and posses similar sacral properties: they consist,
about twenty-four to thirty sigs ued to represent the sounds of spoken
language. The record of this single point of origin, che borrowing
Egyptian characters to compose a system of notation adequate for the
linguistically (and euleurally) dint peoples ofthe ancient Near Eat,

ES
The phen comet

vas parialy preserved i biblical and casical erature, andthe history
of debates onthe origins ofthe alphabe forms the subject of the following
chap
Te was in large pat efficiency and economy of means whch distin

‘ished the ery alphabet fom son-alphabetic scrips, With very limit
number of wren signs, al

almost any spoken language. Languages of the Semitic language group
were the fst robe written in alphabets form, particulaly those in sein

habetic writing canbe used to represent

the Sinai peninsula, slong the licoral extending up through present day
Ista), Lebanon and Syria to Asia Minor, and through areas of ancent
Palestine. But the alphabet proved readily adapable o Indo-European and
‘other languages, and contacts Est brought about through the systematic
invasions of he Levant by ties from the North and East beginning in the
late 13th and ently 12th ceneries BC promoted rapid rpread ofthis writ

ing system and the fst adaptations ofthese letter forms to now Semi
languages The alphabet is now used to write all the many branches of
Indo-European languages — Romance languages, Germanic, Balkan,
Slavic, Indian and Indonesian, aswell ste Finno- Hungarian languages,
and can be used to tranditerate unrelated linguist group, such as East
Asian ang

the zealous dedication of Christian missionaries ~ the Gothic alphabet
invented in the Sed century AD by the Bishop Wala being one ofthe fst
such examples — or by tsde and commescil interests. The cuttent exe
sion of alphabetic septs being effected hy electonie media and the el

8 well In many cases auch adaptations were fostered by

tive efcency ofthe alphabetic keyboard is only the latest in a long series
of sch dfsions

‘While the alphabet is phonetic in nature, this snot true of al other
writen language. Weiing systems ~ to proceed to the thi of my points
‘outlined above ~ may also be loggraphic, in which case the writen sign
represents a single word, or ieographic, in which ideas or concepts ate
represented directly in the form of glyph or characters. The Chinese lan
szage was log believed to belong to this later category, as were Egyptian
hiroplyphics though infact both systems combine phonetic and

les, with an occasional ideographic sign. The alphabet and
rm and pictographic scrips in we in Mesopotamia
syllabi; they made use of single sign to rep
resent combinations of consonane/vowel or wowelconsonant. A syilabary

and the Mediterranean we

tenerally consist of many dozens of signs, and is thus more clumsy and
complex than an alphabetic system. Completely ideographic serpts do
not exist, though many prote-writing systems are based on ieographic
Principles which bypass che representation of language ot linguini struc

tures in order to record complex thoughts in visual form. Such ideoprah
ie wetings occur in cultures which have neither developed nor seemed 0
require a writen language, though attempts to invent purely deographic

writing systems have been made. In particular, such inventions were a

_majoe passion of philosophers ofthe 17eh century when such polymaths

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asthe Bishop John Wilkins proposed ther own idiosyncratic inventions
Wilkins’ intention wa o organize all human knowledge into a single log
ical ierarchy and then o insent a written character eapable f comment
ating this knowledge directly eo the eye. Inspired in part by @ msunder:
standing ofthe nature of hieroglyphic signs, such experiments provide
considerble revelations about the concepts of symbolism and base
premises of human knowledge asumed by thie designers. Contemporary
esigners, such as Adrian Futiger, continue to search for ach universal

vimual symbol.
logographic and ideo
writing and units of

‘While thee basic categories ~ phonetic lab
traphie ~ describe the relations berween nits
speech or language, they provide no description ofthe nature ofthe wri

comprised

ten forms used foreach mode. A script may be pictogsaphic
of set of pictorial elements whose visual form ie recognizable as an
image sch a a standing figure, an animal, tool oa pat which sands
for the depicted object, or linear, schematic sets of arbitrary symbols
Ether script may also be used to represent abstract categories such as
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religious belie, legal constraints, or emotional reponse, which do not
lend themselves eeaily to dice depction. Picrographic scrips have the
dliadvantage that they tend robe labor intensive and require considerable

taining and manual al, This problem was ingeiouslycesalved by the
Minoan who crated punches or stamps ofthe almost 150 signimages
which they ued when Weng in we clay soft materi hey ao wed
the same signs however, when ining metal or writing with ik.
Picographic scrips have historia served the pnecedene 9 mor i
lied forms, the linear scripts whoveviul ements ate mote reduced
id scemacc, mor in keeping withthe “lzins ofthe hand remarked
alphabet forms. But there sno determining sequence scoring £0
Car ones be based on pctographi origina though the later cate f
teorne out ty. arcacologel evidence in all krown inane
SameroBabylonian/Akkadian cuneiform, Egyptian ictoeiyphis and
acters anderen the aiphabe, all ave derived ther schematic forms fom
pisogephic orignal

the shape ofthe leer ther orientation, the dectonl sequence ofthe
srtog andthe veteran eed in which he wetng sproduced In
ting pisapic inscriptions (on sone or eter hard material) or plo
trophic aac (wriing with ik on papyrs, cloth or ater sot
faces the archacalogeal comet prviel by a excavation ste may be
set determine the date ofa supe a welt function.

or

cule use fin_daing|and daingsishing. among alphabetic

alphabetic script and early examples of prot-Sinaitc alphabetic forms,
notated only afew vowel sounds, Other transformations ofthe alphabet
note almost none, and the scrips derived from the Greek adaptation have
4 more replete vowel notation system, Such distinctions may be used to
‘har the poine at which an alphabetic eystem was transmitted or modified
in adaptation from an caer form. Additional factors to be considered in
<ating epigraphic evidence ae the substantive conten of written samples
fas well ar the linguistic structure. While much of ealy non-alphabetic
‘cuneiform in Assyria and Babylonia was used for records of wade and
transactions, the early Ugattc text fom 1400 BC record myths and leg
ends in literary form. Cretan documents and Minoan pictogsaphe record
ax and tariff regulations while the Gree inscriptions on jugs and cupe
dating to the th century BC ate poetic pacans to athletes and dancers
Two early writing aysems, the cuneiform of the ancient Near East and
the hiertic form of Egyptian hicrogyphic, gure prominently inthe pre
history ofthe alphabet. But other writing forms have vanished entirely,
rulfering the fate ofan oblivion so deep that several of them have ett be

deciphered Before outlining in detail the history ofthe alphabet’ develop:
ment, and of the conceptual premises on which that history has been
based tscems useful to provide 2 context by describing the origi of
other writing systems. At last one ofthese, the Egyptian hieroglyphic,
had a history spanning neal cece thousand years’ and vasious forms of
cuneiform persisted nealy 2 long, s that the chronaogial span of their
use iva that ofthe alphabe.

‘Most ofthese noralphabetc writing forms had unigue origins, and in
ny afew cates is there evidence to indicate diet influence of idea or

1m for thee invention, Egyptian hieroglyphic, which appear ax eal as
3000 BC, provide searce evidence of thee prehistory The signs volved
into wel

red and complex elements of hiroglyphie writing, and
archacological evidence such asthe wellknown Narmer palette (dated at
2500 BC) provide testimony of an alteadyformed graphic syle. The few
‘alee porscatchings and incited marks found inthe region bear lite
relation to the pictographic elements of hieroglyphic characters, whose
‘origin ill unknown, Egypdan hierolyphics were wed almost
tnchanged, a least with respect to their visual form, throughout the near
Iy thre thousand years oftheir function, But two other frm of writing,

both versions of herglyphics modified for easier production, weee also
developed the hicratc and demote scripts. The hieratc retain in cusve
form, many of the pictorial clements of the hieroglyphs, bur demotie
Civented after contact with the Grecks wa already considerably deve

‘oped i 0 lines a form that iteration eo hicoglyphice estructural nd
linguistic rather than visual The dcipherment of Egyptian hitoghphics
‘through the efforts of Thomas Young, Alexander Saye and nally, Jean
Frangois Champolion, put to res many centuries of mythic symbolism
and croterc knowledge attributed tothe hieroglyphic character. But the
‘concept ofthe hieroglyph at an arcane and enigmatic sign continues inthe
populae imagination i he very ae ofthe word asa suggestive term,
‘Cuneiform sxpt, which competes with Egypian hieroglyphs forthe
faim to be the fra orm of writing, was invented sometime Betwecn 3500
and 3100 BC in Sumer. The Sumerians spoke a langage of uncertain

fin and the east documents produced in sript were entirely pico:
traphi. A moze linear form of wring, the free euneiform (wedge sha
‘or ‘naibwring?) developed by the Sumerians was adopted. by the

Babylonians and then the Asyrans, both Semitic speaking, in a system of
about 750 signe (only about 300 of which were in general use) cove fo
2800 BC. Cuneiform remained in use into the Christian era, though
employe at that sine only by priests and scholars. The period of greatest
‘tse wat in the Babylonian period of Hammurabi (between 1725 and 1680
BC) and at the height ofehe Asyran empire inthe Sth to 7th centuries
BC. Writing was sed in these cultures fora wide varity of purposes, and
the texts ate concerned with law and medicine, magic, astrology aso
omy, literature and many other eapdly developing Blds of human
knowledge
The Hities, who spoke an Indo-European language and had a fur
inhing eilizatio in northern Syria and Asia Minor in the Sed through Ist
millenium BC, invented a hieroglyphic writing sytem of their own
2round 1500 BC. They also borrowed the cuneiform script ofthe nigh
boxing Akkadians, but their hieroglyphic system, used uni thei cilia
on was conquered and absorbed after 600 BC, comprised approximately
400 signs which were not employed by anyother people

Similaly several sept systems onthe island of Crete, which may have
thd their original inspiration from the Kea of writing obverved in contact
with the Egyptians, hare nothing either visually or linguistically withthe
icroglyphics. The eatiest of these Cretan forms are two pictographic
scripts which developed around the palace at Knossos in 2000 BC, appar
ently followed chronologically by ewo linea forms, A and B, which are
‘related to each other. OF these, ony Linea B (fat developed around
1400 BC) has been deciphered, and that relatively eecently by Michael
Vener. Venti demonstrated thatthe scrip recorded an archaic form of
the Greck language but with characters whose origins sce to ave been
indigenous to Crete. The eater pictographic and Linea A stipes do no
record the Greck language, and they have not, a yet been aiccesfuly
deciphered. The wie of Linea B for sbout two hundred years before the
fnal destruction of Minoan civilization around 1100 BC come four thou
sang clay tablets wore preserved by thir accidental fing in the blaze
which destroyed the palace at Knos
tors oF eulers dominated the affairs atthe Minoan capital in that period

3) indicates chat Greck adminits

Linear B was used mainly for keeping palace accounts of transactions,
trade, and inventories. These Minoan scripts spread as fa as mainland
Greece and porily Cyprus, bt thet influence was limited both geo
sraphically and chronologically

"The Cypriot syllabary shows the distinc visual characteristics ofthe
(Geran scrips, and may have been brought to Cyprus around 1400 BC by
the Mycenaeans. This script was used to record non-Greck language and
was lealy modified to record diferen tongue

Another seemingly independent invention also accursed in the Indus
valley in the period around 2500 BC. Whether ceatd in contact with
other cultures wh had their ow writing system or from some individual
inspiration, chi script also vanished wi
‘ment in chi language also have yee to be deciphered

There were several other spontaneads inventions of wrcen language
the Mayan glyphs of pre-Columbian America, which were copied and
transformed by Toles, Aztec and other peoples in that region, and the
roago-ong script of Easter Inland. This latter system has an unknown
‘orgin and linguistic fonction, andthe ealest extant examples date fom
bout 1000 AD. Spanish conqueror’ destin ofthe caltuts, codices,
tnd monuments in the region of Ceneral America in which the pre
Columbian cultures had developed terminated any development which
smight have ocurred subscqntiyin hoe writing forms

But the Chinee characters, the second most widespread and persistent
form of weiing, were adapted to many Asian languages and cultures
Some of which had as litle in common with Chinese as Semitic and Indo
European civilizations had with each other, The Japanese for instance,
adopted a fal set of Chinese characters known as kant indicate proper
nouns and concepts, then a phonetic cursive biragans to indiate rounds,
and finally «printed form katakana which could be used for tranaltrs
tion. Clasical Chinese characters areal wed in linguistically indepen
dent cues, suchas Korea, fr formal document. Each ofthese writing
systems hat atch lineage of symbolic interpretations attacked tothe ea
<iional forms ofits clement which coud serve asthe base of fllscale
‘contribution tothe history of ideas and human cular.

at development and the doce

Howeve, the scope of my project is necessarily linited. Even within
the Western tradition in which the alphabet has suceeded in sustaining its
unique place as the major wring system, there are many aspects ofits

form and use whch will noc be discussed here. Fr example the enie his

tory of Islamic calligraphy is led with innovative visual investigations of
the symbolic value of sacred and poetic texts The Arabic alphabet is ery
close to the Hebrew alphabet, and they have a common root in the
Aramaic script invented inthe fist millenium BC. Boch Hebrew and
Arabi scripts have a history within the mainstream of Western European
cake, with their most significant eentry ia intellectual ie occuring
st various moments from the Middle Ags through the Renaissance and
again in the 18th and 19th centuries among scula and elgious scholars
The only excuse I can offer for nor attending to the rich tradition of
Arabic calligraphy and its ually rch history of symbolic ine

of lee forms and visual language, i the most banal: lack of linguistic

expertie on my par and the need to seta lini, somewhere, inthe scope
ofthis research. Likewie, I have nt attended tothe history ofthe many
Indian series, or those modified in thei diffusion through Asia, Africa
and other ares of the world whose script forms share «common origin
with the modern Evopean alphabet
to those practices which ae
hich have a more purely visal
aphic writing. An

we of hand
corte bor

allya portion of sripeare, which was thematically complementary to the

central presentation, Tie technique was used ino the 1th and 20th cen
tures in portraits and works of a more secular nature where the image
involved was often composed out of micrographic writing

al with ess of

writing in the culate more
ok is concerned manly with the symbolic ateibutions

and interpretations attached to what may be termed she
European alphabet. So let us turn oar attention to the chroal

Aliscorery ofits origins and devlopmene before tracing the
alphaber symbolism through the coarse of human history and ado,