The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet

Preface xi

1 The First IT Revolution 1

2 Cuneiform: Forgotten Legacy of a Forgotten People 13

3 Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the Quest for Eternity 33

4 Chinese: A Love of Paperwork 56

5 Maya Glyphs: Calendars of Kings 79

6 Linear B: The Clerks of Agamemnon 95

7 Japanese: Three Scripts are Better than One 113

8 Cherokee: Sequoyah Reverse-Engineers 133

9 The Semitic Alphabet: Egypt to Manchuria in 3,400 Years 143

10 The Empire of Sanskrit 169

11 King Sejong’s One-Man Renaissance 191

12 Greek Serendipity 208

13 The Age of Latin 229

14 The Alphabet Meets the Machine 249

Appendix: Figures A.1–A.7 273

Further Reading 281

Index 297