Social Implications of Phoenician Writing

The Phoenician script was the first widely used phonetic script. Previous writing systems had been either largely logographic, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, or logo-syllabic, such as Sumerian. The complexity of these systems restricted literacy to members of royalty and religious leaders - an extremely useful social tool in a culture with a strong priestly-political elite. In this way, writing helped preserve the class divisions present in ancient societies.

Although previous writing systems had contained an element of sound-symbol mapping, so the concept of representing a discrete set of sounds with a discrete set of symbols was not new, the writing process was greatly simplified by the development of the exclusively phonetic Phoenician script.

The effects of this were two-fold; it allowed other languages with similar sound inventories to represent their languages using the same symbols (and those with different sound inventories to modify those symbols), and it allowed the general populace to become literate. Writing could no longer be used so effectively to control knowledge, but it could be used to codify and administer laws, and to distribute information on a mass scale.

Literacy was also instrumental for trading. The Phoenicians appear to have been one of the first people to employ any means of rendering information for long-distance business transactions. Writing provided a means for establishing extensive trade networks throughout the Mediterranean, dealing in agricultural and luxury goods. Partially as a result of this, the Phoenician people were neither ethnically nor religiously homogeneous, but comprised a culture characterized almost entirely by their shared commercial interest.

Reference: Hinds, Pamela and Sara Kieler, ‘Distributed Work’, p7.

This article formerly appeared on ScriptSource.