Word vs. Image. The earliest forms of writing were cunieform in Mesopotamia and hieroglyphs in Egypt. In Mesopotamia, the creation of cunieform was credited to the Goddess Nisaba . In Egypt, Seshat was the Goddess of scribes, and created hieroglyphs. Both cunieform and hieroglyphs took time to learn. They each contained hundreds of symbols and were mostly studied by "the literary elite". They were based on images. In between Egypt and Mesopotamia, scripts surfaced that were hybrids of the two forms. The peoples who lived between Egypt and Mesopotamia included Midianites, semi-nomadic camel caravaneers, Serite miners working copper quarries, Phoenician sea traders, and Canaanites with their terraced vineyards and olive groves. To the north was the land of the Assyrians, and to the south stood the fabled city of Jericho. Leonard Shlain, in The Alphabet Vs. The Goddess writes, "Wandering throughout these lands were groups ...
Exploring stories, history (and herstory), and beliefs through art.