How writing affected the worldview (based on the history of writing in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt)
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2026-3-137-156
The aim of this essay is to understand how the emergence and development of writing in two ancient cultures influenced the worldview of those who mastered this art, and, thanks to the advent of this method of coding, the worldview of society as a whole. First, the essay references material from Mesopotamia. Writing here develops on the basis of the expanded use of administrative documents, primarily associated with property relations. At a certain point, there is a shift from marks and the designation of individual images to narrative, which requires a corresponding shift from synthetic perception to analytical. Cylindrical seals, in particular, occupy a special place in this process. Increasingly extensive lexical lists appear, leading to the formation of a new spiritual order, which is manifested both in the nature of the images and in the creation of a structured representation of the external world. Moreover, the world begins to “be read” before writing as such appears; it only ultimately confirms this perception. Through the designation of names, writing is also established as a guarantee of preserving the memory of a person in eternal life. In turn, writing as a new means of representing the world provides an opportunity for reflection, which manifests in authorial literature. The nature of school education is considered, which includes deliberately excessive material aimed at creating and maintaining the so-called “club of scribes.” A set of classical texts, a canon, emerges, which over time leads to a split between the “old” (using the dead Sumerian language) and the “new” culture. Reference to Egyptian material shows that writing here goes through similar stages from labels to narratives, but with some significant differences. Thus, hieroglyphics were used only for cultic purposes, whereas hieratic writing was used for administrative ones; literacy was characteristic not only of scribes but also of the upper elite, both administrative and priestly. Accordingly, the educational system itself was structured differently. The gap between the “old” and “new” cultures was based on the fact that one was represented by a highly archaic form of the Egyptian language.
Keywords: writing, phoneticization, text, literacy and art, narrative, education system
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Issue: 3, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: ESSAYS
Pages: 137 — 156
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