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#2500. 粘土証票の文字発生説 (2)[grammatology][writing][archaeology]

2016-03-01

 昨日の記事 ([2016-02-29-1]) で紹介した標記の説は Schmandt-Besserat が初めて唱えたものである.彼女の1978年の論文の要旨を記したい.
 従来,文字の起源と発展については,絵文字 (pictogram) から始まり,より抽象度の高い文字記号へと進んだということが前提とされていた.それ自体は誤りではないかもしれないが,ドイツ考古学チームが1929年に Uruk で発掘した大量の粘土板の文書には,史上最古級の文字とされながらも,すでに抽象度の高い記号文字が用いられていた.このことは,さらに遡った時代に文字が存在していたことを強く示唆し,文字の発生についての新たな洞察を促すことになった.Schmandt-Besserat (50) 曰く,

The fact that the Uruk texts contradict the hypothesis that the earliest form of writing would be pictographic has inclined many epigraphers to the view that the tablets, even though they bear the earliest-known writing, must represent a stage in the evolution of the art that is already advanced. The pictographic hypothesis has been revived anew. The fact that no writing of this kind has yet appeared at sites of the fourth millennium B.C. and even earlier is explained away by postulating that the writing of earlier millenniums was recorded exclusively on perishable mediums that vanished long ago, such as parchment, papyrus or wood.


 さて,Schmandt-Besserat は,中東各地の遺跡の発掘を通じて,粘土のコマや粘土でできた卵形の中空の容器 (bulla) の存在に関心を抱いていた.これについては,すでに1958年に A. Leo Oppenheim という学者により,2重の記録体系のための道具ではないかという説が唱えられていた.Oppenheim の見つけたある bulla には,表面に48個の動物を表わす記号が刻まれており,容器のなかでカラカラと音がしたので割ってみると,それぞれの動物をかたどったコマがぴったり48個入っていたのである.これらはおそらく交易上の記録に用いられたのではないかと推測され,数字や文字の記号の前段階に相当するものと解釈された.これらの道具の年代は紀元前1500年ほどとされたが,後の発掘で類似のコマがもっとずっと古い層から発掘されたことから,人類の文字史(及びその前段階を含めた歴史)は数千年という規模で押し上げられることとなった.
 Schmandt-Besserat の調査では,このような粘土のコマが,紀元前9千年紀から紀元前2千年紀に及ぶ長い期間にわたって連続的に,広く中東全域から出土することを確かめ(ただし,bulla は紀元前4千年紀より前には現われない),この記録法がきわめて安定した体系として受け入れられ,実践されていたことを証明した.Schmandt-Besserat (56--57) はまた,なぜ紀元前9千年ほどの時期にこの体系が生み出されたのかというタイミングの問題について,農業経済の出現という人間社会の大変化に起因するのではないかと考えている.

It cannot be a coincidence that the first tokens appear early in the Neolithic period, a time of profound change in human society. It was then that an earlier subsistence pattern, based on hunting and gathering, was transformed by the impact of plant and animal domestication and the development of a farming way of life. The new agricultural economy, although it undoubtedly increased the production of food, would have been accompanied by new problems. / Perhaps the most crucial would have been food storage. Some portion of each annual yield had to be allocated for the farm family's own subsistence and some portion had to be set aside as seed for the next year's crop. Still another portion could have been reserved for barter with those who were ready to provide exotic products and raw materials in exchange for foodstuffs. It seems possible that the need to keep track of such allocations and transactions was enough to stimulate development of a recording system. / . . . The Neolithic period and the succeeding Chalcolithic period, or Copper Age, in western Asia lasted about 5,000 years. Over this substantial span one finds surprisingly few changes in the tokens, a fact that may indicate how well suited to the needs of an early agricultural economy this recording system was.


 農業経済の出現により複雑な会計処理が必要となり,その解決法の1つとして粘土のコマの使用が考案され,後の文字の発生にも貢献したというシナリオだ.Schmandt-Besserat (59) の結論部を引用する.

To summarize, the earliest examples of writing in Mesopotamia may not, as many have assumed, be the result of pure invention. Instead they appear to be a novel application late in the fourth millennium B.C. of a recording system that was indigenous to western Asia from early Neolithic times onward. In this view the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia represents a logical step in the evolution of a system of record keeping that originated some 11,000 years ago.
   On this hypothesis the fact that the system was used without significant modification until late in the fourth millennium B.C. seems attributable to the comparatively simple record-keeping requirements of the preceding 5,000 years. With the rise of cities and the development of large-scale trade the system was pushed onto a new track. Images of the tokens soon supplanted the tokens themselves, and the evolution of symbolic objects into ideographs led to the rapid adoption of writing all across western Asia.


 ところで,残る問題は,粘土のコマと,それを入れ,その記号を表面に刻みつける容器としての bulla を組み合わせたものが,なぜ会計の道具となるのか,である.粘土証票のシステムについては,明日の記事で考える.

 ・ Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. "The Earliest Precursor of Writing." Scientific American 238 (1978): 50--59.

Referrer (Inside): [2016-03-02-1]

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