The following words are from the official account, "good old Lao Li".
Press: on April 11, the school of information management of Nanjing University and the Publishing Research Institute jointly hosted the Publishing Forum, inviting Li Jianchen, a member of the Chinese Writers Association and a cultural scholar, to give a special lecture for the graduate students of the University, live broadcast through Tencent conference and station B platform, and open to the society at the same time. The summary is hereby released.
Hello, teachers and students!
First of all, the concept of the book industry to do a description. The book industry discussed here is a generalized concept, which generally refers to the way or behavior of human information dissemination with words as the media, including various forms of carrier media.
The word "Shu" was first seen in oracle bone inscriptions. Its original meaning is writing, and later extended to written achievements and works, such as documents, letters, simplified books, ancient books, etc. So the book industry is inseparable from the characters. Words are the symbol of human civilization. It took thousands of years from the initial scattered ideographic symbols to the final recognized communication tool. We mainly discuss mature characters here.
Writing is not only the embodiment of human thought, but also the further promotion of human thought development through communication. Therefore, the book industry and human's thinking ability and creativity mutually promote and complement each other. Looking at the history of human civilization, we find that the prosperity of every society or civilization resonates with the evolution of characters in that era. There were more than 4500 Chinese characters in the period of oracle bone inscriptions, about 10000 in ShuoWenJieZi in the Eastern Han Dynasty, double that; and more than 47000 in Kangxi dictionary, double that. From the number of Chinese characters in different periods, we can also reflect the language expression ability and thinking ability of our nation in different periods.
There are many writings with profound influence in history. Today, we mainly talk about cuneiform characters, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Latin and Chinese. Let's have a glimpse of these five kinds of characters and writings, and how they contribute to the development of human civilization!
Cuneiform begins in Western Asia. We know that the earliest bronze ware unearthed in China is a bronze knife unearthed in Dadiwan, Gansu Province, nearly 5000 years ago. Other bronzes are much later than this Dao, most of which are more than 3000 years old. The bronzes unearthed in Western Asia are 9000 years old. Western Asia, as the first region shining the dawn of human civilization, has also produced mature languages and characters.
Cuneiform characters were born more than 5000 years ago in Lianghe River Basin. At first, cuneiform characters were also pictographs, but in the course of more than two thousand years' use, gradually completed the transformation from pictograph to ideograph, and then to phonograph, becoming a kind of half syllable characters. The writing format changed from top-down, right first and then left (similar to ancient Chinese Books) to left to right.
In the way of writing, Sumerians use reed stalks or sticks as pens, the tips of which are cut into triangles, and the characters are engraved on a rectangular clay plate made of clay. After the writing, the clay plate is dried and then fired, similar to that of brick factories. Clay plates vary in size, just like our modern books have 32, 16, 8. The largest existing clay plate is 2.7m long and 1.95M wide. This kind of clay edition book, though bulky, can be preserved forever.
Cuneiform script was born in Lianghe River Basin, and gradually became the common script in most parts of Western Asia. In the process of transmission, cuneiform script was constantly transformed by various regions and times, and evolved into many different character systems, just like an old ancestor who had numerous descendants. By the first century A.D., cuneiform writing, which had existed for more than 3000 years, had disappeared.
Since the second half of the 18th century, with the discovery of various clay or stone carvings with cuneiform characters, archaeologists began to pay attention to cuneiform characters. Among them, there are several iconic figures: the first is the Danish scholar nibble, who found wedge-shaped inscriptions in 1756 at the site of the palace of Persepolis in Iran. He transcribed and tried to do a partial interpretation, which was published in 1772. The second is German scholar grotfender, who has made an important breakthrough in the interpretation of ancient Persian. The formation of ancient Persian is based on the cuneiform characters of the two river basins. The third is the English scholar Rawlinson, who deciphered the inscriptions of besiston.
The study of the two river civilization is called Assyria. Assyria not only shows the outstanding achievements in astronomy, calendar, mathematics, architecture, writing, religion, myth, literature, art and other aspects of the ancient two river basins, but also reveals its important role in the development of human civilization. And Assyria is not only born from the interpretation of cuneiform characters, but also the core of Assyria. Because the two river civilization almost exists in all kinds of original books. Unlike our study of the Great Wall, the original things stand there.
There have been many countries in the two river basins. Why should Assyria be used to name this science? Because the Assyrian Empire is not only prosperous and powerful, but also the most concentrated place of clay books. The Assyrians not only improved the cuneiform characters, but also established the first large library in human history, collecting a large number of clay books. This was in the 7th century BC. Later, with the fall of Assyria, Nineveh, the capital, was destroyed. In 1849, Layard, a British scholar, excavated the ancient city Nineveh from the ruins of more than 2400 years of waste, making numerous art treasures come to light again. The most valuable one is more than 20000 clay books, covering religion, literature, science, history, decrees, documents, etc., providing a large number of precious materials for uncovering the mysterious veil of thousands of years of civilization in the two river basins. Up to now, archaeologists have unearthed nearly one million clay books.
The representative works of cuneiform writing are besiston inscription and Hammurabi code. In 1835, a 25-year-old British soldier named Rawlinson found a cuneiform inscription on a cliff near the town of besiston in western Iran. He risked his life to climb the ladder, and spent 12 years transcribing and deciphering the inscriptions engraved on the cliff more than 100 meters high. In 1850, Rawlinson published the notes on the inscriptions of Babylonian cuneiform characters, and in 1852, he published the outline of Assyrian history, which undoubtedly became the universally recognized father of assyrianism.
The code of Hammurabi is carved on a 2.25-meter-high black basalt rock column. It was excavated by the French in 1901 in the ruins of the ancient city of Susa in southwest Iran. The ancient city of Susa was the capital of elan. In 1163 BC, the Elamites conquered Babylon, and took the stone pillars engraved with the code of hammorabi back to Susa as spoils of war. Then the kingdom of Elam was destroyed by Persia. The Persian Empire moved its capital to Susa. So the stone column code changed hands several times, and now it exists in the Louvre in Paris.
The code is a collection of laws promulgated 3800 years ago by Hammurabi, king of Babylon, Cuba. Apart from the preface and postscript, there are 282 articles in the main body, covering three aspects of civil, criminal and litigation, ranging from personal morality to state obligations and social life, such as theft, harboring, robbery, framing, military service, leasing, lending, commerce, trusteeship, hostages, debt, deposit, marriage, inheritance Transfer, adoption, medical treatment, construction, shipbuilding, employment, personal injury and even haircut, and other specific behaviors, the scope of the wide provisions is amazing. In particular, the principles established in the code concerning creditor's rights, contracts, torts, punishment for stealing others' property, compensation for damaging others' property, reflection on false accusations and perjury, and heavy punishment for judges' perverting the law have a great influence on the later legislation.
Some contents of the code were worn out when it was unearthed. Later, the relevant content of the code was found in the clay edition book, so the stone tablet code was supplemented and restored.
This code is the earliest written code in the world. The code of urnamu is 300 years earlier than it. It is also cuneiform, but it is not complete, just some fragments.
Hebrew Hebrew is the national language of the Jews, very ancient. The ancestors of the Jews were nomads in the two river valley. Four thousand years ago, under the leadership of Abram, the patriarch of the clan, they went all the way west to Palestine. At that time, this place was called Canaan. They conquered the local tribes and became their new owners. The language brought by these nomads was integrated with the local language of Canaan to form the later Hebrew.
Polytheism is a common phenomenon in early human civilization. It is a milestone in the history of human thought to change the worship from multi gods to one God. It was Abram, the forefather of the Jews, who completed this transformation of belief mode. Abram not only recognized a God, but also made a "contract" with him: I believe in you, and you bless me. To some extent, the source of contractual spirit in Western civilization may be here.
About 600 years later, the national hero Moses led the Jews to flee Egypt. There is a peninsula between Africa and Asia, called Sinai Peninsula. When he fled to Sinai, Moses claimed that God had summoned him and given him a slate with ten commandments written by God himself. Moses carried the "Ten Commandments" stone back down the mountain and conveyed the contents to the whole people as the code of conduct that everyone abided by.
But ten are obviously not enough. So Moses organized a writing team and wrote five books, genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers of the people and Deuteronomy, collectively referred to as the five books of Moses. The ten commandments and the five scriptures are written in Hebrew. At that time, people couldn't distinguish the difference of law, morality and belief, and didn't have that concept. Therefore, "Ten Commandments" and "Five Classics" are not only legal norms, but also moral norms, as well as value system or belief system, which constitute the core of Judaism and become the permanent spiritual pillar and behavior guide of this nation. A thousand years later, the Christian flower not only opened up in Judaism, but also the Bible was originally written in Hebrew. In addition to Christianity, Islam also absorbed many doctrines and ideas of Judaism. Therefore, it can be said that Hebrew is immortal because of the establishment of Judaism; Judaism, because of the record and dissemination of Hebrew, has injected the essence and nutrition of human civilization.
In 63 BC, the Roman Republic began to rule Canaan. One hundred years later, Rome became an empire, destroying Jerusalem, the capital of the Jews, and driving them away. Two thousand years later, Jews were forced into exile around the world until the establishment of a new state of Israel in 1948.
In the process of two thousand years' exile, the Jews were forced to use the language of the host country, resulting in the disappearance of Hebrew. Xi Murong, a Mongolian writer, once wrote a song "the river of my father's Grassland Mother". In the song, "although I can't speak my native language, please accept my sadness, my joy, I'm also a child of the plateau, I have a song in my heart, the river of my father's Grassland Mother", singing the feelings and feelings of wandering children looking forward to their ancestral home. And this complex lingered in the soul of the Jews for two thousand years.
In 1879, a Lithuanian Jewish youth named Yehuda published an article, proposing the resurrection of Hebrew, which aroused thousands of waves and received a positive response from the Jews. Thirty years later, more than 60 kindergartens, primary and secondary schools and professional schools in the Palestinian area have all used Hebrew. More than a decade later, the British trusteeship confirmed Hebrew as one of the three official languages in the region. After the establishment of the state of Israel, there was no doubt about Hebrew