The Idea of Writing ─ Writing Across Borders

In this valuable product of the Idea of Writing seminar series begun at Leiden University several years ago, Voogt (curator, American Museum of Natural History, New York) and Quack (Egyptology, Heidelberg U.) note that the appearance of a new script generally occurs in complete form but is subject to further development. In case studies, contributors offer interdisciplinary insights on the alphabet, abugida (alpha-syllabary), and logographic scripts including the evolution of the national scripts of various Semitic and Asian Indian languages; transnational or time-shift borrowing of a script, e.g., Chinese in Japan, writing classical Egyptian rituals in demotic script; and reforms in modern Korean writing. The volume includes illustrations and indexing by subject, language group and script, and author. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Alex de Voogt, Ph.D. (1995) in Psychology, Leiden University, is an Assistant Curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His studies on writing systems and the dispersal of board games focus on the Indian Ocean region.Joachim Friedrich Quack, Ph.D. (1993) in Egyptology, University of Tubingen, Habilitation (2003) in Egyptology, Free University of Berlin, is Professor of Egyptology at Heidelberg University. He is a leading specialist for Egyptian cursive writing systems. Contributors include Hans-Jorg Dohla, Theo Krispijn, Reinhard Lehmann, Sven Osterkamp, Konstantin Pozdniakov, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Ingo Strauch, Aldo Tollini, Thorsten Traulsen and Alex de Voogt.