Throughout this time many ordinary people have opposed nuclear weapons and have formed groups to give strength to the opposition. These groups have been supported by people of all races, creeds, and nations. Bonds have been developed with those concerned with the environment. There has been a growth in non-violent direct action (NVDA) where people obstruct with their bodies the actions of the military.
Law
Chemical and biological weapons are generally regarded as unlawful. Those opposed to nuclear weapons want them treated in the same way. In 1996 the International Court of Justice declared that nuclear weapons are in general illegal.
"...the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law..."
Billy I Ahmed
Columnist & Researcher
Published: Observer Magazine, Aug., 29, Friday, 2003
Discovering Writing; Try to imagine our culture today without writing
The Significance of Writing
The invention of script (in the late fourth millennium BC) marks a quantum leap forward in human cultural development. Time and space cease to be barriers to the transmission of knowledge and information. To grasp the magnitude of this advance, try to imagine our culture today without writing (for even today's visual media and high technology communications usually depend on written drafts and scripts). It is impossible to imagine our schools and universities teaching, our scientists conducting and reporting research, our government governing or our civil service functioning without the written word.
The ancient Egyptians knew full well that writing was the mainstay of civilized life. A seated scribe holding a papyrus roll was one of the most popular subjects in their early art. He was revered and honoured, for the early Egyptians recognized that writing was the foundation of ordered life and government and, to some extent, transcended death itself. For now ideas, discoveries, wisdom and experience need no longer die with the individual, but could be transmitted through endless generations, right down to us, indeed, as we read the fine literature, the religious and scientific texts of these early scribes.
The Egyptian school was called "The House of Life" (Per-Ankh), for writing bestowed a kind of immortality. As one scribe expressed it: the names of scribes "are still preserved because of their books... and their memory lasts to the limits of eternity".
Writing was not one, but two inventions. First, the script itself - a comprehensive series of signs capable of representing all the words or sounds of human speech. Then a second invention - just as remarkable - the technological development of materials (papyrus, pen, ink) capable of recording, transmitting and preserving the script.
At a very early date (c.3000 BC) both these extraordinary advances were uniquely developed in ancient Egypt, that great centre of early literacy, from whom we have learnt to write with pens on paper in an alphabetic script descended directly (if distantly) from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Early Script
The ancient Egyptian script, like other early scripts, was pictographic: that is to say, it drew pictures of the words represented: ox, house, man, etc. Writing was associated with Thoth, the ibis-headed god of learning and writing, and referred to as "words of god". Later, the Greeks, retaining this original meaning, called the signs hieroglyphs, from hieros "sacred" and glyphein "to carve". Hieroglyphs make art out of writing, and lend an extraordinary grace and beauty to inscribed texts. Egyptian writing is a "mixed" script - combining signs denoting ideas (ideograms) with phonetic signs.
Words and Syllables
It was an easy step for a pictogram (object sign) to become an ideogram (idea or concept sign). Thus the pictogram for foot could also express the verbal idea to walk. Pictograms could be combined to provide extended meanings: a man with a container on his head denoted the verb to carry; a wall drawn in a sloping position expressed the verb to fall, etc. Naturally, an ideographic script requires a very large number of signs for even a basic reading knowledge of Chinese. Yet Egyptian has less than a quarter this number - around 700 signs. Still, if you compare this with our alphabet with its mere 26 signs, you will understand why the scribe in ancient Egypt belonged to a specialised and privileged profession and underwent a long and arduous training. Literacy was limited.
The Egyptian script managed with fewer signs than the Chinese because it was not purely ideographic. It also contained some phonetic signs capable of expressing syllables.
Hieroglyphic writing made its debut remarkably early, in the First Dynasty (3100-2900 BC). It was used extensively, with relatively little change in form, not only in Egypt itself, but also throughout Near Eastern territories under Egyptian influence or control for some 3,000 years, though few papyri have survived outside the dry climate of Egypt. In fact the script persisted well into the Christian era, and the latest recorded hieroglyphic inscriptions dated AD 39 are on the temples of Philae.
Discovery of Script
There are isolated references to hieroglyphics by classical visitors: the Greek historian Herodotus (c.484-425 BC); Diodorus, another Greek historian, who lived at the time of Julius Caesar and travelled to Egypt between 60 and 57 BC; and the Roman historian, Tacitus (c.55-120 AD). All were fascinated by the mysterious hieroglyphic writings which they realised were concerned with historical events. One classical writer, Horapollon of Phaenebythis, Egypt, (about 5th century AD) wrote at some length on the subject of hieroglyphic translations and made the first attempt at decipherment. Although some of his identifications were correct, his reasons for reaching them bordered on fantasy and were quite unrealistic. It was a further thirteen centuries before the script was properly understood.
Pen and Papyrus Paper
Look at the sheet of paper you are reading; consider its smoothness of surface, legibility, lightness, compactness, durability, and so on. We owe the invention of paper to the Egyptians and, for convenience to both writer and reader; it remains unsurpassed even in the age of the floppy disc and microfiche.
Egyptian 'paper' was made from the papyrus reed, more than 2,000 years before the Chinese are known to have invented a paper made from vegetable pulp. The Arabs learned paper technology from the Chinese, in the 8th century AD. They manufactured paper, using linen and other vegetable fibres, on a large scale and introduced the process into Europe.
Papyrus
The ancient Egyptians were thus the first (by two or three thousand years) to solve the demanding technological problem of manufacturing an exceptionally high quality writing material. We know that they did so as early the first Dynasty (3100- 2900 BC), since an uninscribed roll of papyrus was found in a mastaba (tomb) of this period at Saqqara.
Now extinct in lower (northern) Egypt, the papyrus reed (Cyperus Papyrus) grew profusely along the banks of the Nile in antiquity. It reached a considerable height, 12 to 25 feet, and its triangular stems were almost two inches thick, covered with a hard rind or skin, around a soft inner spongy tissue or pith.
Manufacturing Papyrus
The use of papyrus as writing material surpasses in ingenuity all its other uses. The process certainly originated from the mind of someone with tremendous inventive ability.
Pen and Ink
Another reed (Juncus Maritimus) supplied the pen. Cut about 10 inches long, the tip was cut on a slant and then crushed or chewed by the scribe to from a comparatively fine brush. The reed brush was then dipped into water and rubbed over the surface of the hardened block. The scribe's standard kit included ink palette, water cup and brush holder. Other colours were also used, for decorating papyri with colourful pictures (like a medieval manuscript).
Variety of Texts
Papyrus was by no means the only writing material used. Fragments of pottery (ostraca) and pieces of limestone were frequently used, as were boards painted with gesso (a mixture of gum and whiting). Nevertheless, for thousands of years papyrus was the dominant and preferred writing material.
The papyrus literature that has come down to us is not confined to religious texts. Business, historical, poetic and magical documents, and even the most enchanting fictional stories have survived, in addition to scholarly works on mathematics, astronomy and medicine.
The treatise now known as the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus (now in the New York Academy of Medicine), and other medical papyri, clearly indicate that some ancient practitioners were not only good observers, but actually carried out useful and serious work in the field of bone surgery. The Greek physicians Hippocrates (c.500BC), the acknowledged "Father of Medicine", and Galen (c.130-200 AD), acknowledged that some of their data came from Egyptian scripts they had studied in the temple of Imhotep at Saqqara. Thus it is clear the ancient Egyptian made a lasting and valuable contribution to medical science.
One of the most beautiful of the numerous surviving papyri, with exceptionally colourful illustrations (or vignettes), measuring 78 feet in length, is the "Book of the Dead" (British Museum, London), prepared for the high-ranking scribe Ani, who died about 1400BC.
So it is fitting that whenever we use a piece of paper we pay unconscious homage to the ancient Egyptians, for our word "paper" stems from the Greek "papyros", in turn derived from ancient Egyptian.
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Billy I Ahmed
Columnist & Resarcher
29 July 29, 2003
Published: Observer Magazine, Friday, August 15, 2003
