|
Server : Apache/2.4.62 System : FreeBSD fbsdweb2.web.rcn.net 14.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE releng/14.1-n267679-10e31f0946d8 GENERIC amd64 User : www ( 80) PHP Version : 8.3.8 Disable Function : NONE Directory : /domains/markrose/atlas/ |
Upload File : |
<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>600c</TITLE>
<style>
h2
{color:#9C8900;}
h3
{color:#9C8900;}
h4
{color:#9C8900;}
</style>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<h3>600 C — Cities and Literacy</h3>
<h4>Urbanization</h4>
The vast majority of the people of this time were peasants living in small villages. However, in three regions a significant urban culture had developed: Cuzei, the Xengi plain, and Skouras.
<p>The <b>Ezičimi</b> cities were the dwelling place of lords, administrators, priests, and soldiers, as well as the craftsmen and slaves who saw to their needs. Trade, to the extent there was any, was a matter of lordly monopolies over local resources, and bartering with other lords, Jei, and Skourenes for foreign goods. The freedom, cultural life, and commerce of a modern city had no place in these towns; living in them was like living in a beehive or an office park.
<p>The <b>Munkhâshi</b> cities were even more primitive, being mainly storehouses for managing the flow of goods, workshops for intensive manufactures such as ships and catapults, fortresses for mustering troops and defense, and temples for large-scale rituals. The ktuvoks distrusted cities and only allowed people in if they were there to serve the state.
<p>The <b>Cuzeians</b> had a more vibrant urban life, with merchants, artists, and shopkeepers added to the mix; they boasted the largest city on the continent, Eleisa. The cities belonged to no noble House; in a sense their inhabitants were the first truly free men in Ereláe. The tendency in Cuzei was for the cities to grow but not to become more numerous, perhaps because all the land outside the cities belonged to some House or another.
<p>Cities were the heart of <b>Skourene</b> culture, which from the beginning was maritime and commercial rather than agricultural in nature. As many as 15% of Skourenes lived in the cities (compare about 4% for Cuzei). Each city had a rural hinterland (<i>guşouri</i>) which was both its support and its exclusive market. Armies were drawn from the city dwellers; they were easier to mobilize and train, and this way the rural population could stay productive.
<h4>Literacy</h4>
Beginning around -100, the <b>Ezičimi</b> adapted the Wede:i Old Syllabary for <a href="Javascript:parent.updir('axunwrite.htm');">writing their own language</a>, Axunašin, retaining both the syllabic and the logographic glyphs. The script was reformed around 650, under the patronage of the kings of Axuna and Gotanneli. The syllabary itself was greatly simplified, mainly by the bright idea of representing all the syllables beginning with a particular consonant and vowel with a syllabic sign plus a stroke representing the final consonant (e.g. <img src="xra.gif" align=absmiddle> <i>ra</i>, <img src="xras.gif" align=absmiddle> <i>ras</i>, <img src="xraj.gif" align=absmiddle> <i>raj</i>, etc.), so that the script now consisted of 133 syllabic signs and 770 logographs. The glyphs had by now become so stylized as to lose their pictographic character; compare the ancient <img src="../wedei/il.gif" align=absmiddle> ‘eye’ with the reformed <img src="../wedei/ilx.gif" align=absmiddle>.
<p>The <b>Skourenes</b>, copying the Ezičimi, had devised <a href="Javascript:parent.updir('lenani.htm#writing');">their own script</a> around 100, starting in Iṭili. The Skourene language relied heavily on infixing and was heavy on consonant clusters; it was not easy to apply either the logographic or the syllabographic principles. What they came up with was logograms for each root, plus phonetic symbols which represented the pattern of vowels in the word, rather as if we spelled <i>writer, wrote, written </i>all using a graph <WRITE> and patterns CCiCeC, CCoCe, CCiCCeC.
<p>The <b>Munkhâshi</b> (and their ktuvok masters) never adopted writing, although they did have a system to maintain accounts, using beads embedded in clay tablets (<i>wiwichala</i>).
</BODY></HTML>