An archaeologist and art historian examines the impact of literacy on visual art during the early urban period in the Near East. Denise Schmandt-Besserat opened

An “utterly lucid, thoughtfully illustrated, and thoroughly convincing” book on the origins of the world’s oldest known system of writing (American Journa

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"A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard"--

Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization traces the origins of writing tied to speech from ancient Sumer through the Greek alphabet and bey