The knotty question of the origins of our alphabet has been partly straightened out by the discovery of a comb. In June 2016, an archaeological excavation of the ancient Canaanite city of Lachish ...

Along with Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform is one of the oldest known forms of writing, and consists of more than 1,000 unique characters. The appearance of these characters can vary across eras ...

Unlike cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) or hieroglyphics (“sacred carvings”) — names that evoke the distinct essence of ancient scripts — “Chinese character” is vague, impersonal and oddly detached from its ...