Reflection after One Semester

After reading my diagnostic paper, I realized that my writing style has changed significantly throughout the duration of this course. In my diagnostic paper, I make considerably large claims but I don’t have any evidence to back them up. I assume many things that are not necessarily true and this made my writing weak. Also, coming into this class, I knew very little about Near Eastern studies and what it encompassed. After reading many academically engaging texts, I realized that the claims that I made in my diagnostic paper were very limited. The subject of reading and writing has been so important ever since the beginning of time and in the beginning, I did not realize the many different uses of it in the Ancient World. From writing the papers in this class, I have been able to come up with a strong thesis that is not too broad and can be thoroughly discussed in the amount of space that I am given. This final research paper has also taught me various research techniques that I was not so comfortable with before. I have learned to assess whether an author is a reliable source and how, at first, you shouldn’t believe everything that you read.

Although I do believe that many of my arguments from the first paper are correct claims, there is much more that I could have done with the paper to make my arguments stronger. Reading and writing are both very powerful techniques necessarily for religious purposes as well as for society to run smoothly with some law code.

Power of Literacy

Tiffany Yen

Power of Literacy

Reflecting on what I wrote earlier on this year, I still stand firm on my belief that literacy and knowledge are the gateways to power and status. My other thought associates with how words and literacy broaden the human mind and body by labeling and thus creating emotions and feelings – but largely, this is more for a psychology or linguistics class so let’s return to the previous topic.

Last week, a classmate gave a presentation on the roots of writing. In my previous essay, I had believed that writing first originated due to a need for recording stories, legends, and the like. However my peer presented and the comments on my diagnostic show that I stand corrected – the introduction of writing was first to document economic statistics. Actually, numbers were created before writing was created. (The student mentioned that he hoped to research the foundations of mathematics, but his topic later divulged into writing. I find it quite amazing that the roots of numbers and writing are somewhat connected and quite blurred.)

Even in ancient times, the ability to read provided wealth and status. The numbers recorded how much money a certain item cost and how much money a person had. The inability to “read” these numbers could provide for potential disaster – fraud, trickery, etc.

And finally literature possess because readers treat the content as true. All modern society has from ancient times are objects, architecture, and literature. Many religions are based off a single holy book that is regarded as true. Here I note the power literature and writing can possess not only when it is written but even after it is written.

Functions still the same

My original thoughts in the diagnostic paper about the functions of literacy are still pretty consistent with how I feel now after the class. My thoughts were pretty broad so I can narrow down a little more about the role of writing in the Ancient Near East after this semester. As I claimed before, writing was reserved for a literate elite. Religious traditions I am guessing were mostly orally transmitted, but what is clear after reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Flood, Innannas Descent and others is that the early religious writings were to explain how everything worked and how everything was created. Writing it down was like burning a brand into something, declaring a spiritual set of beliefs to be the truth in a religiously diverse and multi-cultural world. The Bible would have been the largest textual declaration of religion and the people who wrote it are considered prophets so its consistent with the literate being not only religious tied, but functioning as an elite class.
Hymns and poems seemed to be a tool for some to understand emotions and feelings. For instance, the Elegy of a Woman in Childbirth dealt with love, death, loss, and desertion by a trusted figure. For some it was definitely an artistic expression as we can see by the writing tools like puns and metaphors. And writing definitely functioned as a political tool. After reading “Who Wrote the Bible” I was more enlightened to the fact that authors in the ancient Near East manipulated their work to align with their own politics and personal or religious affiliations. It was also a bureaucratic advantage in terms of keeping records on the business of the state. I’ve mostly agreed with my argument in my diagnostic paper. I have a more in depth understanding and evidence under my belt to back it up, but I still think that writing functioned as a religious and national unifier and a way for the few lucky individuals who had the skills to express themselves artistically.

Evidence gives power

Upon reading my diagnostic paper from the beginning of the semester I realized that my writing style has been changed significantly, with regards to my semantics. Initially I would make speculations and conjectures without significant evidence to back my claims and notions. I have, through my progress in this course significantly increased the validity of my claims, as I make it a point to justify every point I make now with solid evidence. My Ideas from the first essay two were somewhat restricted- after reading works that enveloped much larger areas of thought and subject, I realize that my initial diagnostic paper was too close-minded. I dealt in absolutes much more than I was warranted to; most of my ideas are true to some extent, but I seemed to think that it would make my arguments more powerful if I worded them in absolutes and did not qualify them with some ambiguity. I did this while absolutely disregarding the fact that I need evidence to back up my claims, and this made my argument fail. I have learned that as a writer, I cannot assume the position of authority and make claims that have potentially no basis- It is the provision of evidence and justification that make an argument strong and able to withstand academic scrutiny.

The Utility of the Written Word

In my diagnostic essay I argued that writing is simply a means of data storage and distribution, and that its uses were defined by this characteristic. I had two main points concerning the significant uses of writing: first that it could be used to promote the dissemination and advancement of scientific knowledge as well as legal and religious standards, and second that as a consequence of this, if the literacy level in a society is not sufficiently high, those who are literate could posses significant power over those who are not. I still agree with my assessment, though I do notice that I neglected to include any mention of the use of writing as an artistic medium rather than a device for the distribution of information. Perhaps this is indicative of my skepticism as to the true value of such endeavors, but having spent the semester reading myths and stories that, while possibly containing some morals or teachings, were written mostly to simply tell the story, I feel that any discussion of writing should make at least some mention of less pragmatic uses of the written word. I am still not sure how to discuss the usefulness of such literature; some would argue that it helps develop a society culturally and that that is valuable in itself, and others would claim that it can help develop an individual intellectually and make them more able to contribute in other ways to the society, but I feel that I still do not understand the issue comprehensively enough to make such arguments. In the end though it cannot be disputed that all literature is useful in at least some way, for as we have seen all semester, the writings of a past society are invaluable in trying to understand it.

Change For The Better

In my diagnostic paper, from the beginning of the semester I argued that the lack of literacy could lead to set backs in communication and record keeping leading to unwanted control by the educated. I focused on three main points in my paper. They included how the invention on writing has helped the transportation of messages from one place to another, how it helped record keeping and how and why writing is an important skill to have. After, spending a semester reading and learning about Ancient Mesopotamia many of the ideas I included in my paper remain the same. However, I have learned more about the points I included.

I wrote about the importance of writing and how it helped the ability for the Ancient Mesopotamians to communicate. While doing research for my final paper I truly understood how helpful writing was for people. Although, invented much before it is clear that the Persian Empire heavily relied on the ability to write to get messages from one place to another. The kings of the different empires needed to communicate with each other and the king needed to communicate with others in his empire. Writing in a form that could be transported by a messenger from one place to another was extremely helpful when Darius began building Persepolis.

Furthermore, I had written about the invention numerical figures and there importance. In my paper I wrote how, with the invention of numbers, records could be kept on the amount of food, textiles and livestock that went in out of each area. From the presentations given by Samvit and Rob we learned that the people of the ancient Near East had a very complex number system. They had even made algorithms used to solve complex problems. The people of the ancient Near East used their number system to figure out area things like the area of a room according to Samvit. They usually did not use it for counting imports or exports until much later in history.

When comparing my writing in the beginning of the semester I believe that I have become better at developing and argument and using evidence to prove my thesis. In my second and third paper my thesis was much more specific and I focused on a specific point and throughout my essay worked on proving it. Also, the amount of evidence and they way I incorporated it into my essays improved. However, there is still a great deal of room for improvement in my writing.

That much more valuable

As difficult as it was to force myself to read this paper from the beginning of the semester, it actually showed me how far I’ve come in my writing in one semester. I couldn’t seem to think of anything to argue or even some main thesis to write about for the diagnostic paper, so I had no real argument. This class has taught me how to pull a thesis out of research, especially with the last two papers. I’d like to think that my grammar and sentence structure improved from my first paper, but I know that my argumentation has definitely improved over the course of the semester. I learned a little bit more about organizing papers in order to make them flow smoothly.

I still agree with most of my main ideas about reading and writing, although now that I look at them they seem pretty shallow. At the time, I argued that literacy is an important aspect of modern life and allows us to eventually become successful. I still do believe this is true, even when applied to the past; the people in ancient Mesopotamian society and even those in the Bible seemed to be the most successful when they were literate. Of course, it would have been difficult to be literate in those days, too. I looked at those symbols and etchings in clay from the earliest articles we read (and especially on the two presentations on math) and had no idea how they had managed to interpret all of those symbols in order to write and read. Since we’re taught at such a young age to read and write, I think I took it for granted just how important it was and is to us. Several of the research presentations mentioned that we do not have written information about certain topics in Mesopotamia and thus we may never know—imagine if we still had them, or if more people were literate at the time so they could have written about them. The Epic of Gilgamesh is fragmented, and we base what we know off of other tablets. How much more could we know? My stance remains the same, but now I see just how important literacy is, and not on a superficial level as of the thoughts I entered this class with. So much of what we know about these ancient societies is through writing, and I think I can appreciate it just a little bit more with that knowledge.

The Things I Have Learned

After reading my diagnostic essay, I realize that I really didn’t know that much about the Ancient Near East coming in to this class. I had an idea of how things were, but I had no clue how much we know about the area and time period today. In fact, some of the things that I wrote were just outright wrong. I was under the impression that the writing system that Ancient Mesopotamians used was very simple when in reality, it was extremely complex. Also, as mentioned earlier, I did not realize the sheer amount of information we have about the Ancient Near East. Had you showed me volumes one through four of the giant Civilizations of the Ancient Near East books I found in the library, I would have been extremely surprised. The tablets that have been found in the area range everywhere from laws to prayers to rituals to even myths. Heck, we even know that pomegranates held a certain importance to those of the Ancient Near East. Some things that I believed were right though, such as that most individuals did not know how to read or write and that the only ones that had this abilities were educated religious officials. All in all, I have decided that the things I have learned in this class have far surpassed everything that I expected, and that the Ancient Near East is both more complex and more interesting than I ever thought it to be.

I still agree

           

            Even though I wrote this diagnostic paper over three months ago and have learned a lot since then, I still retain the same views as before. Society, in almost every time period, is heavily reliant on the means of communication so it can function properly. This concept is even apparent today with various immigrants who enter the United States and do not know how to read or write English; they cannot be fully incorporated into society since they have limited access to the knowledge that surrounds them in the form of signs, labels, instructions, etc.

“The gap of knowledge that would result from the differences in reading and writing skills would create extreme breaks between social classes within society.” I stated that reading and writing is powerful and is the reason for a separation of classes. Those with the ability to read and write can utilize written material and become even more knowledgeable while those who lack these skills remain in the same situation. This idea is basically the same concept of the accumulation of wealth within upper class groups while the lower class has no means for upward mobility, but with power in the form of knowledge.  Friedman’s Who Wrote The Bible? provides an example of this notion with the emphasis of the importance of Baruch, a scribe with knowledge and potential power, as one of the possible writers of the Bible.

"James on James," the Paper of Response XIII, written on the 27th of April, 2011 AD

           Oddly, my diagnostic essay happened to have been on a very similar topic to what I had picked for my research project, though I later shifted my research paper to focus more on a slightly variant aspect. In the diagnostic, I responded to the prompt in which I had to “discuss some of the functions of writing” and also features that would be expected in a mostly illiterate society. I had argued the invention of writing “drastically changed human society,” analyzing its psychological effects, its intellectual effects, and its practical uses. I followed by examining the implications of a mostly illiterate population, saying it could result in a more oligarchical society and would generally be less knowledgeable. I would generally agree with the ideas presented in the diagnostic, and some textual evidence utilized in the NES class actually would support some of my claims.
            In my paper, I mentioned how writing “allows us to free our mind from having to memorize as many things.” I believe that numerous portions of the text read in class reflect this effect. For example, the recorded genealogies in Genesis, if they were originally based on an oral tradition, would no longer have to be remembered after being written down. Marduk's fifty names could be another example of something that would have to be less vigorously remembered after written. Of course, I still am not knowledgeable enough in the fields of psychology or biology to truly know whether memory-use actually reduces the amount of available space in the mind or if its storage capabilities are more limitless.
           However, the texts read in class may actually not be in favor of my argument that “writing makes knowledge so much easier to acquire.” Most of the texts (especially the early ones) that were read for this class appear to be mythological fiction, which would not really contribute to the knowledge of the literate. While it could contribute to the self-perceived knowledge of someone literate, this shows that writing alone does not make knowledge easy to acquire; instead, a combination of writing and truth would do that. Of course, sometime books that more accurately depicted actual events were written (e.g. the historical ones in the Bible and Herodotus), allowing people to be able to really learn from past mistakes, as well as books containing laws (e.g. Exodus and that Hammerabi guy), which taught what was expected in one in a society. But not all writing was like this, which I overlooked in the earlier paper.
            I also noticed that I did not really write a conclusion for my diagnostic paper, but I think that was because I don't really like writing conclusions.

Readable writing

It is ironic to say, but there are ways in which I find my writing from the beginning of this class more readable and compelling that what I have produced recently. Perhaps it owes to fatigue, or perhaps to the very limited scope of the initial essay, but I find myself thinking that in the future I should try to write in a more similarly simple and easily-understood manner. My tendency seems to be toward verbosity and complex vocabulary, and I feel this can be a detriment. On the other hand, there are also ways in which one might consider my past writings “less convincing” – they are purely explanatory and do not have a clear thesis or argument, and no explanation of the source of their information supports them. Having understood that ease of understanding is just as important as content in writing, in the future I will endeavor to retain this simple and readable style in addition to providing proper structure and backup to my assertions.

In regards to the thoughts and opinions expressed in my first essay, I would say I still hold them in a mostly unchanged form. I wrote with a fairly broad view of what things writing could represent and as technology and a part of society, and I have not seen anything this semester that has caused me to change my previous understanding. If anything, discussions on works like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible have only reinforced my concepts of writing as a mode of information transmission and preservation, but also as a mode of expression and cultural coherency. Furthermore, Friedman’s study of the Bible’s authorship convinced me even more of the power and position that could be conferred upon a group of people by their literacy, and the associated trappings of learning, expertise, and clout that tend to come with it.

In the past, I read a great deal for leisure, but as of late it has been a much less relevant hobby. From here on out I will probably endeavor to again make reading a part of my leisure activities, because I feel that the experience with self-expression it will bring me will be of value in the future.

Writing's Essential Role

Reading my diagnostic essay once again I realized that writing is personally a difficult process for me. Therefore in my paper, my argument is somewhat broad, but I argued that that writing humans understand themselves and it serves as a way to pass down history. Overall my paper was general and never went much into detail. But I still agree with my argument. Writing is important because it is one of the few ways in which history is preserved. It is a powerful means of communication because it allows for history to be established. Unlike other forms of communication, such as story-telling, writing serves as a set record, meaning it is preserved. A popular cliché says, “it is not history until it has been written,” Many would argue against this, but to some degree it can be strongly supported. Many of us, including myself, get most of our history from books and different articles and journals because listening to ideas does not satisfy our beliefs. Something about written work always it more believable.

This course has reinforced this believe because we have had to conduct research. For example, this last research paper has proven to be difficult because of the lack of sources. It only makes me believe more strongly that written works are needed in order to help us learn and write about our thoughts and opinions on them. Writing is essential and it may be taken for granted at times but in the end it is needed.