Chirography

Chirography (from the Greek derived (cheir-'/'cheiro-) Latin chiro- (similar to the Hittite word kesar) meaning hand (i.e. chiropractic)) is the study of penmanship and handwriting in all of its aspects.

According to Georges Jean (1992, p. 12), standardised writing 'cannot be said to exist until there is an agreed upon repertoire of formal signs or symbols that can be used to reproduce clearly the thoughts and feelings' that those utilising them hope to put forth.

Although writing's origins may be traced back to the renowned French cave paintings in Lascaux (said to be about 20,000 years old), it appears to have been nearly 17 millennia before any formal system of writing was developed.

The Sumerians are regarded as the first everyday users (in agricultural applications) of pictographs (of which scholars have catalogued some 15,000 individual symbols).

Contextual handwriting is said to have begun with the development of Cuneiform (from the Latin Cuneus and referring to the styluses used in creating the pictographs of the aforesaid). Cuneiform would be applied in the recording of the Akkadian language and several other languages of Mesopotamia as the usage of Sumerian began to fade as a spoken language.

As both Mesopotamians and Egyptians began to regard writing as an indicator of one's privilege/rank in societal hierarchy, instructors of the times were given rein to develop drilling (reading/identification, and so on) and memorisation techniques still in operation in modern language instruction. This may have also been assisted by the eventual availability of papyrus as well as the evolution of the hieroglyphs into the more comprehensible forms of Hieratic (from the Greek 'hieros' meaning 'sacred' and coined by Herodotus (c. 484-424 BCE)) and Demotic. These would diminish one another in their own swiftness and would be key elements in the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion.

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