European conceptions of ‘exotic’ writing systems in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract In this paper, I present a brief overview of conceptions of ‘exotic’ writing systems in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with particular emphasis on ‘exotic’ forerunners of writing (such as the Peruvian quipus or the wampum belts of the Iroquois) and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The history of writing was often conceived of as a gradual development with a growing degree of complexity by authors like Antoine-Yves Goguet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau or William Warburton. Their description of ‘exotic’ writing systems generally reveals a euro-centric perspective as well as a sometimes inadequate knowledge of the true nature of different writing systems. After a description of several ‘exotic’ forerunners of writing, conceptions of Egyptian hieroglyphs are subjected to a more detailed examination. Given their enigmatic character, hieroglyphs seemed particularly well adapted for use in universal language schemes. In the last part of the paper, I will establish a link between non-alphabetical writing systems and ‘real characters’ to show how much the latter are indebted to the model of non-European scripts.