How many other seemingly banal questions are literally constantly before our eyes. However, we never tried to find answers to them because we did not notice this question - we got used to it. But often such questions hide interesting, deep and sometimes simply elegant answers.

Have you ever wondered why Hebrew and Arabic writing have one distinct feature, namely writing from right to left? It turns out there is a very practical explanation for this.

Semitic languages, which include both Arabic and Hebrew, are among the oldest on the planet. They originated at a time when no one could even dream of paper, because it appeared only about two thousand years ago. Hebrew and Arabic writing developed from ancient Babylonian cuneiform writing, and Western writing traditions evolved from ancient Egyptian papyrus writing.

To explain clearly what is the difference between them, let’s use our imagination. Imagine that there is papyrus in front of you, and in your hands you have a stylus (a thin knife). We cut hieroglyphs with our right hand (85% of people are right-handed). At the same time, what is written to the right of us is closed, but what is written to the left is clearly visible. The question arises: how do you prefer to write? Of course, from left to right, since it is so convenient to see what has already been written.

Now take a stone, a hammer and a chisel in your hands. Hammer in the right hand (85%), chisel in the left. Let's start carving cuneiform hieroglyphs. The left hand with the chisel reliably covers us from what is written on the left, but what is written on the right is clearly visible to us. How is it more convenient for us to write? In this case - from right to left.

By the way, if you take a closer look at the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, you will notice that their peculiar configuration indicates that the letters were originally carved on something solid. It is much easier to draw such letters with a chisel rather than with a pen.

Of course, since then the stone has ceased to be the only long-term keeper of information, but the rules of writing have already been formed, so it was decided not to radically change the rules of writing.

Do you agree with this version?

One of my friends, after visiting Egypt, relayed to me his dialogue with another Russian tourist during an excursion to the pyramids. People who have been there know what it looks like: Arabs running around with whistles and chasing away those who like to climb the pyramids. After a short contemplation of this circus, a fellow traveler asked him, “Do you believe that THESE could build this? I don’t.” His friend agreed with him.

Nevertheless, every time I allow myself unflattering statements about the Arabs, there is a person who reminds me that the positional number system that we use was invented by the Arabs and that is why the numbers are called “Arabic”, in contrast to, for example, Roman .

However, these numbers were called Arabic by Europeans, who borrowed them from the Arabs.

In the 12th century, Al-Khwarizmi’s book “On Indian Counting” was translated into Latin and played a very important role in the development of European arithmetic and the introduction of Indo-Arabic numerals. ()

But in Arabic they are called “ar raqm al hindi”, which means “Indian count”. They are also called Indian in Iran: “shumare ha ye hendi” in Farsi means “Indian numerals”. We cannot know for sure whether the Arabs built the pyramids, but the fact that they had nothing to do with the creation of the so-called “Arabic” numbers is a reliable and generally accepted fact.

Indian numerals originated in India no later than the 5th century. At the same time, the concept of zero (shunya) was discovered and formalized, which made it possible to move on to positional notation of numbers. Arabic and Indo-Arabic numerals are modified styles of Indian numerals adapted to Arabic writing. The Indian notation system was widely popularized by the scientist Al-Khwarizmi, the author of the famous work “Kitab al-jabr wa-l-muqabala”, from the name of which the term “algebra” was derived. ()

But let’s imagine that we don’t have access to the Internet and books, or we don’t believe what’s written on Wikipedia. The fact that the Arabs simply took advantage of the result can be easily guessed even without knowing about the “Indian numbers”. As you know, Arabs write from right to left. But at the same time, numbers are written like most white peoples, from left to right. Therefore, if an Arab needs to write a number when writing, he has to step back to the left, figuring out how much space it will take up, write the number from left to right, and then return back to writing from right to left. Take a piece of paper and try to write the text from right to left, and the numbers as usual, and you will understand what is meant. If you have to write quickly, then you can hastily underestimate the space needed for the number, and then it will be flattened towards the end.

The inscription in Arabic "Received the amount of 25976000 reais." The last three zeros did not fit into the indentation and had to be added in small font at the top.

A more educated opponent will immediately say that the achievement of the Arabs is not so much in the creation of a system of positional calculus, but in the creation of algebra, the progenitor of which is considered to be the outstanding Arabic(more on this below) mathematics Al-Khwarizmi. He is considered the creator of algebra, of course, not for the “Arabic” numbers, but for the above-mentioned work, the book “Kitab al-jabr wa-l-mukabala”. The word "al-jabr" in the name means "transfer", and the word "wa-l-muqbala" means "bringing". Transferring terms and bringing similar ones are one of the main actions when solving equations. By the way, the word “algorithm” comes precisely from the name of Al-Khorezmi - the Latin translation of his book began with the words “Dixit Algorizmi” (said Algorizmi).

Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi, a (supposedly) Persian mathematician who worked under Arab occupation. The real image, of course, was not preserved and the author, for some reason, decided to draw the scientist an Arabian beak-shaped nose. (photo from here)

Wikipedia tells us that Al-Khwarizmi introduced a certain classification for linear and quadratic equations and described the rules for solving them. Methods for solving quadratic equations are undoubtedly an achievement for that time. But only they were known before him

One of the first known derivations of the formula for the roots of a quadratic equation belongs to the Indian scientist Brahmagupta (circa 598); Brahmagupta outlined a universal rule for solving a quadratic equation reduced to canonical form ()

“Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta” (“Improved Doctrine of Brahma”, or “Revision of the Brahma System”) is Brahmagupta’s most famous work on mathematics and astronomy. The treatise is written in verse and contains only results without evidence. The work consists of 25 chapters (other sources speak of 24 chapters and an appendix with tables). The 18th chapter, “Atomizer,” is directly related to algebra, but since such a term did not yet exist, it is named after the first problem discussed in the chapter. ()

Maybe Al-Khorezmi was not familiar with the works of Brahmagupta and rediscovered ways to solve quadratic equations?

In the second half of the 8th century, when the Baghdad caliph from the Abbasid dynasty Abu-l-Abbas Abd-Allah al-Mamun (712-775) was on an embassy in India, he invited a scientist from Ujjain named Kankah to Baghdad, who taught the Indian system of astronomy in based on the Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta. The Caliph commissioned a written translation of the book into Arabic, which was carried out by the mathematician and philosopher Ibrahim al-Fazari in 771. The translation, made in the form of tables - zija - with the necessary explanations and recommendations, was called “Great Sindhind”. It is known that al-Khorezmi used this work to write his works on astronomy (“Zij al-Khorezmi”) and arithmetic (“Book of Indian Accounting”). ()

As we see, Al-Khorezmi was well acquainted with Brahmagupta’s book. Yes, he was undoubtedly a major scientist of his time, but by no means the founder of algebra. And if European mathematics received knowledge directly from India, and not through Baghdad, then algebra would now be called some kind of “brahmasphuta”.

Most likely Al-Khorezmi was not an Arab either. Why? Remember how we mentioned that in the Arabic writing system (right to left), writing numbers from left to right looks very unnatural? Couldn't a major mathematician of his time have guessed that it was possible to write numbers from right to left? Surely he could. Not even for the purpose of hiding the fact of borrowing, but simply for reasons of convenience. But he didn't. Why? Quite possibly deliberately so as to leave obvious the fact that this is a foreign system, not Arab. It’s like a message from time immemorial: look people, Arabs have nothing to do with numbers. Our guess is partially confirmed by Wikipedia

Very little information about the scientist’s life has been preserved. Presumably born in Khiva in 783. In some sources, al-Khorezmi is called “al-Majusi,” that is, a magician, from which it is concluded that he came from a family of Zoroastrian priests who later converted to Islam. ()

Zoroastrianism, which Wikipedia mentions, is not an ethnicity, but a religious one. It is clear that if Al-Khorezmi’s family professed Zoroastrianism, then he could not be an Arab. But by whom then? Zoroastrianism was practiced mainly by the Persians, that is, most likely he was a Persian.

An even more sophisticated opponent may say that it was mentioned above that the Baghdad caliph al-Mamun ordered the translation of Brahmagupta’s book, and therefore supported the development of science. So that the reader does not have false feelings about this, let’s look at the history of Khorezm, the homeland of Al-Khorezmi.

In 712, Khorezm was conquered by the Arab commander Kuteiba ibn Muslim, who carried out a brutal massacre of the Khorezm aristocracy. Kuteiba brought down especially cruel repressions on the scientists of Khorezm. As al-Biruni writes in the “Chronicles of Past Generations,” “and by all means, Kuteiba scattered and destroyed everyone who knew the writing of the Khorezmians, who kept their traditions, all the scientists who were among them, so that all this was covered in darkness and there is no true knowledge about what was known from their history at the time of the advent of Islam." ()

This is what the Arab invasion of the enlightened world represented - to slaughter all the scientists, and for the few remaining to build a library in Baghdad.

Al-Khwarizmi was presumably born in 783, that is, approximately 60 years after the arrival of the Arabs. Imagine that your homeland was captured by a tribe of nomads and your grandfathers tell stories in the evenings about how the invaders slaughtered your relatives. Apparently Al-Khorezmi quietly hated the Muslim occupiers, so he left the direction of recording numbers like the Hindus. They say let the Arabian animals suffer at least this much, writing texts from right to left, then from left to right.

What do we have in the bottom line? Arabic numerals are not Arabic at all, but Indian, and the pride of the Arab world, the supposed founder of algebra, the mathematician Al-Khorezmi, did not create algebra and most likely was not even an Arab.

Have you ever wondered why Hebrew and Arabic writing have one distinct feature, namely writing from right to left? It turns out there is a very practical explanation for this.

The fact is that Hebrew and Arabic writing arose on the basis of ancient Babylonian cuneiform writing, and the Western tradition of writing - from ancient Egyptian papyrus writing.

To explain clearly what is the difference between them, let’s use our imagination. Imagine that there is papyrus in front of you, and in your hands you have a stylus (a thin knife). We cut hieroglyphs with our right hand (85% of people are right-handed). At the same time, what is written to the right of us is closed, but what is written to the left is clearly visible. The question arises: how do you prefer to write? Of course, from left to right, since it is so convenient to see what has already been written.

Now take a stone, a hammer and a chisel in your hands. Hammer in the right hand (85%), chisel in the left. Let's start carving cuneiform hieroglyphs. The left hand with the chisel reliably covers us from what is written on the left, but what is written on the right is clearly visible to us. How is it more convenient for us to write? In this case, from right to left.

By the way, if you take a closer look at the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, you will notice that their peculiar configuration indicates that the letters were originally carved on something solid. It is much easier to draw such letters with a chisel rather than with a pen.

Of course, since then the stone has ceased to be the only long-term keeper of information, but the rules of writing have already been formed, so it was decided not to radically change the rules of writing.

I remember when I first learned as a child that some peoples, for example, Arabs and Jews, write from right to left, I was very surprised. It seemed incomprehensible to me how one could write like that. After all, this is terribly inconvenient!

I even tried to write something backwards, but almost immediately I smeared everything with the hand I was holding the pen with.

To my questions about why Jews and Arabs write this way, no one gave an intelligible answer. Therefore, for a long time I had to be content with the explanation that it was just their custom.

However, the answer to this riddle haunted me even as I grew up. It seemed to me that there must be a good reason for writing in the “wrong” direction. And in the end it turned out that this was indeed the case!

It turned out that everything is explained quite simply and logically. The fact is that Semitic languages, which include both Arabic and Hebrew, are among the oldest on the planet. They originated at a time when no one could even dream of paper, because it appeared only about two thousand years ago.

Nevertheless, people needed to somehow record information, so they carved writing on stone. Now let’s imagine how it will be more convenient for right-handed people, who make up 85% of us on earth, to wield a hammer and chisel? Of course, it is more convenient to do this by holding the chisel in your left hand and hitting it with a hammer held in your right. And in this case, it is most convenient to write from right to left!

By the way, take a closer look at the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Their peculiar configuration indicates that the letters were originally carved on something solid. It is much easier to draw such letters with a chisel rather than with a pen.

Although since then the stone has ceased to be the only long-lasting keeper of information, the rules of writing have already been formed, so no one began to change them radically.

This is how the riddle about the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic is simply explained. If this was a discovery for you, be sure to share your new knowledge with your friends.

In the beginning there was a word

About 4,000 years ago, people developed a need to write, i.e. convey information to other people not by the spoken word, but by the written word. The first such attempts were pictograms, i.e. drawings. The writers of those times were probably very proud of themselves, but it is clear to us that their ability to describe qualities and emotions was meager.

drawing 01

The development of pictograms were hieroglyphs. In addition to drawings of objects, images appeared that carried descriptive information. Stable concepts were assigned to hieroglyphs, and the number of such hieroglyphs grew. The inscriptions now consisted of hieroglyphs and pictograms.

drawing 02

Disadvantages of such a letter:

1. There are more than 500,000 words in any modern language. The need to memorize thousands of hieroglyphs is a task beyond the capabilities of most people. The profession of a scribe/reader was respected and required many years of training; the common people were completely deprived of this opportunity.

2. Each hieroglyph has meaning only within a certain group of people who have agreed on the meaning of this hieroglyph. A person not from this group will not understand this hieroglyph, so hieroglyphs are not suitable for exchanging information between groups of people.

They wrote hieroglyphs in all directions, but the predominant directions were from right to left and from top to bottom. The reason for this is simple: it is so convenient for a right-handed person who writes on stone with a chisel in his left hand and a hammer in his right.

What I hear is what I write

In the middle of the 17th century. before. AD the family of forefather Jacob moves from Canaan (Canaan) to Egypt. Jews take an active part in economic and trading activities—keeping records in hieroglyphs and pictograms was absolutely not suitable for solving such problems. Icons were invented with which it was possible to RECORD THE SOUNDS PRONOUND BY A PERSON. This is how the first phonetic alphabet arose.

At first, each sign of this alphabet consisted of a combination of consonant and vowel sounds, i.e. was an open syllable. Here is one version of the list of signs (not all are still understood):

drawing 03

There are 88 characters in this list. In fact, their number varies from 50 to 100 at different stages, in different places and among different researchers. As in almost all languages ​​today, each consonant sound could be combined with one of 5 vowels to form an open syllable, for example:

Pa, Po, Pu, Pi, Pe.

In the photograph we see an inscription made in the 16th century. BC. It was found in Egypt in the El-Hol gorge (sand gorge) - this is the oldest inscription found written in the phonetic alphabet. This form of writing is now called linear writing because, unlike previous forms of writing hieroglyphs in all directions, it was written in a horizontal line.

drawing 04

El-Hol Gorge is located in Egypt about 500 km. upstream of the Nile River from the city of Cairo in the area where Jews settled in Egypt in the 16th century. BC.

drawing 05

Linear syllabary was improved in the period 16 - 14 centuries. BC. In the 13th century BC. There was a revolutionary leap in the development of this letter—more on that below.

After being overthrown in 1550 BC. During the XVI dynasty of the Hyksos pharaohs (hyksos, hycsos, Ὑκσώς, היקסוס), the attitude of the authorities and the local population towards the Jews became hostile (read the article ““). The emigration of Jews from Egypt to the areas of the Aegean Sea, Crete, Cyprus, Sicily and other shores of the Mediterranean began.

figure 06

Jews settled in these areas and naturally brought the linear syllabary there. Many documents written in versions of this letter have been found in excavations from the Minoan and Mycenaean periods.

figure 07

Whatever language we write in, removing vowels from words in most cases does not lead to misunderstanding of the text, but it significantly shortens it. Let's try to write this sentence without vowels, leaving vowels only at the beginning and end of words and the vowel “o”.

Let’s try this, because it’s more difficult to use the word “o” only at the beginning and end of words. I thought it was a little strange, but if you look at it, it’s quite poignant.

Jews have been writing and reading this way for more than 3 thousand years. The structure of Hebrew, in which almost all word roots consist of 3 consonant letters, greatly facilitates the task of understanding what is written. This method of writing saves time, paper, ink and develops variant thinking.

Having removed all unnecessary signs, the Jews by the end of the 13th century. BC, i.e. By the time of the Exodus from Egypt, they had created an alphabet consisting of 22 letters. Here he is:

figure 08

Dear reader! Stop and think!!! Before your eyes the first phonetic alphabet consisting of 22 letters - greatest invention in human history. The invention of the wheel, gunpowder, pinicillin and the Internet are insignificant in comparison. It is a universal means of disseminating information among people all over the world. Without it, humanity would have practically stopped in its development 3,200 years ago.

This alphabet had the following revolutionary advantages:

1. it made it possible to record ANY combination of sounds, INDEPENDENT of the language of the speaker, and did not even require an understanding of the meaning of what was said.

2. it was available to EVERY person for study in a matter of days, i.e. opened the gates to literacy for the common people.

Export of the alphabet to Europe

In 1194 - 1154. BC. Jews make the Exodus - they leave Egypt and settle Canaan.

Over the next 450 years, using this alphabet, immortal works such as the Torah, the psalms of King David, the Song of Songs and a great many others were written in Hebrew. What was the population of Europe doing while the Jews were learning to read and write, building Jerusalem and arguing about the foundations of morality laid down in the 10 commandments?

Europeans of those times wandered through the forests in skins, obtained food by gathering and primitive hunting, lived in caves, and worshiped stones and lightning. This would continue to happen, BUT...

In 732 BC. Assyrian king Tiglath Pilaser III began expansion into Canaan. The war lasted 31 years. During this period, masses of inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel left Canaan and, fleeing, settled on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

figure 09

The total number of refugees amounted to millions of people (read the article ““). A significant part of them settled on the islands and on the coast of the Aegean Sea. Thus came the end of the dark ages of Greece.

The settlers brought, among other things, the alphabet to the Aegean Sea basin. Thus began the history of European writing.

Development of writing technologies

In the 7th - 5th centuries. BC. there was no paper yet. They wrote on clay, on papyrus, on animal skin.

The most convenient and promising was writing on specially treated animal skin. The technology of leather processing has survived to this day. It is used to make a klafa on which the prayer “Hear, O Israel” is written and placed in a mezuzah. The same technology was and is used to make Torah scrolls.

The larger the piece of leather, the more information could be recorded on it and, therefore, the greater its value.

Reading from large pieces of skin had the disadvantage of an inconvenient need to turn your head when moving from line to line. To overcome this inconvenience in the 6th - 5th centuries. BC. a tendency appeared and developed to change the direction of writing from line to line - the line from right to left, the next line from left to right, etc., for example:

figure 10

It’s unusual for us, but after minimal training it’s quite acceptable.