... in the Uruk-period, where there were need for proof of paid tax and other legal deeds. The fast development of writing soon made it to a syllabic writing system, where each sign represented a syllable. When the Akkadian language (East-Semitic) took over the influence of the area, further development took place, although some problems between the Sumerian and the East-Semitic Akkadian must have occurred, caused by their differences in sounds. In Egypt they, as far as we can see, copied the idea of a pictographic writing system already at the end of the 4th. mill. BC. Soon they were using several hundred signs, either single signs used as ideograms (for full words) or shorter words with only two or three consonants. In Egypt we find that they had also about twenty 'alphabetic' signs, which were mainly used to transcribe foreign names. Also in Anatolia, in the Hittite kingdom, and on Crete ...

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