Dr. Irving Finkel

Kind of like amphora.

That sort of thing, but stick in the ground.

So the basic vessel is used for the word cash,

which is beer.

If a Cimmerian is sitting here, he will be very pleased to see that you've highlighted cash, the word for beer, and think you were a right-thinking chap.

But the thing is this.

This illustrates two things.

That there were lots of different vessels,

And there were lots of different things that can go in vessels.

So when it started out, you could have the vessel, and then you could have the drawing of the same vessel with something inside it.

Or you could have a drawing of something else inside that picture.

And so you have pictographic framework of a sign like vessel.

And as the script developed, they realized by bonking in a small thing, you extend the range of a given sign

into other things which naturally, semantically or intellectually, are obviously connected.

So that was a very remarkable matter, very fruitful.

So that looks to me like a straight sign for beer standing on end.

But there's something else.

Because cash, we agree, is an essential part of the human world.

But when the script moved from doing a picture of something that everybody would understand, like, for example, a milk bottle on a piece of paper for the milkman, no problem about it, that tradition of signs that look like what they meant

or signs that looking like what they meant had an extra component to show what they really meant, is one big sweep of the evolution of the writing system.