Evolution of the Alphabet

The Oriental Institute Museum has a regular series of special exhibits.  At the moment, the show is Pioneer to the Past about the trip of the OI's founder, James Henry Breasted through Egypt and the Middle East visiting various significant sites, many of which the OI at the time had projects exploring.

Coming this fall will be Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East.
Should be pretty cool.

My husband has been working on various behind-the-scenes stuff for the show, one of which is this awesome, awesome video showing the evolution of signs from Egyptian hieroglyphs to our own alphabet.  The link goes to the OI's Facebook page, which you should be able to view even if you aren't a member of Facebook.  There are some other sneak-peaks of the upcoming show there too.

It's both an excellent explanatory tool, but I'm also very impressed with the video in general.  Very awesome. 

I know many of you are interested in the origins of writing, etc., so I thought you'd especially enjoy this.  Even if you can't make it to Chicago for the show, I do encourage you to check out the OI Facebook presence and the website for all kinds of fun photos and videos and other snippets of info.