The is an
Abjad of twenty-plus
Acrophonic glyphs, found in
Levant ine texts of the
Late Bronze Age (from ca. the
15th Century BC ), by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of
1050 BC , after which it is called
Phoenician . About one dozen incriptions written in Proto-Canaanite have been discovered in modern-day Israel and Lebanon.
Being the parent script of Phoenician, the script is the ancestor of nearly every
Alphabet in use today, from
Arabic ,
Greek ,
Hebrew ,
Roman and
Berber in the West to
Thai ,
Mongol , and perhaps
Hangul in the East. The Hebrew alphabet remains close to its predecessor, as only the form of the letters has been modified - unsurprisingly, since Hebrew is a
Canaanite Language and had, in its original pronunciation, roughly the same set of consonants as the dialect that the alphabet was devised for.
Predecessor scripts, possibly still partly
Logograph ic, were discovered in central
Egypt in
1905 and
1999 (see
Wadi El Hol ). These early scripts may have had more letters than are found later, and may also have included letter variants (different letters that could be used to express the same phoneme).
The names of the letters, which survive in the Greek, Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, were probably already present. The names are based on the
Acrophonic principle, presumably from
Semitic translations of the names of
Egyptian Hieroglyph s. For example, Egyptian ''nt'' (water) became Semitic ''mu'' (water), ultimately evolving into Latin
M , while Egyptian ''drt'' (hand) became Semitic ''kapp'' (hand), and ultimately Latin
K .
The alphabetic order is unknown. The related
Cuneiform Ugaritic Alphabet had two alphabetic orders, an ABGD order similar to that of the
Hebrew ,
Greek and
Latin Alphabet s, and an order attested in the
South Arabian and
Ge'ez Alphabet s.
One reconstruction of 23 letters, equivalent to the Phoenician alphabet which evolved from it, follows. The Latin descendants are given in parentheses.
# "ox" (
A )
#
Bet "house" (
B )
#
Gaml "throwstick" (
C ,
G )
#
Digg "fish" (
D )
#
Haw / hll "jubilation" (
E )
#
Waw "hook" (
F ,
U ,
V ,
W ,
Y )
#
Zen /ziqq "manacle" (
Z )
# "courtyard" (
H )
# (
) "wheel"
#
Yad "arm" (
I ,
J )
#
Kap "hand" (
K )
#
Lamd "goad" (
L )
#
Mem "water" (
M )
# "snake" (
N )
#
Samek "fish" (
X )
# "eye" (
O )
# "corner" (
P )
# "plant"
#
Qup "monkey" (
Q )
# "head" (
R )
#
šimš "sun, the
Uraeus " (
S )
#
Taw "signature" (
T )
# "thread" (
Gh )
- 1
- Cross, F.M. (1991) "The Invention and Development of the Alphabet" in Senner, Wayne M. (ed.) ''The Origins of Writing''. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-9167-1. Paperback
- Diringer, David and Freeman, Hilda (1983) ''A History of the Alphabet''. Headley-on-Thames: Gresham Books. ISBN 0-946095-03-5
- Healey, John. (1990) ''The Early Alphabet''. London: British Museum.
- Naveh, Joseph. (1982) ''The Early History of the Alphabet''. Leiden: E.J. Brill; also: (Magnes Press: The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1987)
