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The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar but undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BC), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets: It has been suggested that List of alphabets be merged into this article or section. ...
The Bronze Age is a period in a civilizations development when the most advanced metalworking has developed the techniques of smelting copper from natural outcroppings and alloys it to cast bronze. ...
(3rd millennium BC - 2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC) Events 2064 – 1986 BC -- Twin Dynasty wars in Egypt. ...
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A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...
1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (link will take you to calendar). ...
1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...
Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (3 June 1853 - 28 July 1942) was a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. ...
1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...
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The Proto-Sinaitic script
The Proto-Sinaitic script is known from carved graffiti in Canaan (Palestine) and the Sinai peninsula, most famously from a turquoise-mining area of the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim (serābîţ el-xâdem). These mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a West Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician and Hebrew. The Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions were found in a temple of Hathor (ħatħor), and appear to be votive texts. Graffiti is the unofficial application of graphics on publicly viewable surfaces. ...
For other uses, see Canaan (disambiguation). ...
Map of the British Mandate of Palestine. ...
Sinai Peninsula, Gulf of Suez (west), Gulf of Aqaba (east) from Space Shuttle STS-40 For other uses of the word Sinai, please see: Sinai (disambiguation). ...
Turquoise (or turquois) is opaque, blue-to-green hydrated copper aluminium phosphate mineral according to the chemical formula CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8·5H2O. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been enjoyed as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique...
Serabit el-Khadim (Arabic, also transliterated Serabit al-Khadim, Serabit el-Khadem) is a locality in the south-west Sinai Peninsula where turquoise was mined extensively in antiquity, mainly by the ancient Egyptians. ...
14th century BC diplomatic letter in Akkadian, found in Tell Amarna. ...
The Canaanite languages are a subfamily of the Semitic languages, spoken by the ancient Canaanite peoples. ...
Phoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal region of what is now Lebanon. ...
Hebrew redirects here. ...
Statue of Hathor (Luxor Museum) In Egyptian mythology, Hathor (Egyptian for house of Horus) was originally a personification of the Milky Way, which was seen as the milk that flowed from the udders of a heavenly cow. ...
A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script containing a phrase which means 'to Baalat'. The line running from the upper left to lower right reads mt l bclt. (Photo here) Despite a century of study, researchers can agree on the decipherment of only a single phrase, cracked in 1916 by Alan Gardiner: לבעלת l bclt (to the Lady) [bacalat (Lady) being a title of Hathor and the feminine of the title Bacal (Lord) given to the Semitic god], although the word m’hb (loved) is frequently cited as a second word. Specimen of the only certainly decyphered word in the Proto-Sinaitic script. ...
Specimen of the only certainly decyphered word in the Proto-Sinaitic script. ...
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner (March 29, 1879 Eltham - December 19, 1963 Oxford) was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-Twentieth century. ...
Baal () is a Semitic title and honorific meaning lord that is used for various gods, spirits and demons particularly of the Levant. ...
The script has graphic similarities with the Egyptian hieratic script, the less elaborate form of the hieroglyphs. In the 1950s and 60s it was common to show the derivation of the Canaanite alphabet from hieratic, using William Albright's interpretations of Proto-Sinaitic as the key. It was generally accepted that the language of the inscriptions was Semitic, that the script had a hieratic prototype and was ancestral to the Semitic alphabets, and that the script was itself acrophonic and alphabetic (more specifically, a consonantal alphabet or abjad). The word bacalat (Lady) lends credence to the identification of the language as Semitic. However, the lack of further progress in decipherment casts doubt over the other suppositions, and the identification of the hieratic prototypes remains speculative. Development of hieratic script from hieroglyphs; after Champollion. ...
Hieroglyphs at the Memphis museum with a statue of Ramesses II in the background. ...
William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891 - September 19/20, 1971) was an evangelical Methodist archaelogist, biblical authority, linguist and expert on ceramics. ...
An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ...
The Wadi el-Hol script The Wadi el-Hol (wadi el-ħôl) inscriptions were also carved in stone, along an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos, in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, at approx. 25°57′N 32°25′E. Two inscriptions are known. The script is graphically very similar to the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, but is older and further south, in the heart of literate Egypt. The shapes and angles of the glyphs best match hieratic graffiti from 2000 BC, during the First Interdynastic Period. Frank M. Cross of Harvard University believes the inscriptions are "clearly the oldest of alphabetic writing", and are similar enough to later Semitic writing to conclude that "this belongs to a single evolution of the alphabet." Thebes For the ancient capital of Boeotia, see Thebes, Greece. ...
Abydos (Arabic: أبيدوس), one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, stood about 11 km (6 miles) west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10 N. The Egyptian name was Abdju (technically, 3bdw, hieroglyphs shown to the right), the hill of the symbol or reliquary, in which the sacred head...
A wadi is a dry riverbed that contains water only during times of heavy rain. ...
Qina () is the capital of Qina Governorate, Egypt. ...
Brian Colless believes that the Wadi el-Hol script is a proto-alphabet that retains some of the logographic nature of its hieratic provenance. For instance, he believes (following Albright) that one glyph, נ ancestral to our N, derives from an Egyptian glyph for snake (actually, that it had variant forms derived from several snake hieroglyphs). The name of the letter was therefore the Canaanite word for snake, naħaš. It could be used acrophonically for the phoneme /n/, but also logographically as the word naħaš (snake). It could also be used as a poly-consonantal rebus, for example placed with the letter ת T taw, as נת NT, to represent nħšt (copper). In an acrophonic alphabet the initial (Greek: acro) sound (phonos) of a word gives the name to the whole. ...
A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ...
Rebus Principle (Linguistics) is using the existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. ...
There may have been more than one glyph for some of the consonants, either because they could represent the same letter name (as snake, viper, or other snake glyphs for N snake), or because they were homonyms or near homonyms in Canaanite (as fish and spine/support, both samk in Canaanite, for S). There appear to have been letters that were lost by the time of the earliest readable Levantine alphabets.
 Traces of the 16 and 12 characters of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions. (Photos here and here) Stefan and Samaher Wimmer's readings of the two inscriptions, with alternate readings by Colless in brackets, are, with disagreements in bold, BRUCE ZUCKERMAN IN COLLABORATION WITH LYNN SWARTZ DODD Pots and Alphabets: Refractions of Reflections on Typological Method (MAARAV, A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. ...
BRUCE ZUCKERMAN IN COLLABORATION WITH LYNN SWARTZ DODD Pots and Alphabets: Refractions of Reflections on Typological Method (MAARAV, A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. ...
- r ħ m c ʔ h2 m p w h1 w m w q b r ← [read right to left]
- [r x m p ʔ h2 θ g n h1 n m n w b r]
- l ʔ š p t w c h2 r t š m ← [read top-right to bottom-left]
- [l ʔ š g t n c h2 r t š m]
H1 is a figure of celebration [Gardiner A28], whereas h2 is either that of a child [Gardiner A17] or of dancing [Gardiner A32]. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic variants. Hieroglyphs representing celebration, a child, and dancing respectively. Several scholars agree that the רב rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is likely rebbe (chief; cognate with rabbi); and that the אל ’l at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ’el "god". For the town in Italy, see Rabbi, Italy Rabbi (Sephardic Hebrew רִבִּי ribbÄ«; Ashkenazi Hebrew רֶבִּי rebbÄ« or rebbÉ™; and modern Israeli רַבִּי rabbÄ«) in Judaism, means teacher, or more literally great one. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root-word RaV, which in biblical Hebrew means great or distinguished (in...
Ä’l (×ל) is a northwest Semitic word and name translated into English as either god or God or left untranslated as El, depending on the context. ...
Origin of the alphabet? The Egyptian hieratic script was basically logographic, but used rebus and acrophony extensively. There was a complete set of uniliteral glyphs from at least 2700 BC — that is, the hieroglyphic script contained an alphabetic subsystem within it. But while logographic systems such as Egyptian and Chinese are extremely time-consuming to learn, they are sometimes considered superior to alphabets when it comes to reading. For literate Egyptians, there was little advantage to whittling their script down to a pure alphabet. Purely uniliteral (alphabetic) writing was used mainly to transcribe foreign names. Development of hieratic script from hieroglyphs; after Champollion. ...
A Chinese logogram A logogram, or logograph, is a single written character which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ...
Rebus Principle (Linguistics) is using the existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. ...
In an acrophonic alphabet the initial (Greek: acro) sound (phonos) of a word gives the name to the whole. ...
It has been suggested that Hieroglyph (French Wiki article) be merged into this article or section. ...
However, from the 22nd to 20th centuries BC, central rule broke down. The Darnells found contemporary references to an Egyptian named Bebi, General of the Asiatics. They speculate that,
- In the course of reunifying his fragmented realm, the reigning pharaoh attempted to pacify and employ roving bands of mercenaries who had come from outside Egypt to fight in the civil wars. The Egyptians were the quintessential bureaucrats, and under Bebi's command, there must have been a small army of scribes in the military whose job it was to keep track of these "Asiatics". Inventive scribes apparently came up with a kind of easy-to-learn Egyptian shorthand to enable the captured troops to record their names and other basic information.
In other words, it was a utilitarian invention for soldiers and merchants. The assumption is that they developed a Semitic script based on acrophony, where the first sound of the Semitic word for an Egyptian glyph became associated with that glyph. Just as the numerals 1, 2, 3, etc. changed names but retained their graphic forms as they passed from the Indians to the Arabs to the Europeans, so the names of the letters were translated as they passed from the Egyptians to the Semites. The name of the hieratic glyph for house changed from Egyptian pr to Canaanite bayt, and therefore the glyph came to stand for /b/ rather than /pr/. House and most of the other letters were not uniliteral glyphs in Egyptian: the Semitic alphabet is not derived from the Egyptian alphabet, but rather from the full set of hieratic hieroglyphs. In fact, some of the letters, such as ה H, may have been ideographic determiners (taxograms) only, and thus had no sound value in Egyptian.
Egyptian prototypes Only the Colless reconstruction is shown here. For the Albright identification of the Egyptian prototypes, see the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. A third interpretation can be found at the Phoenician alphabet article. The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. ...
The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and is related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ...
The alphabetical order of these scripts is unknown. They are conventionally presented in the ancient Levantine order because this corresponds to our own alphabet. However, the South Semitic order, h l ħ m q w š r t s k n x b ..., is also attested from the Late Bronze Age and may be just as old as the Levantine. (See the Ugaritic alphabet.) It is not known if the Egyptians had an alphabetic order, but at least one Egyptian dictionary started with h as the South Semitic order does. This is because the first word was ibis (the tutelary animal of Thoth (dħwty), the patron of writing), which started with an h in Egyptian, as reflected in its Greek form hībis. The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform version of the Levantine consonant alphabet (abjad), used from around 1300 BC for the Ugaritic language, an extinct Canaanite language discovered in Ugarit, Syria. ...
Genera Threskiornis Pseudibis Thaumatibis Geronticus Nipponia Bostrychia Theristicus Cercibis Mesembrinibis Phimosus Eudocimus Plegadis Lophotibis Ibises are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae. ...
, or , or [1] Thoth (Ramesseum, Luxor) Thoth, a Greek name derived from the Egyptian * (djih-how-tee) (written by Egyptians as ) was considered one of the most important deities of the Egyptian pantheon. ...
Some of the distinctions listed here are lost or conflated in later Levantine alphabets. For instance, while Η continues the shape of the letter ħasir, its Greek name eta appears to derive from the closely related fricative xayt. Evidently the two letters had been confounded by the time of the Levantine alphabets. Similarly, šimš seems to have replaced θad, taking its place in the alphabet. Colless also reconstructs more than one letter for some phonemes, such as samek Ξ: The fish and the support/spine are alternative glyphs; they never appear together in the same inscription. In other cases there are significant graphic variants, as with šimš (sun), which is represented by a uræus that may not even have a sun disk; or naħaš (snake), which may be represented by several snake hieroglyphs in addition to the one shown here. The Uraeus (plural Uraei or Uraeuses) is a stylised upright cobra (or snake / serpent), used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity and divine authority in ancient Egypt. ...
Note that all proposals for Egyptian prototypes of the alphabet remain controversial. For example, a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that resembles the hieroglyph djet (snake) is identified with the letter נ Ν here, and has been ever since Gardiner, because the name of the corresponding Ethiopic letter is naħaš, which also happens to be Hebrew for "snake" (although in Ethiopic, it means "brass", not "snake"). However, Peter T. Daniels claims it seems very likely that the modern Ethiopic letter names date no further back than the sixteenth century AD, and so are irrelevant to the investigation of Proto-Sinaitic. Note: This article contains special characters. ...
Peter T. Daniels is a scholar of writing systems. ...
| History of the Alphabet | | Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC
The history of the alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing. ...
| | Meroitic 3rd c. BC | | Complete genealogy | | name (and meaning) | hieroglyph | translit. | Phoenician | Hebrew | Greek | | ’alp (ox) | (ỉħ) | ’ [ʔ] |
 | א | Α | | bayt (house) | (pr) | b |
 | ב | Β | | gaml (boomerang) | (qm’) | g |
 | ג | Γ | | xayt (thread [skein]) | (ħ) | x | → ħ | | dalt (door) | (c’) | d |
 | ד | Δ | | hillul (jubilation) | ; (q’; xrd) | h |
 | ה | Ε | | waw (hook) | – | w |
 | ו | Ϝ | | ziqq (manacle) | – | z |
 | ז | Ζ | | ħasir (court) | | ħ |
 | ח | Η | | ţab (good) | (nfr) | ţ |
 | ט | Θ | | yad (arm/hand) | (c) | y |
 | י | Ι | kapp (palm [of hand])
kipp (palm branch) | (d, drt)
– | k |
 | כ,ך | Κ | | šimš (sun [uræus]) | (rac) | š |
 | ש | Σ | | lamd (crook/goad) | (cwt) | l |
 | ל | Λ | | mu (water) | (nt) | m |
 | מ,ם | Μ | | ðayp (eyebrow) | | ð | → z | | naħaš (snake) | (j) | n |
 | נ,ן | Ν | samk (support [vine tutor])
samk (fish) | (jd, dd)
(ỉn) | s |
 | ס | Ξ | | cayn (eye) | (ỉr) | c [ʕ] |
 | ע | Ο | | pu (mouth) | (r, r’) | p |
 | פ,ף | Π | | şirar (tied bag) | (sšr) | ş |
 | צ,ץ | Ϡ | | qaw (cord [wound on stick]) | (wj) | q |
 | ק | Ϟ | | ra’iš (head) | (tp) | r |
 | ר | Ρ | | θad (breast) | – | θ | → š | | γinab? (grape?) | – | γ [ɣ] | – | | taw (mark) | – | t |
 | ת | Τ | The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. ...
The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and is related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ...
The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1000 BC and is derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ...
The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ...
BrÄhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts. ...
The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, and to an extent, Korea. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
This article or section uses Khmer characters which may be rendered as boxes or other nonsensical symbols. ...
Javanese script is the script that Javanese is originally written in (not to be confused with Javascript, which is a programming language). ...
This article is mainly about Hebrew letters. ...
11th century book in Syriac Serto. ...
The Nabatean alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (abjad) that was used by the Nabateans in the 2nd century BC. Important inscriptions are found in Petra. ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd century AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a. ...
Note: This article contains special characters. ...
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...
Younger Futhark inscription on the Vaksala Runestone The Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes, formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, but before Christianization also on the European Continent. ...
Note: This article contains special characters. ...
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius to Wulfila, used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. ...
Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ...
The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ...
The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet, the more commonly known Hebrew alphabet having been adapted from the Aramaic alphabet under the Persian Empire. ...
Photograph of Botorrita 1 (both sides), 1st century BC. The Iberian scripts (or Iberian alphabet) are two scripts (or two styles of the same script) found on the Iberian peninsula, the Northeast and South Iberian script. ...
The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in ca. ...
Note: This article contains special characters. ...
The Meroitic script is an alphabet of Egyptian (Hieroglyphic) origin used in Kingdom of Meroë. Some scholars, e. ...
Nearly all the segmental scripts (alphabets, but see below for more precise terminology) used around the globe were apparently derived from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. ...
It has been suggested that Hieroglyph (French Wiki article) be merged into this article or section. ...
The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and is related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ...
This article is mainly about Hebrew letters. ...
Phoenician Aleph. ...
Phoenician Beth. ...
Phoenician Gimel. ...
Phoenician Daleth. ...
Phoenician He. ...
Phoenician Waw. ...
Phoenician Zayin. ...
Phoenician Heth. ...
Phoenician Teth. ...
Phoenician Yodh. ...
Phoenician Kaph. ...
The Uraeus (plural Uraei or Uraeuses) is a stylised upright cobra (or snake / serpent), used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity and divine authority in ancient Egypt. ...
Phoenician Sin. ...
Phoenician Lamedh. ...
Phoenician Mem. ...
Phoenician Nun. ...
Phoenician Samekh. ...
Phoenician Ayin. ...
Phoenician Pe. ...
Image File history File links Phoenician_sade. ...
Phoenician Qoph. ...
Phoenician Res. ...
Phoenician Taw. ...
Literature - Sacks, David (2004). Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-1173-3.
- Albright, Wm. F. (1966) The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment
See also A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...
An abjad is a type of writing system where there is one symbol per consonantal phoneme, sometimes also called a consonantary. ...
Hieroglyphs at the Memphis museum with a statue of Ramesses II in the background. ...
The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. ...
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