The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the

Mediterranean region In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin (; also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea) is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and wa ...

. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician alphabet is also called the Early Linear script (in a Semitic context, not connected to Minoan writing systems), because it is an early development of the Proto- or Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script, into a linear, purely alphabetic script, also marking the transfer from a multi-directional writing system, where a variety of writing directions occurred, to a regulated horizontal, right-to-left script. Its immediate predecessor, the Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script, used in the final stages of the

Late Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

, first in either Egypt or Canaan and then in the Syro-Hittite kingdoms, is the oldest fully matured alphabet, and it was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Phoenician alphabet was used to write the

Early Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

Canaanite languages, subcategorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite, as well as

Old Aramaic Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century. Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramaic ...

. Its use in Phoenicia (coastal Levant) led to its wide dissemination outside of the Canaanite sphere, spread by Phoenician merchants across the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

world, where it was adopted and modified by many other cultures. It became one of the most widely used writing systems. The Phoenician alphabet proper remained in use in Ancient Carthage until the 2nd century BC (known as the

Punic alphabet The Punic language, also called Phoenicio-Punic or Carthaginian, is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language, a Canaanite languages, Canaanite language of the Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages. An ...

), while elsewhere it diversified into numerous national alphabets, including the Aramaic and Samaritan, several Anatolian scripts, and the early Greek alphabets. In the Near East, the Aramaic alphabet became especially successful, giving rise to the Jewish square script and Perso-Arabic scripts, among others. "Phoenician proper" consists of 22 consonant letters (leaving vowel sounds implicit) – in other words, it is an ''abjad'' – although certain late varieties use '' matres lectionis'' for some vowels. As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, they are mostly angular and straight, although cursive versions steadily gained popularity, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman-era North Africa. Phoenician was usually written right to left, though some texts alternate directions ( boustrophedon).

History

Origin

The earliest known alphabetic (or "proto-alphabetic") inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic (or Proto-Canaanite) script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle and

. The script was not widely used until the rise of

Syro-Hittite states The states that are called Syro-Hittite, Neo-Hittite (in older literature), or Luwian-Aramean (in modern scholarly works), were Luwian and Aramean regional polities of the Iron Age, situated in southeastern parts of modern Turkey and northwester ...

in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite" script of the

Bronze Age collapse The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC, between c. 1200 and 1150. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near ...

period. The inscriptions found on the Phoenician arrowheads at al-Khader near Bethlehem and dated to c.1100 BCE offered the

epigraphist Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

s the "missing link" between the two. The so-called Ahiram epitaph, whose dating is controversial, engraved on the sarcophagus of king

Ahiram The Ahiram sarcophagus (also spelled Ahirom, in Phoenician) was the sarcophagus of a Phoenician Kings of Byblos, King of Byblos (c. 850 BC), discovered in 1923 by the French excavator Pierre Montet in tomb V of the royal necropolis of Byblos. Th ...

in Byblos, Lebanon, one of five known Byblian royal inscriptions, shows essentially the fully developed Phoenician script, although the name "Phoenician" is by convention given to inscriptions beginning in the mid-11th century BC. Gezer calendar close up

The German philologist Max Müller (1823-1900) believed that the Phoenician alphabet was derived from the

Ancient South Arabian script The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ''ms3nd''; modern ar, الْمُسْنَد ''musnad'') branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE. It was used for writing the Old Sout ...

during the 9th-century BC rule of the

Minaeans The Minaean people were the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ma'in ( Minaean: ''Maʿīn''; modern Arabic ''Maʿīn'') in modern-day Yemen, dating back to the 10th century BCE-150 BCE. It was located along the strip of desert called Ṣayhad ...

over parts of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Spread and adaptations

Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet thrived, including

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, Old Italic and Anatolian scripts. The alphabet's attractive innovation was its phonetic nature, in which one sound was represented by one symbol, which meant only a few dozen symbols to learn. The other scripts of the time, cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, employed many complex

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

and required long professional training to achieve proficiency; which had restricted literacy to a small elite. Another reason for its success was the maritime trading culture of Phoenician merchants, which spread the alphabet into parts of North Africa and Southern

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in archaeological sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as

Byblos Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 8 ...

(in present-day Lebanon) and Carthage in North Africa. Later finds indicate earlier use in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

. The alphabet had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. Its simplicity not only allowed its easy adaptation to multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of literacy as an exclusive achievement of royal and religious elites, scribes who used their monopoly on information to control the common population. The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these

class division Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...

s, although many Middle Eastern kingdoms, such as

Assyria Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...

, Babylonia and

Adiabene Adiabene was an ancient kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, corresponding to the northwestern part of ancient Assyria. The size of the kingdom varied over time; initially encompassing an area between the Zab Rivers, it eventually gained control of N ...

, would continue to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into the Common Era. According to

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society ...

, the Phoenician prince Cadmus was accredited with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet—''phoinikeia grammata'', "Phoenician letters"—to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their Greek alphabet. Herodotus claims that the Greeks did not know of the Phoenician alphabet before Cadmus. He estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time (while the historical adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks was barely 350 years before Herodotus). The Phoenician alphabet was known to the Jewish sages of the Second Temple era, who called it the "Old Hebrew" ( Paleo-Hebrew) script.

Notable inscriptions

The conventional date of 1050 BC for the emergence of the Phoenician script was chosen because there is a gap in the epigraphic record; there are not actually any Phoenician inscriptions securely dated to the 11th century. The oldest inscriptions are dated to the 10th century. * KAI 1: Ahiram sarcophagus,

, c. 850 BC. * KAI 14: Eshmunazar II sarcophagus, 5th century BC. * KAI 15-16: Bodashtart inscriptions, 4th century BC. * KAI 24: Kilamuwa Stela, 9th century BC. * KAI 46: Nora Stone, c. 800 BC. * KAI 47:

Cippi of Melqart The Cippi of Melqart are a pair of Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Ancie ...

inscription, 2nd century BC. * KAI 26: Karatepe bilingual, 8th century BC * KAI 277: Pyrgi Tablets, Phoenician-Etruscan bilingual, c. 500 BC. * Çineköy inscription, Phoenician-Luwian bilingual, 8th century BC. (Note: KAI =

Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften (in English, Canaanite and Aramaic Inscriptions), or KAI, is the standard source for the original text of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions not contained in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. It was fir ...

)

Modern rediscovery

The Phoenician alphabet was deciphered in 1758 by

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (20 January 1716 – 30 April 1795) was a French scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758. Early years Barth� ...

, but its relation to the Phoenicians remained unknown until the 19th century. It was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were deciphered by Champollion in the early 19th century. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single individual conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian. It was eventually discovered that the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was inspired by the model of hieroglyphs.

Table of letters

The chart shows the ''graphical'' evolution of Phoenician letter forms into other alphabets. The ''sound'' values also changed significantly, both at the initial creation of new alphabets and from gradual pronunciation changes which did not immediately lead to spelling changes. The Phoenician letter forms shown are idealized: actual Phoenician writing is less uniform, with significant variations by era and region. When alphabetic writing began, with the early Greek alphabet, the letter forms were similar but not identical to Phoenician, and vowels were added to the consonant-only Phoenician letters. There were also distinct

variants Variant may refer to: In arts and entertainment * ''Variant'' (magazine), a former British cultural magazine * Variant cover, an issue of comic books with varying cover art * ''Variant'' (novel), a novel by Robison Wells * "The Variant", 2021 e ...

of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how those Phoenician characters that did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were used. The Ionic variant evolved into the standard Greek alphabet, and the Cumae variant into the Italic alphabets (including the Latin alphabet). The

Runic alphabet Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

is derived from Italic, the

Cyrillic alphabet , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...

from medieval Greek. The Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic scripts are derived from Aramaic (the latter as a medieval cursive variant of

Nabataean The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern L ...

). Ge'ez is from South Arabian. , ʾālep , ox, head of cattle , ʾ , ʾ , , , א , ܐ , 𐭀 , ﺍ, ء , 𐩱 , አ , Αα , Aa , Аа , 𑀅 /a/ , अ /a/ , — , (') , - , 𓉐 , Proto-semiticB-01

, } , bēt , house , b , b , , , ב , ܒ , 𐭁 , ﺏ , 𐩨 , በ , Ββ , Bb , Вв , 𑀩 /b/ , ब /b/ , — , (') , - , 𓌙 , Proto-semiticG-01

, } , gīml , throwing stick (or camel Theodor Nöldeke (1904)) , g , g , , , ג , ܓ , 𐭂 , ﺝ , 𐩴 , ገ , Γγ , Cc, Gg , Гг, Ґґ , 𑀕 /g/ , ग /g/ , ᑯ /ko/ , (') , - , 𓉿 , Proto-semiticD-01

, } , dālet , door (or fish) , d , d , , , ד , ܕ , 𐭃 , د, ذ , 𐩵 , ደ , Δδ , Dd , Дд , 𑀥 /dʰ/ , ध /dʰ/ , — , — , - , 𓀠? , Proto-semiticE-01

, } , he , window (or jubilation) , h , h , , , ה , ܗ , 𐭄 , ه , 𐩠 , ሀ , Εε , Ee , Ее, Єє, Ээ , 𑀳 /ɦ/ , ह /ɦ/ , — , — , - , 𓏲 , Proto-semiticW-01

, } , wāw , hook , w , w , , , ו , ܘ , 𐭅 , ﻭ , 𐩥 , ወ , (), Υυ , Ff, Uu, Vv, Yy, Ww , Ѵѵ, Уу, Ўў , 𑀯 /v/ , व /v/ , ᐤ /-w/ , (') , - , 𓏭 , Proto-semiticZ-01

, } ,

zayin Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Zayin , Hebrew Zayin , Yiddish Zoyen , Aramaic Zain , Syriac Zayn ܙ, and Arabic Zayn or Zāy . It represents the sound . The ...

, weapon (or manacle) , z , z , , , ז , ܙ , 𐭆 , ﺯ , 𐩹 , ዘ , Ζζ , Zz , Зз , 𑀚 /ɟ/ , ज /dʒ/ , ᒐ /tʃa/ , (') , - , 𓉗/𓈈? , Proto-semiticH-01

, } , ḥēt , courtyard/wallThe letters he and ḥēt continue three Proto-Sinaitic letters, ''ḥasir'' "courtyard", ''hillul'' "jubilation" and ''ḫayt'' "thread". The shape of ''ḥēt'' continues ''ḥasir'' "courtyard", but the name continues ''ḫayt'' "thread". The shape of ''he'' continues ''hillul'' "jubilation" but the name means "window". see: He (letter)#Origins. (?) , ḥ , ḥ , , , ח , ܚ , 𐭇 , ح, خ , 𐩢, 𐩭 , ሐ, ኀ , Ηη , Hh , Ии, Йй , 𑀖 /gʰ/ , घ /gʰ/ , — , (') , - , 𓄤? , Proto-semiticTet-01

, } , ṭēt , wheel , ṭ , ṭ , , , ט , ܛ , 𐭈 , ط, ظ , 𐩷 , ጠ , Θθ , , Ѳѳ , 𑀣 /tʰ/ , थ /tʰ/ , — , — , - , 𓂝 , Proto-semiticI-01

, } , yod , arm, hand , y , j , , , י , ܝ , 𐭉 , ي , 𐩺 , የ , Ιι , Ιi, Jj , Іі, Її, Јј , 𑀬 /j/ , य /j/ , ᔪ /jo/ , (') , - , 𓂧 , Proto-semiticK-01

, } , kāp , palm of a hand , k , k , , , כך , ܟ , 𐭊 , ﻙ , 𐩫 , ከ , Κκ , Kk , Кк , 𑀓 /k/ , क /k/ , — , (') , - , 𓌅 , Proto-semiticL-01

, } , lāmed ,

goad The goad is a traditional farming implement, used to spur or guide livestock, usually oxen, which are pulling a plough or a cart; used also to round up cattle. It is a type of long stick with a pointed end, also known as the cattle prod. The ...

, l , l , , , ל , ܠ , 𐭋 , ﻝ , 𐩡 , ለ , Λλ , Ll , Лл , 𑀮 /l/ , ल /l/ , ᓗ /lo/ , (') , - , 𓈖 , Proto-semiticM-01

, } , mēm , water , m , m , , , מם , ܡ , 𐭌 , ﻡ , 𐩣 , መ , Μμ , Mm , Мм , 𑀫 /m/ , म /m/ , ᒪ /ma/ , (') , - , 𓆓 , Proto-semiticN-01

, } , nūn , serpent (or fish) , n , n , , , נן , ܢ , 𐭍 , ﻥ , 𐩬 , ነ , Νν , Nn , Нн , 𑀦 /n/ , न /n/ , ᓂ /na/ , (') , - , 𓊽 , Proto-semiticX-01

, } , śāmek , pillar(?) , ś , s , , , ס , ܣ ܤ , 𐭎 , , 𐩪 , ሰ , Ξξ , , Ѯѯ , 𑀱 /ʂ/ , ष /ʂ/ , — , (') , - , 𓁹 , Proto-semiticO-01

, } , ʿayin , eye , ʿ , ʿ , , , ע , ܥ , 𐭏 , ع, غ , 𐩲 , ዐ , Οο, Ωω , Oo , Оо, Ѡѡ , 𑀏 /e/ , ए /e/ , ᐁ /e/ , — , - , 𓂋 , Proto-semiticP-01

, } , pē , mouth (or corner) , p , p , , , פף , ܦ , 𐭐 , ف , 𐩰 , ፐ, ፈ , Ππ , Pp , Пп , 𑀧 /p/ , प /p/ , ᐸ /pa/ , (') , - , 𓇑 ? , Proto-semiticTsade-01

, } , ṣādē , papyrus plant/fish hook? , ṣ , ṣ , , , צץ , ܨ , 𐭑 , ص, ض , 𐩮 , ጸ, ጰ, ፀ , () , , 𑀘 /c/ , च /tʃ/ , — , (') , - , 𓃻? , Proto-semiticQ-01

, } , qōp , needle eye , q , q , , , ק , ܩ , 𐭒 , ﻕ , 𐩤 , ቀ , ( , Qq , Ҁҁ Фф , 𑀔 /kʰ/ , ख /kʰ/ , — , — , - , 𓁶 , Proto-semiticR-01

, } , rēs, reš , head , r , r , , , ר , ܪ , 𐭓 , ﺭ , 𐩧 , ረ , Ρρ , Rr , Рр , 𑀭 /r/ , र /r/ , ᕈ /ro/ , ('),(') , - , 𓌓 , Proto-semiticS-01

, } , šīn , tooth (or sun) , š , š , , , ש , ܫ , 𐭔 , ش, س , 𐩦 , ሠ , Σσς , Ss , Сс, Шш, Щщ , 𑀰 /ɕ/ , श /ɕ/ , — , (') , - , 𓏴 , Proto-semiticT-01

, } , tāw , mark , t , t , , , ת , ܬ , 𐭕 , ت, ث , 𐩩 , ተ , Ττ , Tt , Тт , 𑀢 /t/ , त /t/ , ᑕ /ta/ , (')

Letter names

Phoenician used a system of acrophony to name letters: a word was chosen with each initial consonant sound, and became the name of the letter for that sound. These names were not arbitrary: each Phoenician letter was based on an Egyptian hieroglyph representing an Egyptian word; this word was translated into Phoenician (or a closely related Semitic language), then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's Phoenician value. For example, the second letter of the Phoenician alphabet was based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for "house" (a sketch of a house); the Semitic word for "house" was ''bet''; hence the Phoenician letter was called ''bet'' and had the sound value ''b''. According to a 1904 theory by Theodor Nöldeke, some of the letter names were changed in Phoenician from the Proto-Canaanite script. This includes: *''gaml'' "throwing stick" to ''gimel'' "camel" *''digg'' "fish" to ''dalet'' "door" *''hll'' "jubilation" to ''he'' "window" *''ziqq'' "manacle" to ''zayin'' "weapon" *''naḥš'' "snake" to ''nun'' "fish" *''piʾt'' "corner" to ''pe'' "mouth" *''šimš'' "sun" to ''šin'' "tooth"

Yigael Yadin Yigael Yadin ( he, יִגָּאֵל יָדִין ) (20 March 1917 – 28 June 1984) was an Israeli archeologist, soldier and politician. He was the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and Deputy Prime Minister from 1977 to 1981. B ...

(1963) went to great lengths to prove that there was actual battle equipment similar to some of the original letter forms named for weapons (samek, zayin). Later, the Greeks kept (approximately) the Phoenician names, albeit they didn't mean anything to them other than the letters themselves; on the other hand, the Latins (and presumably the Etruscans from whom they borrowed a variant of the

Western Greek alphabet Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms ...

) and the Orthodox Slavs (at least when naming the Cyrillic letters, which came to them from the Greek by way of the

Glagolitic The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...

) based their names purely on the letters' sounds.

Numerals

The Phoenician numeral system consisted of separate symbols for 1, 10, 20, and 100. The sign for 1 was a simple vertical stroke (𐤖). Other numerals up to 9 were formed by adding the appropriate number of such strokes, arranged in groups of three. The symbol for 10 was a horizontal line or tack (). The sign for 20 (𐤘) could come in different glyph variants, one of them being a combination of two 10-tacks, approximately Z-shaped. Larger multiples of ten were formed by grouping the appropriate number of 20s and 10s. There existed several glyph variants for 100 (𐤙). The 100 symbol could be multiplied by a preceding numeral, e.g. the combination of "4" and "100" yielded 400. The system did not contain a numeral zero.

Derived alphabets

Phoenician is well prolific in terms of writing systems derived from it, as many of the writing systems in use today can ultimately trace their descent to it, and consequently Egyptian hieroglyphs. The

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, Cyrillic,

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

and Georgian scripts are derived from the Greek alphabet, which evolved from Phoenician; the Aramaic alphabet, also descended from Phoenician, evolved into the Arabic and Hebrew scripts. It has also been theorised that the Brahmi and subsequent Brahmic scripts of the

Indian cultural sphere Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

also descended from Aramaic, effectively uniting most of the world's writing systems under one family, although the theory is disputed.

Early Semitic scripts

The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is a regional variant of the Phoenician alphabet, so called when used to write early Hebrew. The

Samaritan alphabet The Samaritan script is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasionally Arabic. Samaritan is a direct ...

is a development of Paleo-Hebrew, emerging in the 6th century BC. The

South Arabian script The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ''ms3nd''; modern ar, الْمُسْنَد ''musnad'') branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE. It was used for writing the Old South ...

may be derived from a stage of the Proto-Sinaitic script predating the mature development of the Phoenician alphabet proper. The

Geʽez script Geʽez ( gez, ግዕዝ, Gəʿəz, ) is a script used as an abugida (alphasyllabary) for several Afroasiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It originated as an ''abjad'' (co ...

developed from South Arabian.

Samaritan alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet continued to be used by the Samaritans and developed into the

, that is an immediate continuation of the Phoenician script without intermediate non-Israelite evolutionary stages. The Samaritans have continued to use the script for writing both Hebrew and Aramaic texts until the present day. A comparison of the earliest Samaritan inscriptions and the medieval and modern Samaritan manuscripts clearly indicates that the Samaritan script is a static script which was used mainly as a

book hand A book hand was any of several stylized handwriting scripts used during ancient and medieval times. It was intended for legibility and often used in transcribing official documents (prior to the development of printing and similar technologies). ...

Aramaic-derived

The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic, is an early descendant of Phoenician. Aramaic, being the '' lingua franca'' of the Middle East, was widely adopted. It later split off (due to political divisions) into a number of related alphabets, including Hebrew,

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

, and

, the latter of which, in its cursive form, became an ancestor of the Arabic alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet emerges in the Second Temple period, from around 300 BC, out of the Aramaic alphabet used in the Persian empire. There was, however, a revival of the Phoenician mode of writing later in the Second Temple period, with some instances from the

Qumran Caves Qumran Caves are a series of caves, both natural and artificial, found around the archaeological site of Qumran in the Judaean Desert. It is in these caves that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Israel Nature and Parks Authority took over t ...

, such as the "

Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll, known also as 11QpaleoLev, is an ancient text preserved in one of the Qumran group of caves, and which provides a rare glimpse of the script used formerly by the nation of Israel in writing Torah scrolls during its ...

" dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC. By the 5th century BCE, among Jews the Phoenician alphabet had been mostly replaced by the Aramaic alphabet as officially used in the Persian empire (which, like all alphabetical writing systems, was itself ultimately a descendant of the Proto-Canaanite script, though through intermediary non-Israelite stages of evolution). The " Jewish square-script" variant now known simply as the Hebrew alphabet evolved directly out of the Aramaic script by about the 3rd century BCE (although some letter shapes did not become standard until the 1st century CE). The Kharosthi script is an Arabic-derived alphasyllabary used in the

Indo-Greek Kingdom The Indo-Greek Kingdom, or Graeco-Indian Kingdom, also known historically as the Yavana Kingdom (Yavanarajya), was a Hellenistic-era Greek kingdom covering various parts of Afghanistan and the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent (p ...

in the 3rd century BC. The Syriac alphabet is the derived form of Aramaic used in the early Christian period. The Sogdian alphabet is derived from Syriac. It is in turn an ancestor of the Old Uyghur. The Manichaean alphabet is a further derivation from Sogdian. The Arabic script is a medieval cursive variant of

, itself an offshoot of Aramaic.

Brahmic scripts

It has been proposed, notably by Georg Bühler (1898), that the Brahmi script of India (and by extension the derived Indic alphabets) was ultimately derived from the Aramaic script, which would make Phoenician the ancestor of virtually every alphabetic writing system in use today, with the notable exception of written Korean (whose influence from the Brahmi-derived 'Phags-pa script has been theorized but acknowledged to be limited at best, and cannot be said to have derived from 'Phags-pa as 'Phags-pa derived from Tibetan and Tibetan from Brahmi). It is certain that the Aramaic-derived Kharosthi script was present in northern India by the 4th century BC, so that the Aramaic model of alphabetic writing would have been known in the region, but the link from Kharosthi to the slightly younger Brahmi is tenuous. Bühler's suggestion is still entertained in mainstream scholarship, but it has never been proven conclusively, and no definitive scholarly consensus exists.

Greek-derived

The Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician. With a different phonology, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script to represent their own sounds, including the vowels absent in Phoenician. It was possibly more important in Greek to write out vowel sounds: Phoenician being a Semitic language, words were based on consonantal roots that permitted extensive removal of vowels without loss of meaning, a feature absent in the Indo-European Greek. However,

Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-s ...

, which wrote a related Semitic language, did indicate vowels, which suggests the Phoenicians simply accepted the model of the Egyptians, who never wrote vowels. In any case, the Greeks repurposed the Phoenician letters of consonant sounds not present in Greek; each such letter had its name shorn of its leading consonant, and the letter took the value of the now-leading vowel. For example, ''ʾāleph'', which designated a glottal stop in Phoenician, was repurposed to represent the vowel ; ''he'' became , ''ḥet'' became (a long vowel), ''ʿayin'' became (because the pharyngeality altered the following vowel), while the two semi-consonants ''wau'' and ''yod'' became the corresponding high vowels, and . (Some dialects of Greek, which did possess and , continued to use the Phoenician letters for those consonants as well.) The

Alphabets of Asia Minor Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian languages and Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logographic and syllabic scripts. The alphabets of Asia Minor proper s ...

are generally assumed to be offshoots of archaic versions of the Greek alphabet. The Latin alphabet was derived from Old Italic (originally derived from a form of the Greek alphabet), used for Etruscan and other languages. The origin of the

is disputed: the main theories are that it evolved either from the Latin alphabet itself, some early Old Italic alphabet via the Alpine scripts, or the Greek alphabet. Despite this debate, the Runic alphabet is clearly derived from one or more scripts that ultimately trace their roots back to the Phoenician alphabet. The Coptic alphabet is mostly based on the mature Greek alphabet of the Hellenistic period, with a few additional letters for sounds not in Greek at the time. Those additional letters are based on the

Demotic script Demotic (from grc, δημοτικός ''dēmotikós'', 'popular') is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta, and the stage of the Egyptian language written in this script, following Late Egypt ...

. The Cyrillic script was derived from the late (medieval) Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters (generally for sounds not in medieval Greek) are based on

forms.

Paleohispanic scripts

Escrita_sudoeste_by_Henrique_Matos_004_02

These were an indigenous set of genetically related semisyllabaries, which suited the phonological characteristics of the Tartessian, Iberian and Celtiberian languages. They were deciphered in 1922 by Manuel Gómez-Moreno but their content is almost impossible to understand because they are not related to any living languages. While Gómez-Moreno first pointed to a joined Phoenician-Greek origin, following authors consider that their genesis has no relation to Greek. The most remote script of the group is the Tartessian or Southwest script which could be one or several different scripts. The main bulk of PH inscriptions use, by far, the

Northeastern Iberian script The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet ...

, which serves to write Iberian in the levantine coast North of Contestania and in the valle of the river Ebro (Hiber). The Iberic language is also recorded using two other scripts: the Southeastern Iberian script, which is more similar to the Southwest script than to Northeastern Iberian; and a variant of the Ionic Greek Alphabet called the

Greco-Iberian alphabet The Greco-Iberian alphabet is a direct adaptation of an Ionic variant of a Greek alphabet to the specifics of the Iberian language, thus this script is an alphabet and lacks the distinctive characteristic of the paleohispanic scripts that present ...

. Finally, the Celtiberian script registers the language of the Celtiberians with a script derived from Northeastern Iberian, an interesting feature is that it was used and developed in times of the Roman conquest, in opposition to the Latin alphabet. Among the distinctive features of Paleohispanic scripts are: *Semi-syllabism. Half of the signs represent syllables made of occlusive consonants (k,g,b,d,t) and the other half represent simple phonemes such as vowels (a,e,i,o,u) and continuous consonants (l,n,r,ŕ,s,ś). *Duality. Appears on the earliest Iberian and Celtiberian inscriptions and refers to how the signs can serve a double use by being modified with an extra stroke that transforms, for example ge with a stroke NE Iberian ke1

becomes ke NE_Iberian_ke5

. In later stages the scripts were simplified and duality vanishes from inscriptions. *Redundancy. A feature that appears only in the script of the Southwest, vowels are repeated after each syllabic signs.

Unicode

References

* Jean-Pierre Thiollet,'' Je m'appelle Byblos'', H & D, Paris, 2005. * Maria Eugenia Aubet, ''The Phoenicians and the West'' Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, London, 2001. * Daniels, Peter T., et al. eds. ''The World's Writing Systems'' Oxford. (1996). * Jensen, Hans, ''Sign, Symbol, and Script'', G.P. Putman's Sons, New York, 1969. * Coulmas, Florian, ''Writing Systems of the World'', Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, 1989. * Hock, Hans H. and Joseph, Brian D., ''Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship'', Mouton de Gruyter, New York, 1996. * Fischer, Steven R., ''A History of Writing'', Reaktion Books, 1999. * Markoe, Glenn E., ''Phoenicians''. University of California Press. (2000) (hardback) * "Alphabet, Hebrew". ''

Encyclopaedia Judaica The ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'' is a 22-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history of all eras, culture, holidays, langu ...

'' (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed.

Cecil Roth Cecil Roth (5 March 1899 – 21 June 1970) was a British Jewish historian. He was editor in chief of ''Encyclopaedia Judaica''. Life Roth was born in Dalston, London, on 5 March 1899. His parents were Etty and Joseph Roth, and Cecil was the young ...

. Keter Publishing House. * *

External links

Ancient Scripts.com (Phoenician)

* officia
Unicode standards document
for Phoenician (PDF file)

Free-Libre GPL2 Licensed Unicode Phoenician Font
GNU FreeFont
Unicode font family with Phoenician range in its serif face.

Phönizisch TTF-Font. * Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic on Coins, reading and transliterating Proto-Hebrew
online edition
(Judaea Coin Archive)
Paleo-Hebrew Abjad font—also allows writing in Phoenician (the current version of the font is 1.1.0)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phoenician Alphabet 11th-century BC establishments Typography Memory of the World Register Obsolete writing systems Alphabet Canaanite writing systems Proto-Sinaitic script Right-to-left writing systems