Phoenician is a

Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ad ...

containing characters used across the Mediterranean world from the 12th century BCE to the 3rd century CE. The Phoenician alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

Standard in July 2006 with the release of version 5.0. An alternative proposal to handle it as a font variation of

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

was turned down. (Se
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summary.) The Unicode block for Phoenician is U+10900–U+1091F. It is intended for the representation of text in

Paleo-Hebrew The Paleo-Hebrew script ( he, הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script ...

, Archaic Phoenician, Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive,

Phoenician papyri Phoenician may refer to: * Phoenicia, an ancient civilization * Phoenician alphabet ::Phoenician (Unicode block) * Phoenicianism, a form of Lebanese nationalism * Phoenician language * List of Phoenician cities * Phoenix, Arizona See also * P ...

, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals,

Ammonite Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttlefish) ...

, Moabite and

Punic The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of t ...

. The letters are encoded U+10900 ''aleph'' through to U+10915 ''taw'', U+10916 , U+10917 , U+10918 and U+10919 encode the numerals 1, 10, 20, and 100, respectively, and U+1091F is the word separator.

Characters

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Phoenician block:

References

{{reflist Unicode blocks Phoenician alphabet