The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the

Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions, are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the society and history of the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic inscriptions may oc ...

found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician alphabet is also called the Early Linear script (in a

Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...

context, not connected to Minoan writing systems), because it is an early development of the Proto- or Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic

script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of ha ...

, 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, 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 Canaanite languages, subcategorized by historians as Phoenician,

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 ...

, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite, as well as Old Aramaic. Its use in

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their his ...

(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 and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...

world, where it was adopted and modified by many other cultures. It became one of the most widely used

writing systems A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...

. The Phoenician alphabet proper remained in use in

Ancient Carthage Carthage () was a settlement in modern Tunisia that later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropolises ...

until the 2nd century BC (known as the Punic alphabet), while elsewhere it diversified into numerous national alphabets, including the

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...

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 In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

letters (leaving vowel sounds implicit) – in other words, it is an ''abjad'' – although certain late varieties use '' matres lectionis'' for some

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

s. As the letters were originally incised with a

stylus A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision ...

, they are mostly angular and straight, although cursive versions steadily gained popularity, culminating in the

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

of Roman-era

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...

. 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 Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

in the late

Middle Middle or The Middle may refer to: * Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits. Places * Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man * Middle Bay (disambiguation) * Middle Brook (disambiguation) * Middle Creek (d ...

and Late Bronze Age. The script was not widely used until the rise of Syro-Hittite states in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite" script of the Bronze Age collapse period. The inscriptions found on the Phoenician arrowheads at al-Khader near

Bethlehem Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital ...

and dated to c.1100 BCE offered the epigraphists the "missing link" between the two. The so-called Ahiram epitaph, whose dating is controversial, engraved on the sarcophagus of king Ahiram 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 Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of India ...

(1823-1900) believed that the Phoenician alphabet was derived from the Ancient South Arabian script during the 9th-century BC rule of the Minaeans over parts of the

Eastern Mediterranean Eastern Mediterranean is a loose definition of the eastern approximate half, or third, of the Mediterranean Sea, often defined as the countries around the Levantine Sea. It typically embraces all of that sea's coastal zones, referring to comm ...

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 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 wedg ...

and

Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1, ...

, employed many complex characters 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

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 enti ...

. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...

sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...

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 Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...

) and

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the clas ...

. 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 Med ...

. 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 divisions, 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 As ...

Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state ...

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

for legal and liturgical matters well into the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the ...

. According to

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known for ...

, the Phoenician prince

Cadmus In Greek mythology, Cadmus (; grc-gre, Κάδμος, Kádmos) was the legendary Phoenician founder of Boeotian Thebes. He was the first Greek hero and, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the ...

was accredited with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet—''phoinikeia grammata'', "Phoenician letters"—to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

. 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 The Kilamuwa Stele is a 9th-century BC stele of King Kilamuwa, from the Kingdom of Bit-Gabbari. He claims to have succeeded where his ancestors had failed, in providing for his kingdom. The inscription is known as KAI 24. The Kilamuwa Stele ...

, 9th century BC. * KAI 46: Nora Stone, c. 800 BC. * KAI 47: Cippi of Melqart 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)

Modern rediscovery

The Phoenician alphabet was deciphered in 1758 by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, 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

. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single individual conceiving it, to the

Hyksos Hyksos (; Egyptian '' ḥqꜣ(w)- ḫꜣswt'', Egyptological pronunciation: ''hekau khasut'', "ruler(s) of foreign lands") is a term which, in modern Egyptology, designates the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650–1550 BC). ...

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 Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

). 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 The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking coun ...

from medieval Greek. The Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic scripts are derived from

(the latter as a medieval cursive variant of Nabataean). Ge'ez is from South Arabian. , ʾālep , ox, head of cattle , ʾ , ʾ , , , א , ܐ , 𐭀 ,

ﺍ Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician , Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew , Aramaic language, Aramaic , Syriac alphabet, Syriac , Arabic alpha ...

, 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 Waw/Vav ( "hook") is the sixth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''wāw'' , Aramaic ''waw'' , Hebrew '' waw/vav'' , Syriac ''waw'' ܘ and Arabic '' wāw'' (sixth in abjadi order; 27th in modern Arabic order). It ...

, 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 , 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 ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). The letter represents a ...

, 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 (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 The Latins were originally an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy from Latium. As Roman power and colonization spread Latin culture during the Roman Republic. Latins culturally "Romanized" or "Latinized" the rest of Italy, and the word Latin ...

(and presumably the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roug ...

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) 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 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usu ...

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

. 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 ...

, Cyrillic, Armenian and Georgian scripts are derived from the

, which evolved from Phoenician; the

Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fer ...

, also descended from Phoenician, evolved into the

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

and

scripts. It has also been theorised that the

Brahmi Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' o ...

and subsequent

Brahmic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...

of the Indian cultural sphere 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 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 ...

is a regional variant of the Phoenician alphabet, so called when used to write early

. The Samaritan alphabet is a development of Paleo-Hebrew, emerging in the 6th century BC. The South Arabian script may be derived from a stage of the

Proto-Sinaitic script Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabia ...

predating the mature development of the Phoenician alphabet proper. The Geʽez script developed from South Arabian.

Samaritan alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet continued to be used by the

Samaritans Samaritans (; ; he, שומרונים, translit=Šōmrōnīm, lit=; ar, السامريون, translit=as-Sāmiriyyūn) are an ethnoreligious group who originate from the ancient Israelites. They are native to the Levant and adhere to Samarit ...

and developed into the Samaritan alphabet, 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.

Aramaic-derived

The Aramaic alphabet, used to write

, 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

, Syriac, and Nabataean, the latter of which, in its cursive form, became an ancestor of the Arabic alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet emerges in the

Second Temple period The Second Temple period in Jewish history lasted approximately 600 years (516 BCE - 70 CE), during which the Second Temple existed. It started with the return to Zion and the construction of the Second Temple, while it ended with the First Jewis ...

, 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, 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 Holy Land, nation of Israel in writing Torah scrolls ...

" dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC. By the 5th century BCE, among

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

the Phoenician alphabet had been mostly replaced by the

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 The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewis ...

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 in the 3rd century BC. The Syriac alphabet is the derived form of Aramaic used in the early Christian period. The

Sogdian alphabet The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, a descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of ...

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 Nabataean, itself an offshoot of Aramaic.

Brahmic scripts

It has been proposed, notably by Georg Bühler (1898), that the

Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such ...

of India (and by extension the derived

Indic alphabets The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...

) 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

is derived from the Phoenician. With a different

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, 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 The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, ...

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 wedg ...

, 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 are generally assumed to be offshoots of archaic versions of the Greek alphabet. The

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 The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian la ...

is mostly based on the mature Greek alphabet of the

Hellenistic period In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

, with a few additional letters for sounds not in Greek at the time. Those additional letters are based on the Demotic script. The

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking cou ...

was derived from the late (medieval) Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters (generally for sounds not in medieval Greek) are based on Glagolitic 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, which serves to write Iberian in the levantine coast North of

Contestania The Contestani were an ancient Iberian (Pre-Roman) people of the Iberian peninsula (the Roman Hispania). They are believed to have spoken the Iberian language. They lived in a region located in the southwest of Hispania Tarraconensis, east of th ...

and in the valle of the river Ebro (Hiber). The Iberic language is also recorded using two other scripts: the

Southeastern Iberian script The southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional Iberian, was one of the means of written expression of the Iberian language, which was written mainly in the northeastern Iberian script and residually by the Greco-Iberian alphabet. Abo ...

, 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. 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'' (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed. Cecil Roth. 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 An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a s ...

Canaanite writing systems Proto-Sinaitic script Right-to-left writing systems

History

Origin

Spread and adaptations

Notable inscriptions

Modern rediscovery

Table of letters

Letter names

Numerals

Derived alphabets

Early Semitic scripts

Samaritan alphabet

Aramaic-derived

Brahmic scripts

Greek-derived

Paleohispanic scripts

Unicode

See also

References

External links