Samekh (Phoenician ''sāmek'' ; Hebrew ''samekh'' , Syriac ''semkaṯ'') is the fifteenth

letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

of the

Semitic abjads An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowel ...

, including the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, wikt:אלפבית, 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 languag ...

. Samekh represents a

voiceless alveolar fricative The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least ...

. Unlike most Semitic consonants, the pronunciation of remains constant between vowels and before voiced consonants. In the Hebrew language, the samekh generally shares a similar pronunciation as the left-dotted

shin Shin may refer to: Biology * The front part of the human leg below the knee * Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates Names * Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...

. The

numerical value A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

of samekh is 60.

History

The Phoenician letter may continue a glyph from the

Middle Bronze Age alphabets 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 ...

, either based on a

hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...

for a tent peg or support, possibly the ''

djed The ''djed,'' also ''djt'' ( egy, ḏd 𓊽, Coptic ''jōt'' "pillar", anglicized /dʒɛd/) is one of the more ancient and commonly found symbols in ancient Egyptian religion. It is a pillar-like symbol in Egyptian hieroglyphs representing sta ...

'' "pillar" hieroglyph (c.f. Hebrew root סמך s-m-kh 'support', סֶמֶךְ semekh 'support, rest', סוֹמֵךְ somekh 'support peg, post', סוֹמְכָה somkha 'armrest', סָמוֹכָה smokha 'stake, support', indirectly '' s'mikhah'' ; Aramaic סַמְכָא samkha 'socket, base', סְמַךְ smakh 'support, help'; Syriac ܣܡܟܐ semkha 'support'). The shape of samek undergoes complicated developments. In archaic scripts, the vertical stroke can be drawn either across or below the three horizontal strokes. The closed form of Hebrew samek is developed only in the Hasmonean period.Frank Moore Cross, ''Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook: Collected Papers in Hebrew and West Semitic Palaeography and Epigraphy'' (2018)
p. 30
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the

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 ...

xi (Ξ), whereas its name may also be reflected in the name of the otherwise unrelated Greek letter sigma. The archaic "grid" shape of Western Greek ''xi'' ( Greek Xi archaic grid

) was adopted in the early

Etruscan alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphabet ...

(𐌎 ''esh''), but was never included in 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 o ...

Syriac semkat

The Syriac letter ''semkaṯ'' develops from the Imperial Aramaic "hook" shape into a rounded form by the 1st century. The Old Syriac form further develops into a connected cursive both in the Eastern and Western script variants.

Hebrew Samekh

Hebrew ''Samekh'' develops a closed cursive form in the middle Hasmonean period (1st century BC). This becomes the standard form in early

Herodian Herodian or Herodianus ( el, Ἡρωδιανός) of Syria, sometimes referred to as "Herodian of Antioch" (c. 170 – c. 240), was a minor Roman civil servant who wrote a colourful history in Greek titled ''History of the Empire from the Death o ...

hands.

Talmudic legend

In Talmudic legend, samekh is said to have been a miracle of the

Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments (Biblical Hebrew עשרת הדברים \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, ''aséret ha-dvarím'', lit. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְ� ...

. records that the tablets "were written on both their sides." The

Jerusalem Talmud The Jerusalem Talmud ( he, תַּלְמוּד יְרוּשַׁלְמִי, translit=Talmud Yerushalmi, often for short), also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmud of the Land of Israel, is a collection of rabbinic notes on the second-century ...

interprets this as meaning that the inscription went through the full thickness of the tablets. The stone in the center parts of the letters

ayin ''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 represen ...

and

teth Teth, also written as or Tet, is the ninth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ṭēt , Hebrew Tēt , Aramaic Ṭēth , Syriac Ṭēṯ ܛ, and Arabic . It is the 16th letter of the modern Arabic alphabet. The Persian ṭa ...

should have fallen out, as these letters are closed in the

ktav ivri The Paleo-Hebrew script ( he, הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Kingdom of Israel ...

script and would not be connected to the rest of the tablet, but miraculously remained in place. The

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...

(tractate Shabbat 104a) also cites the opinion that these closed letters included samekh, attributed to

Rav Chisda Rav Ḥisda ( he, רב חסדא) was a Jewish Talmudist who lived in Kafri, Asoristan in Lower Mesopotamia near what is now the city of Najaf, Iraq. He was an amora of the third generation (died c. 320 CE at the age of ninety-twoMoed Kattan 28a) ...

(d. ca. 320).

Arabic Sīn & Nabataean Simkath

Samekh has no surviving descendant in the Arabic alphabet, it was replaced by the letter س Sīn, a letter variant of the letter ش

Šīn Shin (also spelled Šin (') or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin , Hebrew Shin , Aramaic Shin , Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Shin (in abjadi order, 13th in modern order). Its sound value is a voice ...

. Šīn is positioned at its original 21st spot in the Arabic abjadi sequence, while its variant Sīn replaced Samekh at 15th position, with the numerical value of the replaced letter Samekh also assigned to its replacement letter Sīn. The

Nabataean alphabet The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.Phoenician alphabet Hebrew letters