The Phoenician alphabet is an

abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

(consonantal

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

) used across the Mediterranean civilization of

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in

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 societies and histories of the ancient Phoenicians, Ancient Hebrews, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic ...

found across the Mediterranean basin. In the

history of writing systems The history of writing traces the development of writing systems and how their use transformed and was transformed by different societies. The use of writing prefigures various social and psychological consequences associated with literacy a ...

, the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed

writing direction A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the

Proto-Sinaitic script The Proto-Sinaitic script is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, 30-40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as Wadi el ...

used during the

Late Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

, which was derived in turn from

Egyptian hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char ...

. The Phoenician alphabet was used to write

Canaanite languages The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects, are one of four subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages. The others are Aramaic and the now-extinct Ugaritic and Amorite language. These closely related languages origin ...

spoken during the

Early Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progr ...

, sub-categorized by historians as Phoenician,

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, Moabite,

Ammonite Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...

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 Fertile Crescent in the Early Iron Age, ...

. It was widely disseminated outside of the Canaanite sphere by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean, where it was adopted and adapted by other cultures. The Phoenician alphabet proper was used in

Ancient Carthage Ancient Carthage ( ; , ) was an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state, and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians ...

until the 2nd century BC, where it was used to write the

Punic language 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 ...

. Its direct descendant scripts include the

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

and

Samaritan Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

alphabets, several

Alphabets of Asia Minor Various alphabetic writing systems were in use in Iron Age Anatolia to record Anatolian languages and Phrygian language, Phrygian. Several of these languages had previously been written with logogram, logographic and syllabary, syllabic scripts. ...

, and the

Archaic Greek alphabets Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the Archaic Greece, archaic and Classical Greece, early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that ...

. The Phoenician alphabet proper uses 22

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

letters—as an abjad used to write a Semitic language, the vowel sounds were left implicit—though late varieties sometimes used to denote some

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s. As its letters were originally incised using a

stylus A stylus is a writing utensil or tool for scribing or marking into softer materials. Different styluses were used to write in cuneiform by pressing into wet clay, and to scribe or carve into a wax tablet. Very hard styluses are also used to En ...

, their forms are mostly angular and straight, though cursive forms increased in use over time, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet used in

Roman North Africa Africa was a Roman province on the northern coast of the continent of Africa. It was established in 146 BC, following the Roman Republic's conquest of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisi ...

History

Origin

The earliest known proto-alphabetic inscriptions are the

sporadically attested in the

Sinai Peninsula The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai ( ; ; ; ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a land bridge between Asia and Afri ...

and in

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

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 ...

and

. The script was not widely used until the rise of

Syro-Hittite states The states called Neo-Hittite, Syro-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 northwestern parts of ...

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 period of societal collapse in the Mediterranean basin during the 12th century BC. It is thought to have affected much of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, in particular Egypt, Anatolia, the Aege ...

period. The inscriptions found on the Phoenician arrowheads at al-Khader near

Bethlehem Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of . The city's economy is strongly linked to Tourism in the State of Palesti ...

and dated offered the epigraphists the "missing link" between the two. The Ahiram epitaph, whose dating is controversial, engraved on the sarcophagus of king Ahiram in Byblos, Lebanon, one of five known

Byblian royal inscriptions The Byblian royal inscriptions are five inscriptions from Byblos written in an early type of Phoenician script, in the order of some of the kings of Byblos, all of which were discovered in the early 20th century. They constitute the largest corp ...

, shows essentially the fully developed Phoenician script, although the name "Phoenician" is by convention given to inscriptions beginning in the mid-11th century BC.

Spread and adaptations

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

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

, 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 Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

and

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

Byblos Byblos ( ; ), also known as Jebeil, Jbeil or Jubayl (, Lebanese Arabic, locally ), is an ancient city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. The area is believed to have been first settled between 8800 and 7000BC and continuously inhabited ...

(in present-day

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

) and

Carthage Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, 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 classic ...

in North Africa. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt. 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,

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

s 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: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

and

Adiabene Adiabene ( Greek: Αδιαβηνή, ) 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 ...

, would continue to use

for legal and liturgical matters well into the Common Era. According to

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, the Phoenician prince

Cadmus In Greek mythology, Cadmus (; ) was the legendary Phoenician founder of Boeotian Thebes, Greece, Thebes. He was, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. Commonly stated to be a ...

was accredited with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet— '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 BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

. Herodotus claims that the Greeks did not know of the Phoenician alphabet before Cadmus. He estimates that Cadmus lived 1600 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 The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms o ...

) 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 The Ahiram sarcophagus (also spelled Ahirom; Phoenician: ) was the sarcophagus of a Phoenician King of Byblos (c. 1000 BC), discovered in 1923 by the French excavator Pierre Montet in tomb V of the royal necropolis of Byblos. The sarcophagus ...

, . * KAI 14: Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, 5th century BC * KAI 15–16: Bodashtart inscriptions, 4th century BC * KAI 24: Kilamuwa Stela, 9th century BC * KAI 46:

Nora Stone The Nora Stone or Nora Inscription is an ancient Phoenician inscribed stone found at Nora on the south coast of Sardinia in 1773. Though it was not discovered in its primary context, it has been dated by palaeographic methods to the late 9th ce ...

, * KAI 47: Cippi of Melqart inscription, 2nd century BC * KAI 26: Karatepe bilingual, 8th century BC * KAI 277:

Pyrgi Tablets The Pyrgi Tablets (dated ) are three golden plates inscribed with a bilingual Phoenician– Etruscan dedicatory text. They are the oldest historical source documents from Italy, predating Roman hegemony, and are rare examples of texts in these la ...

, Phoenician-Etruscan bilingual, * Çineköy inscription, Phoenician-Luwian bilingual, 8th century BC The General Directorate of Antiquities of Lebanon has assembled a list of inscribed objects from different time periods that together illustrate the evolution of the Phoenician alphabet. The objects are Lebanese state property and displayed in the National Museum of Beirut, with occasional loans to other institutions. The oldest of them is the Ahiram sarcophagus. This collection formed the basis of a nomination of the Phoenician alphabet to the Memory of the World International Register.

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

accepted the nomination in 2005, recognising the alphabet as documentary heritage of global importance.

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 Catholic clergyman, archaeologist, numismatologist and scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 ...

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

s, 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 Hieratic (; ) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE ...

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

Hyksos The Hyksos (; Egyptian language, Egyptian ''wikt:ḥqꜣ, ḥqꜣ(w)-wikt:ḫꜣst, ḫꜣswt'', Egyptological pronunciation: ''heqau khasut'', "ruler(s) of foreign lands"), in modern Egyptology, are the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt ( ...

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: 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 epis ...

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, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

). The

Runic alphabet Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...

is derived from Italic, the

Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic 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 countries in Southeastern Europe, Easte ...

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

(the latter as a medieval cursive variant of

Nabataean The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petr ...

). Ge'ez is from South Arabian.

, ʾālep , ox, head of cattle , ʾ , ʾ , , , , , , , , , , Αα , Aa , Аа , 𑀅 /a/ , अ /a/ , அ , (') , - , , Proto-semiticB-01

, } , bēt , house , b , b , ⵙ , , , , , , , , , Ββ , Bb , Бб, Вв , 𑀩 /b/ , ब /b/ , - , (') , - , , Proto-semiticG-01

, } , gīml ,

throwing stick The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the jav ...

(or camel) Theodor Nöldeke (1904) , g , g , ⵤ , , , , , , , , , Γγ , Cc, Gg , Гг, Ґґ , 𑀕 /g/ , ग /g/ , - , (') , - , , Proto-semiticD-01

, } , dālet , door (or fish) , d , d , ⵎ , , , , , , , , , Δδ , Dd , Дд , 𑀥 /dʰ/ , ध /dʰ/ , - , — , - , ? , Proto-semiticE-01

, } , he , window (or jubilation) , h , h , Ⲷ , , , , , , , , , Εε , Ee , Ее, Ёё, Єє, Ээ , 𑀳 /ɦ/ , ह /ɦ/ , - , — , - , , Proto-semiticW-01

, } ,

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

, hook , w , w , , , , , , , , , , (), Υυ , Ff, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy , Ѕѕ, Ѵѵ, Уу, Ўў , 𑀯 /v/ , व /v/ , வ /v/ , (') , - , , Proto-semiticZ-01

, } ,

zayin Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''zayn'' 𐤆, Hebrew ''zayīn'' , Aramaic ''zain'' 𐡆, Syriac ''zayn'' ܙ, and Arabic ''zāy'' . It represents the sound . It ...

, weapon (or manacle) , z , z , Libyco-Berber Dougga z2

, , , , , , , , , Ζζ , Zz , Зз , 𑀚 /ɟ/ , ज /dʒ/ , - , (') , - , / ? , 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 , , , , , , , , , , Ηη , Hh , Ии, Йй , 𑀖 /gʰ/ , घ /gʰ/ , - , (') , - , ? , , , Phoenician teth

, } , ṭēt , wheel , ṭ , ṭ , Libyco-Berber Dougga t prime

, , , , , , , , , Θθ , , Ѳѳ , 𑀣 /tʰ/ , थ /tʰ/ , - , — , - , , Proto-semiticI-01

, } , yod , arm, hand , y , j , Libyco-Berber Dougga y variant2

, , , , , , , , , Ιι , Ιi, Jj , Іі, Її, Јј , 𑀬 /j/ , य /j/ , ய /y/ , (') , - , , Proto-semiticK-01

, } , kāp , palm of a hand , k , k , Libyco-Berber Dougga k1

, , , , , , , , , Κκ , Kk , Кк , 𑀓 /k/ , क /k/ , க , (') , - , , Proto-semiticL-01

, } , lāmed ,

goad The goad is a traditional farming implement, used to spur or guide livestock, usually oxen, which are pulling a plow 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 , LibycoBerberDougga

, , , , , , , , , Λλ , Ll , Лл , 𑀮 /l/ , ल /l/ , ல , (') , - , , Proto-semiticM-01

, } , mēm , water , m , m , ⵡ , , , , , , , , , Μμ , Mm , Мм , 𑀫 /m/ , म /m/ , ம , (') , - , , Proto-semiticN-01

, } ,

nūn Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''nūn'' 𐤍, Hebrew ''nūn'' , Aramaic ''nūn'' 𐡍‎, Syriac ''nūn'' ܢ, and Arabic ''nūn'' (in abjadi order). Its numerical value is 50. It is the third letter ...

, serpent (or fish) , n , n , ⵏ , , , , , , , , , Νν , Nn , Нн , 𑀦 /n/ , न /n/ , , (') , - , , Proto-semiticX-01

, } , śāmek , fish , ś , s , ⴵ , , , , , , , , , Ξξ , , Ѯѯ , 𑀱 /ʂ/ , ष /ʂ/ , - , (') , - , , Proto-semiticO-01

, } , ʿayin , eye , ʿ , ʿ , , , , , , , , , , Οο, Ωω , Oo , Оо, Ѡѡ , 𑀏 /e/ , ए /e/ , - , — , - , , Proto-semiticP-01

, } , pē , mouth (or corner) , p , p , ⴴ / ⴳ , , , , , , , , , Ππ , Pp , Пп , 𑀧 /p/ , प /p/ , ப , (') , - , ? , , , Phoenician sade

, } , ṣādē , papyrus plant/fish hook? , ṣ , ṣ , Libyco-Berber Dougga s prime

, , , , , , , , , () , , , 𑀘 /c/ , च /tʃ/ , ச /c/ , (') , - , ? , Proto-semiticQ-01

, } , qōp , needle eye , q , q , Libyco-Berber Dougga gh

, , , , , , , , , (), Φφ , Qq , Ҁҁ, Фф , 𑀔 /kʰ/ , ख /kʰ/ , - , — , - , , Proto-semiticR-01

, } , rēs, reš , head , r , r , ⵔ , , , , , , , , , Ρρ , Rr , Рр , 𑀭 /r/ , र /r/ , ர , ('),(') , - , , Proto-semiticS-01

, , , } , šīn , tooth (or sun) , š , š , ⵉ , , , , , , , , , Σσς , Ss , Сс, Шш, Щщ , 𑀰 /ɕ/ , श /ɕ/ , - , (') , - , , Proto-semiticT-01

, } , tāw , mark , t , t , ⵝ , , , , , , , , , Ττ , Tt , Тт , 𑀢 /t/ , त /t/ , த , (')

Letter names

Phoenician used a system of

acrophony Acrophony (; + 'sound') is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spelled with t ...

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 Black Entertainment Television (BET) is an American basic cable channel targeting Black American audiences. It is the flagship channel of the BET Media Group, a subsidiary of Paramount Global's CBS Entertainment Group. Originally launched ...

''; 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 approximations of the Phoenician names, albeit they did not mean anything to them other than the letters themselves; on the other hand, the

Latins The term Latins has been used throughout history to refer to various peoples, ethnicities and religious groups using Latin or the Latin-derived Romance languages, as part of the legacy of the Roman Empire. In the Ancient World, it referred to th ...

(and presumably the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization ( ) was an ancient civilization created by the Etruscans, a people who inhabited Etruria in List of ancient peoples of Italy, ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. Af ...

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 Greece, archaic and Classical Greece, early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that ...

) and the Orthodox Slavs (at least when naming the

Cyrillic The Cyrillic 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 countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

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 that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

) 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. Adding (or subtracting) 0 to any number leaves that number unchanged; in mathematical terminology, 0 is the additive identity of the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and compl ...

Derived alphabets

Phoenician was prolific. Many of the writing systems in use today can ultimately trace their descent to it, so ultimately to

. The

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

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 around the ...

and Georgian scripts are derived from the

, which evolved from Phoenician; the

Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...

, also descended from Phoenician, evolved into the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and

scripts. It has also been theorised that the

Brahmi Brahmi ( ; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "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' or ...

and subsequent

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

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 (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms ...

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

. The

Samaritan alphabet The Samaritan Hebrew script, or simply 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 occasion ...

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

predating the mature development of the Phoenician alphabet proper. The

Geʽez script Geʽez ( ; , ) 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 (consonantal alphabet) and was ...

developed from South Arabian.

Samaritan alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet continued to be used by the

Samaritans Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

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 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

, is an early descendant of Phoenician. Aramaic, being the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

of the Middle East, was widely adopted. It later split off into a number of related alphabets, including

, Syriac, and

, the latter of which, in its cursive form, became an ancestor of the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

. The Hebrew alphabet emerges in the

Second Temple period The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

, 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 The Qumran Caves ( '; ''HaMeara Kumran'') 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 a ...

, such as the Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC. By the 5th century BC, among Jews the Phoenician alphabet had been mostly replaced by the

as officially used in the

Persian empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the larg ...

(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 (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

evolved directly out of the Aramaic script by about the 3rd century BC (although some letter shapes did not become standard until the 1st century AD). The

Kharosthi Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside vari ...

script is an Aramaic-derived alphasyllabary used in the

Indo-Greek Kingdom The Indo-Greek Kingdom, also known as the Yavana Kingdom, was a Hellenistic period, Hellenistic-era Ancient Greece, Greek kingdom covering various parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India. The term "Indo-Greek Kingdom" ...

in the 3rd century BC. The

Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...

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 th ...

is derived from Syriac. It is in turn an ancestor of the

Old Uyghur Old Uyghur () was a Turkic language spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries as well as in Gansu. History Old Uyghur evolved from Old Turkic, a Siberian Turkic language, after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated ...

. The

Manichaean alphabet The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the third century CE. It bears a sibling relat ...

is a further derivation from Sogdian. The

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

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 Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "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 ...

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

hangul The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...

. It is certain that the Aramaic-derived

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, 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 northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

Greek. However,

Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and ...

, 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 The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

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

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 __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *Etruscan civilization (1st millennium BC) and related things: **Etruscan language ** Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan coins **Etruscan history **Etruscan myt ...

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 most recent development of Egyptian. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the uncial Greek alphabet, augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic. It was ...

is mostly based on the mature Greek alphabet of the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

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

Demotic script Demotic (from ''dēmotikós'', 'popular') is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and Egyptian hiero ...

. The

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

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, which serves to write Iberian in the levantine coast North of

Contestania Contestani () is an ethnonym of Hispania, Roman Spain of the imperial period. It appears chiefly in the Greco-Roman writers Pliny the Elder (Natural History (Pliny) iii.iii.19-20), 1st century, and Claudius Ptolemy (''The Geography'' ii.5 on His ...

and in the valle of the river

Ebro The Ebro (Spanish and Basque ; , , ) is a river of the north and northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, in Spain. It rises in Cantabria and flows , almost entirely in an east-southeast direction. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea, forming a de ...

(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 for the Iberian language, which was primarily written in the northeastern Iberian script and, to a lesser extent, by the Greco-Iberia ...

, 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 In phonetics, an occlusive, sometimes known as a stop, is a consonant sound produced by occluding (i.e. blocking) airflow in the vocal tract, but not necessarily in the nasal tract. The duration of the block is the ''occlusion'' of the consonan ...

consonants (k g b d t) and the other half represent simple phonemes such as vowels (a e i o u) and

continuant In phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech ...

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 sign.

Unicode

Notes

References

Jean-Pierre Thiollet Jean-Pierre Thiollet (; born 9 December 1956) is a French writer and journalist. He is also affiliated with the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, a European trade union. Career Thiollet attended a school in Châtelleraul ...

, ''Je m'appelle Byblos'', H & D, Paris, 2005. *

María Eugenia Aubet María Eugenia Aubet Semmler (30 April 1943 – 18 February 2024) was a Spanish archaeologist and historian. A professor of prehistory and founding director of the Archaeology Laboratory at Pompeu Fabra University, she was considered a pioneer of ...

, ''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 multi-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, Jewish holida ...

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

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

. 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)
{{Northwest Semitic abjad 11th-century BC establishments Typography Abjad writing systems Memory of the World Register Obsolete writing systems

Alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

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

Notes

References

External links