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, 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 The Canaanite languages, or Canaanite dialects, are one of the three subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages, the others being Aramaic and Ugaritic, all originating in the Levant and Mesopotamia. They are attested in Canaanite inscription ...

, subcategorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite,

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

and Edomite, as well as Old Aramaic. Its use in Phoenicia (coastal Levant) led to its wide dissemination outside of the Canaanite sphere, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it was adopted and modified by many other cultures. It became one of the most widely used writing systems. The Phoenician alphabet proper remained in use in Ancient Carthage until the 2nd century BC (known as the Punic alphabet), while elsewhere it diversified into numerous national alphabets, including the Aramaic and Samaritan, several Anatolian scripts, and the early Greek alphabets. In the Near East, the Aramaic alphabet became especially successful, giving rise to the Jewish square script and Perso-Arabic scripts, among others. "Phoenician proper" consists of 22 consonant letters (leaving vowel sounds implicit) – in other words, it is an ''abjad'' – although certain late varieties use ''

matres lectionis ''Matres lectionis'' (from Latin "mothers of reading", singular form: ''mater lectionis'', from he, אֵם קְרִיאָה ) are consonants that are used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing down of Semitic languages such as Arabic, ...

'' for some vowels. 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 w ...

, 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 ...

Roman-era The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...

North Africa. Phoenician was usually written right to left, though some texts alternate directions ( boustrophedon).

History

Origin

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

Sinai Sinai commonly refers to: * Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Mount Sinai, a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt * Biblical Mount Sinai, the site in the Bible where Moses received the Law of God Sinai may also refer to: * Sinai, South Dakota, a place ...

and in Canaan 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 The Phoenician arrowheads or Phoenician javelin heads are a well-known group of almost 70 Phoenician inscribed bronze arrowheads from the 11th century BC onwards. The first known inscription was the Ruweiseh arrowhead; it is the only one found ...

at al-Khader near Bethlehem 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 (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 communi ...

Spread and adaptations

Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet thrived, including Greek, Old Italic and Anatolian scripts. The alphabet's attractive innovation was its phonetic nature, in which one sound was represented by one symbol, which meant only a few dozen symbols to learn. The other scripts of the time, cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, employed many complex characters 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 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 landscap ...

sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos (in present-day Lebanon) and Carthage 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 automatic printing. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...

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 The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (European ...

kingdoms, such as Assyria,

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 c. ...

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

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

Paleo-Hebrew 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 ...

) 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, Byblos, c. 850 BC. * KAI 14: Eshmunazar II sarcophagus, 5th century BC. * KAI 15-16:

Bodashtart inscriptions The Bodashtart inscriptions are a well-known group of between 22–24 Phoenician inscriptions from the 6th century BC referring to King Bodashtart.Bordreuil, 1990, "L'exemple le plus impressionnant est certainement celui des nombreuses dedicaces de ...

, 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 The Karatepe bilingual (8th century BC), also known as the Azatiwada inscription, is a bilingual inscription on stone slabs consisting of Phoenician and Luwian text each, which enabled the decryption of the Anatolian hieroglyphs. The artifact ...

, 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 hieroglyph 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 1,00 ...

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 (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) 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 BC until the ris ...

or cuneiform. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single individual conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian. It was eventually discovered that the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was inspired by the model of hieroglyphs.

Table of letters

The chart shows the ''graphical'' evolution of Phoenician letter forms into other alphabets. The ''sound'' values also changed significantly, both at the initial creation of new alphabets and from gradual pronunciation changes which did not immediately lead to spelling changes. The Phoenician letter forms shown are idealized: actual Phoenician writing is less uniform, with significant variations by era and region. When alphabetic writing began, with the early Greek alphabet, the letter forms were similar but not identical to Phoenician, and vowels were added to the consonant-only Phoenician letters. There were also distinct variants of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how those Phoenician characters that did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were used. The Ionic variant evolved into the standard Greek alphabet, and the Cumae variant into the Italic alphabets (including the Latin alphabet). The

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

is derived from Italic, the Cyrillic alphabet from medieval Greek. The Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic scripts are derived from Aramaic (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, 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 , 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 Nun is the fourteenth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician Nūn , Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew Nun , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic Nun , Syriac alphabet, Syriac Nūn ܢܢ, and Arabic alphabet, Arabic N� ...

, 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 Acrophony (; Greek: ἄκρος ''akros'' uppermost + φωνή ''phone'' 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 name ...

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 from whom they borrowed a variant of the Western Greek alphabet) and the Orthodox Slavs (at least when naming the

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

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.

Derived alphabets

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

, Armenian and Georgian scripts are derived from the Greek alphabet, 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 Fertil ...

, also descended from Phoenician, evolved into the Arabic and Hebrew scripts. It has also been theorised that the Brahmi and subsequent Brahmic scripts of the Indian cultural sphere 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 Hebrew. 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 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 Aramaic, 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, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

'' of the Middle East, was widely adopted. It later split off (due to political divisions) into a number of related alphabets, including Hebrew, 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 the Phoenician alphabet had been mostly replaced by the

as officially used in the

Persian empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...

(which, like all alphabetical writing systems, was itself ultimately a descendant of the Proto-Canaanite script, though through intermediary non-Israelite stages of evolution). The " Jewish square-script" variant now known simply as the Hebrew alphabet evolved directly out of the Aramaic script by about the 3rd century BCE (although some letter shapes did not become standard until the 1st century CE). The

Kharosthi The Kharoṣṭhī script, also spelled Kharoshthi (Kharosthi: ), was an ancient Indo-Iranian script used by various Aryan peoples in north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely around present-day northern Pakistan and ...

script is an Arabic-derived alphasyllabary used in the 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 AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with ...

is the derived form of Aramaic used in the early Christian period. The Sogdian alphabet is derived from Syriac. It is in turn an ancestor of the

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

. The Manichaean alphabet is a further derivation from Sogdian. The

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...

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 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

script was present in northern India by the 4th century BC, so that the Aramaic model of alphabetic writing would have been known in the region, but the link from Kharosthi to the slightly younger Brahmi is tenuous. Bühler's suggestion is still entertained in mainstream scholarship, but it has never been proven conclusively, and no definitive scholarly consensus exists.

Greek-derived

The Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician. With a different phonology, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script to represent their own sounds, including the vowels absent in Phoenician. It was possibly more important in Greek to write out vowel sounds: Phoenician being a Semitic language, words were based on consonantal roots that permitted extensive removal of vowels without loss of meaning, a feature absent in the Indo-European Greek. However, Akkadian cuneiform, 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 plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

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 Latin alphabet was derived from Old Italic (originally derived from a form of the Greek alphabet), used for Etruscan and other languages. The origin of the

is disputed: the main theories are that it evolved either from the Latin alphabet itself, some early Old Italic alphabet via the Alpine scripts, or the Greek alphabet. Despite this debate, the Runic alphabet is clearly derived from one or more scripts that ultimately trace their roots back to the Phoenician alphabet. The

Coptic alphabet 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, 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 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, 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 The Celtiberian script is a Paleohispanic script that was the main writing system of the Celtiberian language, an extinct Continental Celtic language, which was also occasionally written using the Latin alphabet. This script is a direct adapta ...

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 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