samekh

Samekh or samech is the fifteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''sāmek'' 𐤎, Hebrew ''sāmeḵ'' , Aramaic ''samek'' 𐡎, and Syriac ''semkaṯ'' ܣ. Arabic sīn س represents samekh, but there is no surviving descendant of samekh in the arabic alphabet. However, it was present in the Nabataean alphabet, the Arabic alphabet's immediate predecessor, as the letter ''simkath'' , which was related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪏‎‎‎ and South Arabian . The numerical value of samekh is 60.

Samekh represents a voiceless alveolar fricative . In the Hebrew language, the samekh has the same pronunciation as the left-dotted shin .

Origin

The Phoenician letter may continue a glyph from the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, possibly based on a hieroglyph for a tent peg or support, such as the '' djed'' "pillar" hieroglyph 𓊽
(cf. 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', Arabic سَمَكَ 'to raise, to elevate').

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 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'' () was adopted in the early Etruscan alphabet (𐌎 ''esh''), but was never included in the Latin alphabet. The letter samekh is currently the only letter of the Semitic abjad that has no surviving descendant in the Arabic alphabet, and the letter corresponds exclusively to rather than .

The history of the letters expressing sibilants in the various Semitic alphabets is somewhat complicated, due to different mergers between Proto-Semitic phonemes. As usually reconstructed, there are four plain Proto-Semitic coronal voiceless fricative phonemes (not counting emphatic ones) that evolved into the various voiceless sibilants of its daughter languages, as follows:

Note: Hebrew represents both and , when distinguishing is required, they can be distinguished a dot above the left-hand side of the letter for and above the right-hand side for .

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 hands.

Talmudic legend

In Talmudic legend, samekh is said to have been a miracle of the Ten Commandments. records that the tablets "were written on both their sides." The Jerusalem Talmud 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 and teth should have fallen out, as these letters are closed in the ktav ivri script and would not be connected to the rest of the tablet, but miraculously remained in place. The Babylonian Talmud (tractate Shabbat 104a) also cites the opinion that these closed letters included samekh, attributed to Rav Chisda (d. ca. 320).

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.

Character encodings

Notes

References

{{Northwest Semitic abjad
Phoenician alphabet
Hebrew letters