Proto-Canaanite alphabet

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. the 15th century BC), by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of 1050 BC, after which it is called Phoenician. About a dozen incriptions written in Proto-Canaanite have been discovered in modern-day Israel and Lebanon.

Relationship with other writing systems

Being the parent script of Phoenician, the script is the ancestor of nearly every alphabet in use today, from Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Roman and Berber in the West to Thai, Mongol, and perhaps Hangul in the East. The Hebrew alphabet remains close to its predecessor, as only the form of the letters has been modified - unsurprising, since Hebrew is a Canaanite language and had, in its original pronunciation, roughly the same set of consonants as the dialect that the alphabet was devised for.

Predecessor scripts, possibly still partly logographic, were discovered in central Egypt in 1905 and 1999 (see Wadi El Hol). These early scripts may have had more letters than are found later, and may also have included letter variants (different letters that could be used to express the same phoneme).

Characteristics

The names of the letters, which survive in the Greek, Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, were probably already present. The names are based on the acrophonic principle, presumably from Semitic translations of the names of Egyptian hieroglyphs. For example, Egyptian nt (water) became Semitic mu (water), ultimately evolving into Latin M, while Egyptian drt (hand) became Semitic kapp (hand), and ultimately Latin K.

The alphabetic order is unknown. The related cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet had two alphabetic orders, an ABGD order similar to that of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets, and an HLḤM order attested in the South Arabian and Ge'ez alphabets.

23 reconstructed glyphs (read from left to right).

One reconstruction of 23 letters, equivalent to the Phoenician alphabet which evolved from it, follows. The Latin descendants are given in parentheses.

1. ʼ ʾalp "ox" (A)
2. b bet "house" (B)
3. g gaml "throwstick" (C, G)
4. d digg "fish" (D)
5. h haw / hll "jubilation" (E)
6. w waw "hook" (F, U, V, W, Y)
7. z zen /ziqq "manacle" (Z)
8. ḥ ḥet "courtyard" (H)
9. ṭ ṭēt ([[]]) "wheel"
10. y yad "arm" (I, J)
11. k kap "hand" (K)
12. l lamd "goad" (L)
13. m mem "water" (M)
14. n naḥš "snake" (N)
15. s samek "fish" (X)
16. ʻ ʿen "eye" (O)
17. p piʾt "corner" (P)
18. ṣ ṣad "plant"
19. q qup "monkey" (Q)
20. r raʾs "head" (R)
21. š/ś šimš "sun, the Uraeus" (S)
22. t taw "signature" (T)
23. ġ ġʿen "thread" (Gh)

Literature

• Ouaknin, Marc-Alain; Bacon, Josephine (1999). Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing. Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-7892-0521-1. 
• Cross, F.M. (1991) "The Invention and Development of the Alphabet" in Senner, Wayne M. (ed.) The Origins of Writing. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-9167-1. Paperback
• Diringer, David and Freeman, Hilda (1983) A History of the Alphabet. Headley-on-Thames: Gresham Books. ISBN 0-946095-03-5
• Healey, John. (1990) The Early Alphabet. London: British Museum.
• Naveh, Joseph. (1982) The Early History of the Alphabet. Leiden: E.J. Brill; also: (Magnes Press: The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1987)

See also

• Alphabet
• Abjad
• Armenian Alphabet
• Greek Alphabet
• Middle Bronze Age alphabets (including Sinaitic)
• Byblos syllabary
• Ugaritic alphabet
• South Arabian alphabet
• Phoenician alphabet
• Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Hebrew Alphabet

External links

• Hebrew Alphabet - Chart 1
• Hebrew Alphabet - Chart 2
• Hebrew Alphabet - History

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