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The 'Phoenician alphabet' is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to begin with a cut-off date of 1050 BCE. It was used by the Phoenicians to write Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language. Phoenician is a pure abjad, meaning that it is a writing system made up of letters that represent the consonants of the language. While some subsequent offshoots of the script were true alphabets that represented all sounds of the language, the Phoenician alphabet lacks any symbols for vowels.
It became one of the most widely used writing systems, and was spread by traders of Phoenicia across Europe and the Middle East, where it became used for a variety of languages and spawned many subsequent scripts.
Many modern writing systems thought to have descended from Phoenician cover much of the world. The Aramaic alphabet, a modified form of Phoenician, was the ancestor of the modern Arabic and Hebrew scripts, as well as the Brāhmī script, the parent writing system of most modern abugidas in India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants such as the Latin, the Cyrillic and the Coptic), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to include vowels.

Contents

History

Discovery

Parent scripts

Spread of the alphabet and its social effects

Letter names

The alphabet

Encoding

Derived alphabets

Middle Eastern descendents

Derived European scripts

Influence in India and Eastern Asia

See also

Notes

References

External links

History

Discovery

When Phoenician was first uncovered in the 19th century, its origins were unknown. Scholars at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs.^[1] This idea was especially popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, no scholars could find any link between the two writing systems. Certain scholars hypothesized ties with Hieratic, Cuneiform, or even an independent creation, perhaps inspired by some other writing system. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian.^[2]

Parent scripts

With the discovery of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, scientists discovered the missing link between Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Proto-Canaanite script. This discovery reinforced the earlier hypothesis of Phoenician's Egyptian origin. The Proto-Sinaitic script was in use from ca. 1500 BCE in the Sinai and the Levant, probably by early West Semitic speakers. In Canaan it developed into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet from ca. 1400 BCE, adapted to writing a Canaanite (Northwest Semitic) language.
The Phoenician alphabet seamlessly continues the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention called Phoenician from the mid 11th century. Phoenician became the widespread form of Proto-Canaanite; previously, the script had been restricted to recording only Canaanite languages.

Spread of the alphabet and its social effects

Phoenician differed in only letterform and time period from the Proto-Canaanite script, so it is therefore difficult to attest a specific beginning of the alphabet. However, the oldest known inscription of Phoenician is known as the Ahiram epitaph, and is engraved on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram.^[3]
The Phoenician adaptation of the alphabet was extremely successful, and variants were adapted around the Mediterranean from ca. the 9th century, notably giving rise to the Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian and Iberian scripts. Its success was due in part to its phonetic nature; Phoenician was the first widely used script in which one sound was represented by one symbol. This simple system contrasted the other scripts in use at the time, such as Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, which employed many complex characters and were difficult to learn.^[4] This one-to-one configuration also made it possible for Phoenician to be employed in multiple languages.
Another reason of its success was the maritime trading culture of Phoenician merchants, which spread the use of the alphabet into parts of North Africa and Europe.^[5] In fact, inscriptions of Phoenician have been found as far as Ireland. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in archaeological 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.^[6]
Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations which came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script. Its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common population to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of writing systems only being learnt and employed by members of the royal and religious groups of society, who used writing as an instrument of power to control the access of information by the larger population.^[7] The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these class divisions, although many Middle Eastern kingdoms would continue to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into the common era.
As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman-era North Africa. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written in boustrophedon (consecutive lines in alternating directions).

Letter names

Phoenician uses a system of acrophony to name letters. The names of the letters are essentially the same as in its parental scripts, which are in turn derived from the word values of the original hieroglyph for each letter.^[8] The original word was translated from Egyptian into its equivalent form in the Semitic language, and then the initial sound of the translated word become the letter's value.^[9] However, 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"

★ '' "snake" to ''nun'' "fish"

★ '' "corner" to ''pe'' "mouth"

★ ''šimš'' "sun" to ''šin'' "tooth"
The meanings given are of the letter names in Phoenician. The Phoenician letter names are not directly attested and were reconstructed by Theodor Nöldeke in 1904.

The alphabet

Various letters have alternative representations: e.g. the taw can be written more like a '+' than like a 'x', the heth can have two cross bars.

★ The Latin letter X derives from a western Greek pronunciation of chi, and not directly from the samekh-inspired letter xi. However chi itself is probably a secondary derivation of Phoenician samekh.

Letter	Unicode	Name	Meaning	Sound	Corresponding letter in
					Hebrew	Arabic	Greek	Latin	Cyrillic
Aleph			ox		א	ﺍ	Αα	Aa	Аа
Beth		bēth	house	b	ב	ﺏ	Ββ	Bb	Бб, Вв
Gimel		gīmel	camel	g	ג	ﺝ	Γγ	Cc, Gg	Гг
Daleth		dāleth	door	d	ד	د,ذ	Δδ	Dd	Дд
He		hē	window	h	ה	ه	Εε	Ee	Ее, Єє
Waw		wāw	hook	w	ו	ﻭ	(), Υυ	Ff, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy	(), Уу
Zayin		zayin	weapon	z	ז	ﺯ	Ζζ	Zz	Зз
Heth			fence		ח	ح,خ	Ηη	Hh	Ии, Йй
Teth			wheel		ט	ط,ظ	Θθ		()
Yodh		yōdh	arm	y	י	ي	Ιι	Ii, Jj	Іі, Її, Јј
Kaph		kaph	palm (of a hand)	k	כ,ך	ﻙ	Κκ	Kk	Кк
Lamedh		lāmedh	goad	l	ל	ﻝ	Λλ	Ll	Лл
Mem		mēm	water	m	מ,ם	ﻡ	Μμ	Mm	Мм
Nun		nun	fish	n	נ,ן	ﻥ	Νν	Nn	Нн
Samekh		sāmekh	pillar	s	ס		Ξξ, Χχ	Xx	(), Хх
Ayin			eye		ע	ع,غ	Οο	Oo	Оо
Pe		pē	mouth	p	פ,ף	ﻑ	Ππ	Pp	Пп
Sade			papyrus plant		צ,ץ	ص,ض	()		Цц, Чч
Qoph		qōph	Eye of a needle	q	ק	ﻕ	()	Qq
Res		rēš	head	r	ר	ﺭ	Ρρ	Rr	Рр
Sin		šin	tooth	š	ש	س,ش	Σσ	Ss	Сс, Шш
Taw		tāw	mark	t	ת	ت,ث	Ττ	Tt	Тт

Encoding

The Phoenician script was accepted for encoding in Unicode 5.0 in the range U+10900 to U+1091F. An alternative proposal to handle it as a font variation of Hebrew was turned down. (See PDF summary.) The letters are encoded U+10900 ''aleph'' through to U+10915 ''taw'',
U+10916 ,
U+10917 ,
U+10918 and
U+10919 encode the numerals 1, 10, 20 and 100 respectively and
U+1091F the word separator.

Derived alphabets

Middle Eastern descendents

The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, used to write early Hebrew, is nearly identical to the Phoenician one. The Samaritan alphabet, used by the Samaritans, is a version of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic, is another descendant. Aramaic being the ''lingua franca'' of the Middle East, it was widely adopted. It later split off into a number of related alphabets, including the modern Hebrew alphabet, the Syriac alphabet, and the Nabatean alphabet, a highly cursive form that was the origin of the Arabic alphabet.

Derived European scripts

The Greek alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks kept most of the sounds of the symbols, but used some letters which represented sounds that did not exist in Greek to represent vowels. This was particularly important as Greek, an Indo-European language, is much less consonant-dominated than most Semitic languages.
The Cyrillic alphabet was derived from the Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters are based on Glagolitic forms, which were influenced by the Hebrew alphabet.
The Latin was derived from Old Italic, (originally from the Greek alphabet) used for Etruscan and other languages. The Germanic runes also seem to have been derived from an early form of Old Italic alphabet, via the Alpine scripts.

Influence in India and Eastern Asia

Many historians believe that the Brahmi script and the subsequent Indic alphabets are derived from this script as well, which would make it the ancestor of almost all major writing systems in use today, possibly including even Hangul, which is possibly derived from Phagspa, itself a derivative of a Brahmi script; this would mean that of all the scripts in use in the world today, only the Chinese script and its derivatives have an independent origin. It is important to note, however, that the ancient scripts of the Maya and Sumerian cultures evolved independently, and that the Phoenician alphabet owes much of its inspiration to the Egyptian writing system.

See also

★ Hebrew alphabet

★ Greek alphabet

★ Tanakh at Qumran

★ Tifinagh

Notes

1. Jensen (1969) p. 256.
2. Jensen (1969) p. 256-258.
3. Coulmas (1989) p. 141.
4. Hock and Joseph (1996) p. 85.
5. Daniels (1996) p. 94-95.
6. Semitic script dated to 1800 B.C.
7. Fischer (2003) p. 68-69.
8. Jensen (1969) p. 262.
9. Jensen (1969) p. 262-263.

References

★ Sanford Holst, ''Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage'', Cambridge and Boston Press, Los Angeles, 2005.

★ Jean-Pierre Thiollet,'' Je m'appelle Byblos'', H & D, Paris, 2005. ISBN 2 914 266 04 9

★ George Rawlinson, ''History of Phoenicia'', Longmans and Green, 1889.

★ 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, 2003.

External links

★ Phoenicia.org

★ Ancient Scripts.com (Phoenician)

★ The Alphabet of Biblical Hebrew

★ Omniglot.com (Phoenician alphabet)

★ official Unicode standards document for Phoenician (PDF file)