The Alphabet

European Museums, The British Museum

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The Alphabet

During the third millennium the languages of the Levant (principally Canaanite and Amorite) were written in the Mesopotamian system of wedge-shaped signs known as cuneiform. In this system, since each individual syllable required its own sign, the overall number of such signs was very large indeed (about 800). This cumbersome system persisted in use, in diplomatic and educated circles until well into the first millennium. It was eventually replaced by the alphabetic system developed by the Canaanites early in the second millennium.

What the Canaanites did was to remove the vowels from the syllables, leaving only initial consonants. The consonants were then represented by signs pictorially similar to words possessing the consonant in question as the initial letter. For example, the letter "r" was represented by a sign shaped like a human head, ras being the Semitic word for "head". The language could thus be written using consonants only, the vowels being understood, either from the context, or by the use of "helping" letters such as y (=1) or w (=u). In this way, the number of signs needed to express the language was reduced from some 800 to about 24. It was this Canaanite alphabet which was later adopted by the Greeks and thence passed to all nations of the western hemisphere.

Middle Bronze Age dagger from Lachish bearing four incised early alphabetic signs: (from top to bottom), house,- beit - "b", head - ras - "r", serpent - nahas - "n" and fish - samek - "s". The resultant "b-r-n-s" probably conveys the owner's name, "b" (belonging to) r-n-s.

Palestine Archeological Museum

(RockefellerMuseum), Jerusalem

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The Alphabet

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Source:  London, United Kingdom