The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean basin. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script was also the first to have a fixed writing direction—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic scriptBeyond Babel: A Handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages, article by Charles R. Krahmalkov (ed. John Kaltner, Steven L. McKenzie, 2002). "This alphabet was not, as often mistakenly asserted, invented by the Phoenicians but, rather, was an adaptation of the early West Semitic alphabet to the needs of their own language". used during the Late Bronze Age, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Phoenician alphabet was used to write Canaanite languages spoken during the Early Iron Age, sub-categorized by historians as Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, Ammonite and Edomite. It was widely disseminated outside of the Canaanite sphere by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean, where it was adopted and adapted by other cultures. The Phoenician alphabet proper was used in Ancient Carthage until the 2nd century BC, when it was used to write the Punic language. Its direct descendant scripts include the Aramaic and Samaritan alphabets, several Alphabets of Asia Minor, and the Archaic Greek alphabets.
The Phoenician alphabet proper uses 22 consonant letters—as an abjad used to write a Semitic language, it leaves vowel sounds implicit—though late varieties sometimes used to denote some vowels. As its letters were originally incised using a stylus, their forms are mostly angular and straight, though cursive forms increased in use over time, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet used in Roman North Africa.
History
Origin
The earliest known proto-alphabetic inscriptions are the Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai Peninsula and in Canaan in the late Middle 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 at al-Khader near Bethlehem and dated offered the epigraphists the "missing link" between the two. The 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,Coulmas (1989) p. 141. although the name "Phoenician" is by convention given to inscriptions beginning in the mid-11th century BC.Markoe (2000) p. 111
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;Hock and Joseph (1996) p. 85. 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.Daniels (1996) p. 94–95. 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.
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, scribes who used their monopoly on information to control the common population.Fischer (2003) p. 68–69. The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these class divisions, although many Middle Eastern kingdoms, such as Assyria, Babylonia and Adiabene, would continue to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into the Common Era.
According to Herodotus,Herodotus, Histories, Book V, 58. the Phoenician prince Cadmus was accredited with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet— '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 1600 years before his time, while the historical adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks was barely 350 years before Herodotus.Herodotus. Histories, Book II, 145
The Phoenician alphabet was known to the Jewish sages of the Second Temple era, who called it the "Old Hebrew" (Paleo-Hebrew) script.The Mishnah, ed. Herbert Danby, Oxford University Press: Oxford 1933, p. 784, s.v. Yadayim 4:5–6, note 6) (); Babylonian Talmud Zevahim 62a; Sanhedrin 22a
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, . KAI 14: Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, 5th century BC KAI 15–16: Bodashtart inscriptions, 4th century BC KAI 24: Kilamuwa Stela, 9th century BC KAI 46: Nora Stone, KAI 47: Cippi of Melqart inscription, 2nd century BC KAI 26: Karatepe bilingual, 8th century BC KAI 277: Pyrgi Tablets, Phoenician-Etruscan bilingual, Çineköy inscription, Phoenician-Luwian bilingual, 8th century BC The General Directorate of Antiquities of Lebanon has assembled a list of inscribed objects from different time periods that together illustrate the evolution of the Phoenician alphabet. The objects are Lebanese state property and displayed in the National Museum of Beirut, with occasional loans to other institutions. The oldest of them is the Ahiram sarcophagus. This collection formed the basis of a nomination of the Phoenician alphabet to the Memory of the World International Register. UNESCO accepted the nomination in 2005, recognising the alphabet as documentary heritage of global importance.
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 hieroglyphs,Jensen (1969), p. 256. 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 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.Jensen (1969), pp. 256–258. It was eventually discovered that the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was inspired by the model of hieroglyphs.
Table of letters The charts 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.
OriginPhoenicianEgyptian hieroglyphsProto-SinaiticProto-CanaaniteImageTextNameMeaningPronunciationTransliterationPhonemeName Alp ox, head of cattle ʔ/ʾʔalp Bet house bbēt Gaml throwing stick (or camel)Theodor Nöldeke (1904) ggaml Dalt door (or fish) ddalt ? He window hhē Waw hook wwāw Zen weapon zzēn / ? Het 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. (?) ħ/ḥħēt ? Tet wheel ṭṭēt Yod arm, hand jyōd Kap palm of a hand kkap Lamd goadThe root l-m-d mainly means "to teach", from an original meaning "to goad".H3925 in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979. llamd Mem water mmēm Nun serpent (or fish) nnūn Samk pillar(?) ssamk En eye ʕ/ʿʕēn Pe mouth (or corner) ppē ? Sade papyrus plant/fish hook? ṣṣādē ? Qop monkey/ needle ḳ/qḳōp Rosh head rrōš Shin tooth (or sun) ššin Taw mark ttāw 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 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.
PhoenicianLibyco-Berber Samaritan Aramaic Hebrew Syriac Parthian Arabic SouthArabian Ge'ez Greek Latin Cyrillic Brahmi Devanagari Tamil Mongolian𐤀 Αα Aa Аа 𑀅 /a/ अ /a/ அ ()𐤁 Ββ Bb Бб, Вв 𑀩 /b/ ब /b/ - ()𐤂 Γγ Cc, Gg Гг, Ґґ 𑀕 /g/ ग /g/ - ()𐤃 Δδ Dd, Þþ Дд 𑀥 /dʰ/ ध /dʰ/ - —𐤄 Εε Ee Ее, Ёё, Єє, Ээ 𑀳 /ɦ/ ह /ɦ/ - —𐤅 (), Υυ Ff, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy Ѕѕ, Ѵѵ, Уу, Ўў 𑀯 /v/ व /v/ வ /v/ ()𐤆// Ζζ Zz Зз 𑀚 /ɟ/ ज /dʒ/ - ()𐤇 (Ͱͱ), Ηη Hh Ии, Йй 𑀖 /gʰ/ घ /gʰ/ - ()𐤈 Θθ Ѳѳ 𑀣 /tʰ/ थ /tʰ/ - —𐤉 Ιι Ιi, Jj Іі, Її, Јј 𑀬 /j/ य /j/ ய /y/ ()𐤊 Κκ Kk Кк 𑀓 /k/ क /k/ க ()𐤋 Λλ Ll Лл 𑀮 /l/ ल /l/ ல ()𐤌 Μμ Mm Мм 𑀫 /m/ म /m/ ம ()𐤍 Νν Nn Нн 𑀦 /n/ न /n/ ()𐤎, Ξξ Ѯѯ 𑀱 /ʂ/ ष /ʂ/ - ()𐤏 Οο, Ωω Oo Оо, Ѡѡ 𑀏 /e/ ए /e/ - —𐤐 Ππ Pp Пп 𑀧 /p/ प /p/ ப ()𐤑/ ()Цц 𑀘 /c/ च /tʃ/ ச /c/ ()𐤒? (), Φφ Qq Ҁҁ, Фф 𑀔 /kʰ/ ख /kʰ/ - —𐤓 Ρρ Rr Рр 𑀭 /r/ र /r/ ர (),
()𐤔, Σσς Ss Сс, Шш, Щщ 𑀰 /ɕ/ श /ɕ/ - ()𐤕 Ττ Tt Тт 𑀢 /t/ त /t/ த ()
Letter names Phoenician used a system of acrophony 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.Jensen (1969) p. 262–263. 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.
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 (samk, zen).Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. McGraw-Hill, 1963. The samek – a quick war ladder, later to become the '$' dollar sign drawing the three internal lines quickly. The Z-shaped zayin – an ancient boomerang used for hunting. The H-shaped ḥet – mammoth tusks.