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Proto-Canaanite alphabet

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Proto-Canaanite alphabet
Type: Abjad
Languages: Canaanite languages
Time period: ca. 1400 BC to 1050 BC
Parent writing systems: Egyptian hieroglyphs
 Proto-Sinaitic
  Proto-Canaanite alphabet
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. the 15th century), by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of 1050 BC, after which it is called Phoenician.

This was the ancestor of nearly every alphabet in use today, from Greek, Hebrew, Roman and Berber in the West to Thai, Mongol, and perhaps Hangul in the East. The Hebrew alphabet is the one that remains closest to its predecessor, as only the form of the letters has been modified - unsurprisingly, 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.

Predecessors, possibly still partly logographic, were discovered in central Egypt in 1905 and 1999 (see Wadi El Hol) (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets). 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).

The names of the letters, which survive in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, were probably already present. The names are based on an 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 but cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet had two alphabetic orders, an ABGD order similar to that of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin alphabets, and an HLĦM otherwise attested in the South Arabian and Ge'ez alphabets.

20 reconstructed glyphs (read from right to left); compared with the list of 22 glyphs below, ṭēt and samek are missing.

One reconstruction of 22 letters, based on Proto-Canaanite's better-attested successors Phoenician, and its sibling South Arabian, follows, along with the Latin descendants,

History of the Alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC

Meroitic 3rd c. BC
Complete genealogy
  1. [ʾ] 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 (H)
  9. [θ] ṭēt (Θ) "wheel" [citation needed]
  10. [j] 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" [citation needed]
  16. [ʿ] ʿen "eye" (O)
  17. [p] piʾt "corner" (P)
  18. [ṣ] ṣad "plant"
  19. [q] qup (Q)
  20. [r] raʾs "head" (R)
  21. [ʃ] šimš "sun, the Uraeus" (S)
  22. [t] taw "signature" (T)


[edit] 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)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

ru:Ханаанейское письмо

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