Proto-Canaanite alphabet

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The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is the linear (i.e., non-Cuneiform) abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs. It 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.

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 Latin alphabet, 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 Canaanite-Phoenician 14th c. BC *Aramaic 9th c. BC **Brāhmī & Indic, 6th c. BC ***Tibetan 7th c. ***Khmer/Javanese, 9th c. **Hebrew 3rd c. BC **Syriac 2nd c. BC **Din Dabireh 3rd c. **Arabic 4th c. *Greek 9th c. BC **Etruscan 8th c. BC ***Latin 7th c. BC ***Runes 2nd c. **Gothic 4th c. **Armenian 405 **Glagolitic 862 **Cyrillic 10th c. *Samaritan 6th c. BC *Iberian 6th c. BC South Arabian 9th c. BC *Ge'ez 5–6th 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. [ṭ] ṭēt (Θ) "wheel" ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}
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" ^{[[Citing sources 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. [š] šimš "sun, the Uraeus" (S)
22. [t] taw "signature" (T)

Literature

• Cross, F.M. (1979) The Invention and Development of the Alphabet in Senner, Frank (ed.) The Origins of Writing. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
• Diringer, David and Freeman, Hilda (1983) A History of the Alphabet. Headley: Gresham Books.
• Healey, John. (1990) The Early Alphabet. London: British Museum.
• Neveh, Joseph. (1982) The Early History of the Alphabet. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

See also

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

External links

• http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vangogh/555/Spell/alfabet2.html
• http://www.cedarseed.com/water/alphabet.html
• http://www.crystalinks.com/phoenician.html
• http://www.biblescripture.net/Hebrew.html

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