The
Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the
Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. Unlike its Canaanite predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet was non-pictorial. It was used for the writing of
Phoenician, a Northern
Semitic language, used by the civilization of
Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet has been classified as an
abjad because it records only
consonant sounds (with the addition of
matres lectionis). However, the
Greek alphabet, a descendant of Phoenician, modified the script to represent
vowel phonemes as well.
Phoenician became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it was assimilated by many other cultures and evolved. 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 represent vowels.
History
When the Phoenician alphabet 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. This idea was especially popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not 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.
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 BC 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, where it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads. 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 (circa 1200 BCE).
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
Paleohispanic 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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"
- 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
The Phoenician letterforms shown here are idealized — actual Phoenician writing was cruder and more variable in appearance. There were also significant variations in Phoenician letterforms by era and region.
When alphabetic writing began in
Greece, the letterforms used were similar but not identical to the Phoenician ones and vowels were added, because the Phoenician Alphabet did not contain any vowels. There were also distinct variations of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how the Phoenician characters which did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were employed. One of these local Greek alphabets evolved into the standard Greek alphabet, and another into the
Latin alphabet, which accounts for many of the differences between the two. Occasionally, Phoenician used a short stroke or dot symbol as a word separator.
The chart shows the
graphical evolution of Phoenician letterforms into other alphabets. The sound values often changed significantly, both during the initial creation of new alphabets, and due to pronunciation changes of languages using the alphabets over time.
The numerals
The Phoenician numeral system consisted of separate symbols for 1, 5, 10, 20, and 100. The sign for 1 was a simple vertical stroke. Other numbers up to 9 were formed by adding the appropriate number of such strokes, arranged in groups of three. The symbol for 10 was a horizontal line or tack. The sign for 20 could come in different glyph variants, one of them being a combination of two 10-tacks, approximately Z-shaped. Larger multiples of ten were formed by grouping the appropriate number of 20s and 10s. There existed several glyph variants for 100. The 100 symbol could be combined with a preceding numeral in a multiplicatory way, e.g. the combination of "4" and "100" yielded 400.
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 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 is the word separator.
Derived alphabets
Each letter of Phoenician gave way to a new form in its daughter scripts
Middle Eastern descendents
The
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, used to write early
Hebrew, was a regional offshoot of, but was rooted in Phoenician; it is nearly identical to the Phoenician one. The
Samaritan alphabet, used by the
Samaritans, is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
The
Aramaic alphabet, used to write
Aramaic, is another descendant of Phoenician. Aramaic being the
lingua franca of the Middle East, it was widely adopted. It later split off (due to power/political borders) into a number of related alphabets, including the
Hebrew alphabet, the
Syriac alphabet, and the
Nabataean alphabet. Thus Phoenician was the origin of the
Arabic alphabet which is the major alphabet of the Arabic Middle East - from Iran, the Levant, and North Africa.
Derived European scripts
According to
Herodotus, Phoenician prince
Cadmus was accredited with the introduction of the
Phoenician alphabet --
phoinikeia grammata, "Phoenician letters" -- to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their
Greek alphabet, which was later introduced to the rest of
Europe. Herodotus, who gives this account, estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BC. However, Herodotus' writings are not used as a standard source by contemporary historians.
The
Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician alphabet.
The
phonology of Greek was very different from that of Phoenician: in particular it was necessary to distinguish between different vowel sounds. For this reason the Greeks adapted some of the signs of the Phoenician script that represented unused consonants for vowels. For example
ʼāleph, which designated a
glottal stop in Phoenician, was re-purposed to represent the vowel .
The
Cyrillic alphabet was derived from the
Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters are based on
Glagolitic forms, which were influenced by the Hebrew alphabet.
(source?)The
Latin alphabet was derived from
Old Italic (originally a form of the Greek alphabet), used for
Etruscan and other languages. The
Runic alphabet also seems to have been derived from an early form of Old Italic alphabet, via the Alpine scripts.
Influence in India and Eastern Asia
Many historians
[who?] believe
(source?) that the
Brahmi script and the subsequent
Indic alphabets are derived from this script as well, which would make it, and ultimately Egyptian, the ancestor of most writing systems in use today. This possibly includes even
hangul, which may have been influenced by Brahmic
Phagspa. This would mean that of all the national scripts in use in the world today, only the
Chinese script and its derivatives have an independent origin.
See also
