All alphabets can be traced back to a slightly different group of Semitic alphabets used in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine .
The most important for us was the Phoenician alphabet. , since Greek and Latin derive from it.
Its origin has not been determined. The Semitic alphabet, with internal unity, although with different forms, can be divided into two groups:
a) North Semitic :Phoenician, Aramean. Hebrew and Moabite
b) South Semitic :I know. in southern Arabia and in Yemen and Ethiopia.
Northern Semitic group
a) The ancient inscription of Byblos . It consists of five lines and refers to King Shaphatbaal. Its approximate date is the fifteenth century BC. c.
b) The two inscriptions, one on the sarcophagus and the other on the tomb, of King Ahiram of Byblos, which have been attributed to different dates, between the 13th-11th centuries B.C.
c) The calendar of Guezcr. from the 11th-10th centuries BC. C.. which is the oldest known Hebrew inscription.
d) The inscriptions of Abibaal and Elibaal and the epigraph of Asdrübal belong to the period 950-900 BC. C. M. Dunand has proposed two other inscriptions, those of Shaphatbaal and Abdo, an earlier date than the Ahiram text, which he places around 1000 BC. c.
e) The stele of Mesa or Mesha , king of Moab. Also called Stone of Moab , dated around the year 842 a. C. written in a language derived from the ancient Semitic language, belonging to the Canaanite root, within which Hebrew is also found, as we said above. This inscription is the longest written in any Nor-Semitic dialect. narrates the wars between Moab and Israel in the times of Omri and Ahab and the rebellion of the king of Moab:
"I am Mesha, son of Kamoshmald. King of Moob...
And Qucmosh He said to me, Go and take Nebo from Israel. I went at night and attacked her from the break of dawn until noon. I took her and killed them all, seven thousand men, boys, women, maidens and maidservants, because I had given her the curse of Astarte-Chemosh .
South Semitic group
They are more scarce. The oldest is the Balu'a inscription. attributed to the 12th century BC. It is very deteriorated and could not be interpreted.
These texts are written in the archaic Phoenician alphabet. They have only twenty-two signs, completely linear, that write only consonants. With these signs all the words could be written, and it was this simplicity, as well as the historical circumstances, that made this writing spread rapidly and that it did not become popular and endure until it reached us.
But within these doubts and hesitations, the only real thing is that during the second half of the II Millennium a. C.. the Phoenicians elaborated their alphabet, as a result of the simplification of the syllabic principle, by virtue of which they avoided registering all the consonant-vowel combinations:the vowel changes and, therefore, the majority of the vowels, are ignored. The result was a system that recorded mainly consonants, with the exception of a initial. Such a methodology represented the advantage of requiring only a small number of signs to be written.
The archaic script of Byblos spread notably from the 10th century. The Paleohebraic script, which was used in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah until the exile of the Jews to Babylon in the 6th century BC. C. and that will still be found sporadically until the second century AD. It does not differ from the Phoenician except for some graphic peculiarities.
But it was Tyre, above all, that ensured, through the commercial activity of its sailors and merchants, also through the founding of its colonies in the Mediterranean, the spread of this Phoenician alphabet.
The Phoenician inscriptions of Cyprus (9th-2nd centuries BC) and the writing of Carthage, the Tyrian colony founded at the end of the 9th century in North Africa, called Punic writing (9th century to 146 BC) have transmitted to us the forms of this alphabet, in addition to the inscriptions of the Phoenician coast itself, which are quite scarce during the first half of the 1st Millennium BC.
Other ancient documents written in this alphabet are:
- The sarcophagus of Tabnit of Sidon (at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum). It was first owned by the Egyptian general Penephtah and reused for the King of Sidon in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. A Spell is written on it so that his tomb is not desecrated:
"Do not open my grave and disturb me, because doing so is an abomination to Astarte and if you dare to open it and contubate me, may you never have offspring among those who live under the sun, nor a bed of rest among those who live in the shadows" - The bilingual inscriptions of Karatepe. before 711 B.C.
In Greece the Phoenician alphabet must have been introduced through the islands of Tera, Melos and Crete. They did not forget where it came from and for a long time it was called Phoinikia Grammata (Phoenician characters).
The Ugaritic script goes from left to right. Phoenician and Hebrew from right to left, but in Ugarit and in two Palestinian inscriptions there are examples of writing from right to left, perhaps an imitation of the Phoenician procedure. Since the Ugaritic script was only suitable for writing on stone or clay, it could not become a serious rival to the Phoenician script.
According to Albright they used the Phoenicians in the first place:
a) 22 consonants (they never used vowels )
b) Later, the Hebrews created a system for representing vowel sounds based on the double use of three of their consonants and the addition of points with vowel values, as in current Arabic:à =a ç. The Greeks also introduced particular modifications and the forms of the Greek vowels derive from the Phoenician consonants or semi-consonants, for which the Greek had no use and its position within the Greek alphabet is the same as in the Phoenician. Many of their ancient names are those of the original Phoenician consonants and show that the vowels were arrived at by creative error regarding their prototypes.
- The aspirated he Phoenician became e brief Greek.
- The second aspirated het , in some dialects it was h and in other e long or eta .
- The semiconsonant and ot became i or iota .
This extremely simple system represented a great advantage over other writing systems used in ancient times. The Akkadian syllabary, for example, used 280 signs, the Mycenaean Linear B more than 80, and even the later Greek Cypriot syllabary had 56.
Phoenician writing was already established around the 10th century, which is what colonists brought to the West.
Not long after, Etruscan was also written in this alphabet, and other Italic dialects as well, perhaps as a second-hand loan from the Greeks of Cumae, although there are objects with Phoenician inscriptions, such as the famous Praeneste silver bowl, which must have been reach Italy by then or somewhat later directly from Phoenicia.
In Carthage, the oldest Punic text is that of the gold pendant from the Lavigerie museum found in a tomb in the Douimes cemetery, from about 600 BC. But there are very few testimonies from before the 5th century BC. c.
In Sardinia, the Stone of Nora and two fragments from Bosa from the 10th century according to Carpenter (in short chronology, 5th century BC) are known.
The classical Phoenician alphabet he kept the twenty-two letters of the archaic alphabet. The shapes of these letters are a bit more angular and thinner than the old ones. It was always written in horizontal lines, oriented from right to left, as today's Semitic languages continue to do.
The Phoenician script was also adopted by the Arameans from the 9th century BC. to write their language, of a Semitic type, but different from the Canaanite.
The Aramean tribes, still nomadic in the Syrian desert, then settled in small states around Damascus, Hamat and Aleppo, continued to supply the great eastern states with mercenaries and to serve as intermediaries in commercial exchanges along continental itineraries. . If the dissemination of the Phoenician alphabet was ensured by sea by the ships of Tyre, the Arameans ensured its dissemination by continental land routes.