The Devil's Advocate

The origin of Yiddish

Published on January 30, 2005 By geser nart In History

Phoenician Alphabet, Mother of Modern Writing
According to the Egyptians language is attributed to Taautos who was the father of tautology or imitation. He invented the first written characters two thousand years BC or earlier. Taautos came from Byblos, Phoenicia, that shows a continuous cultural tradition going back as far as 8,000 B.C. Taautos played his flute to the chief deity of Byblos who was a moon-goddess Ba'alat Nikkal.

Note: Taautos was called Thoth by the Greeks and the Egyptians called him Djehuti. The mythology of Taautos appears in that of Thoth and Dionysus, or Njörth the snake priest who was, at times, the consort to the moon-goddess. The snake priest was also represented by the symbol of a pillar, a wand or a caduceus. This symbol would itself become a god Hermes or Mercury. The Greeks equated Thoth with the widely-traveled Hermes. According to Egyptian tradition Osiris traveled the world with Thoth. Under the protective umbrella of Hindu culture, snake charmers playing their nasal punji echo the same tradition.

Alphabetic writing was already well established in the Late Bronze Age at Ugarit where a cuneiform script was used. The Phoenician alphabetic script was borrowed to write well before the first millennium BC.

The Phoenicians were not mere passive peddlers in art or commerce. Their achievement in history was a positive contribution, even if it was only that of an intermediary. For example, the extent of the debt of Greece alone to Phoenicia may be fully measured by its adoption, probably in the 8th century BC, of the Phoenician alphabet with very little variation (along with Semitic loan words); by "orientalizing" decorative motifs on pottery and by architectural paradigms; and by the universal use in Greece of the Phoenician standards of weights and measures. Having mentioned this, the influence on or from Linear A and B scripts is unknown.

Phoenician words are found in Greek and Latin classical literature as well as in Egyptian, Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew writings. The language is written with a 22-character alphabet that does not indicate vowels.

Although the Phoenicians used cuneiform (Mesopotamian writing) in what we call Ugaritic, they also produced a script of their own. The Phoenician alphabetic script of 22 letters was used at Byblos as early as the 15th century B.C. This method of writing, later adopted by the Greeks, is the ancestor of the modern Roman alphabet. It was the Phoenicians' most remarkable and distinctive contribution to civilization.

The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder was a great admirer of the Phoenicians, he credited them with many discoveries, including the invention of trade. Although Pliny was not adverse to exaggerating, scholars do accept his evidence that Phoenicians were the first traveling salesmen. Because they needed an efficient method of keeping records, they invented an alphabet from which every alphabet of the world has descended. Along with an alphabet came the equipment for using it: pen, ink and, of course, papyrus, parchment and finally paper. A wax-writing tablet was found in an ancient Uluburun shipwreck (most likely to have been Canaanite Phoenician) off the coast of Turkey. Please see an image of the original wax tablet below.

The oldest of the attested Semitic languages, Akkadian, was the vehicle of a great ancient literature written in a logosyllabic cuneiform writing system of Sumerian origin. Records of other ancient Semitic languages exist in various forms. Amorite, another ancient Semitic language, is known from proper names; Ugaritic (please see image of Ugaritic cuneiform, top left) was written in a quasi-alphabetic cuneiform script unconnected with the Akkadian. The Canaanites of Phoenicia used a still undeciphered syllabic script, the Proto-Byblian, in the 2nd millennium BC, while those of Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula employed another undeciphered writing, the Sinaitic script, which may be alphabetic in nature. All the other Semites used and, for the most part, still use consonantal quasi-alphabets with no means or only imperfect means to distinguish the vowels. All such alphabets are descended from the Phoenician linear quasi-alphabet of 22 signs, first attested at Byblos and externally similar to the Proto-Byblian script. All the European alphabets are descendants of the Phoenician, and all the Asiatic alphabets are descendants of the Aramaic variants of the Phoenician. The Phoenician alphabet is a forerunner of the Etruscan, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac scripts among others, many of which are still in modern use. It has also been suggested that Phoenician is the ultimate source of Kharoshthi and of the Indic scripts descending from Brahmi.

Garbini suggests that while the origins of Phoenician may have been a reform of the Proto-Sinaitic/Canaanite script (see linked charts at the bottom of this page), it came into its own from the 9th century BC, when it “became a very elegant script with long, slightly slanting vertical lines, minuscule loops and flat letters.”

Phoenician is quintessentially illustrative of the historical problem of where to draw lines in an evolutionary tree of continuously changing scripts in use over thousands of years. The twenty-two letters in the Phoenician block may be used, with appropriate font changes, to express Punic, Neo-Punic, Phoenician proper, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Palaeo-Hebrew. The historical cut that has been made here considers the line from Phoenician to Punic to represent a single continuous branch of script evolution. The wax writing tablet (right) is a replica of an original discovered in the Uluburun (Canaanite?) shipwreck off the coast of Turkey.

Phoenician is written from right to left horizontally. Phoenician language inscriptions usually have no space between words; there are sometimes dots between words in later inscriptions (e.g. in Moabite inscriptions). Typical fonts for the Phoenician and especially Punic have very exaggerated descenders. These descenders help distinguish the main line of Phoenician evolution toward Punic from the other (e.g. Hebrew) branches of the script, where the descenders instead grew shorter over time.

From a South Arabian variant of the earliest Semitic alphabet the Ethiopians developed a syllabic writing still in use for the languages of Ethiopia. Maltese uses the Latin alphabet.

Phoenician Numerals

**Phoenician script for numbering system.**
^{Click thumbnails for larger image}

Phoenician numerals are built up from four elements in combination 6, 7, 8 and 11. Like the letters, Phoenician numbers are written from right to left:

... means 143 (100 + 20 + 20 + 1 + 1 + 1). The numbers between one and 9 were written down as combinations of lines specifically I, II, III for the first three numbers but anything between 4 and 9 were combinations sets of III and II or III and III...etc. Number 10, 11 and 20 had their own format while a 30, for example, was a combination of a 20 and a 10.

For a comprehensive look at how the Phoenicians wrote down their numbers, please follow the link attached to the thumbnail (right) for a large chart illustrating this concept.

Phoenician script was the original one used for transliterating Holy Bible

The Old Testament consists of a collection of works composed at various times from the twelfth to the second century BC. No manuscripts have survived from the period before the first destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jews into Babylon in 587 BC. The text therefore is not infrequently uncertain and its meaning obscure. Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the second destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, with the exception of the Biblical manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

**In the Old Testament, the Phoenician alphabet continued to be to transliterate the name of God in Hebrew and Greek texts.** See archaeological proof above.
^{Click thumbnails for larger images}
Greek
Greek
Hebrew

Most of the original parts of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, were originally written down as transliterated ancient Hebrew language using the Phoenician alphabet. The simple reason for that was the fact that there were no other efficient writing systems other than Phoenician at that time. Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Demotic or Hieratic were too complicated and time consuming to use while Ugaritic and Babylonian Cuneiform were on their way out of usage as the writting systems in the eastern Mediterranean world.

Because in the Phoenician script no vowels are used, the early inscriptions run on continuously with no division between the words; but already c. 1000 – 700 BC some have points or vertical strokes to divide them. By the sixth century BC, this use of points was becoming rare and words were being separated by spaces; and the reader was further assisted, when the Aramaic script replaced the old Phoenician script, by the peculiar forms of several letters used at the end of a word.

This text was originally written in a purely consonantal Phoenician alphabet, although the scribes at Qumran had already attempted to indicate the vowels by using certain letters for them (for example w for o and u, and y for e and i). This system, however, was soon found inadequate when, except in very restricted circles, the use of the old Hebrew language was dying out.

Because in Judaism YHVH (Yahweh) was too sacred for common usage to be written, it was replaced by "God" or "Lord." Because of it is a four letter Hebrew word, it came to be called "Tetragrammaton" (four letters in Greek). The practice of substituting the Tetragrammaton for the name of Yahweh continued to be used for centuries until very recent history.

The strict Jewish observance of using the Tetragrammaton conformed not only to the original Hebrew language but also to the original Phoenician script. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) maintained the observance and transliterated the Phoenician script for YHVH in Greek, as evident in the fragment of the Septuagint version from 50 B.C. The practice obviously continued and the a fragment of the same Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible from the second century A.D. substituted YHVH with the word "Lord" (Kyrious in Greek) and transliterated the name in Phoenician script still. The Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls, yielded the same archaeological proof for text written in Hebrew. A fragment in Hebrew from Qumran clearly shows that the Tetragrammaton was transliterated in Phoenician script.

Phoenician Alphabet, Adopted by the Greeks

According to the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, the Phoenicians introduced their alphabet to Greece. Cadmus the Phoenician is attributed with the credit for this introduction. Further, Phoenician trade was the vessel which speeded the spread of this alphabet along side Phoenician trade which went to the far corners of the Mediterranean. Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of the Greek alphabet and, hence, of all Western alphabets.

The earliest Phoenician inscription that has survived is the Ahiram epitaph at Byblos in Phoenicia, dating from the 11th century BC and written in the North Semitic alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet gradually developed from this North Semitic prototype and was in use until about the 1st century BC in Phoenicia proper.

Phoenician colonial scripts, variants of the mainland Phoenician alphabet, are classified as Cypro-Phoenician (10th-2nd century BC) and Sardinian (c. 9th century BC) varieties. A third variety of the colonial Phoenician script evolved into the Punic and neo-Punic alphabets of Carthage, which continued to be written until about the 3rd century AD. Punic was a monumental script and neo-Punic a cursive form. Following is the account from Herodotus on the origins of the Greek Alphabet in words of Herodotus.

Herodotus on the origins of the Greek Alphabet

(5.58-61) from Herodotus, The Histories, transl. Audrey de Selincourt,
Penguin Books, 1972. ISBN 0-14-044034-8

Repulsed from Sparta, Aristagoras went on to Athens, which had been liberated from autocratic government in the way which I will now describe. Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus and brother of the despot Hippias, in spite of a vivid dream which warned him of his danger, was murdered by Harmodius and Aristogiton, two men belonging to the family of the Gephyraei; the murder, however, did the Athenians no good, for the oppression they suffered during the four succeeding years was worse than before. Hipparchus had dreamt, on the night before the Panathenaic festival, that the tall and beautiful figure of a man stood over his bed and spoke to him these obscure and riddling words:

O lion, endure the unendurable with enduring heart;
No man does wrong and shall not pay the penalty.

At dawn next morning he was seen communicating his dream to the interpreters; but later he put it out of his mind and took part in the procession, during which he was killed.

The Gephyraei, to whom the two men who killed Hipparchus belonged...I have myself looked into the matter and find that they were really Phoenicians, descendants of those who came with Cadmus to what is now Boeotia where they were allotted the district of Tanagra to make their homes in. After the expulsion of the Cadmeans by the Argiva, the Gephyraei were expelled by the Boeotians and took refuge in Athens, where they were received into the community on certain stated terms, which excluded them from a few privileges not worth mentioning here. The Phoenicians who came with Cadmus - amongst whom were the Gephyraei - introduced into Greece, after their settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments, of which the most important was writing, an art till then, I think, unknown to the Greeks. At first they used the same characters as all the other Phoenicians, but as time went on, and they changed their language, they also changed the shape of their letters. At that period most of the Greeks in the neighbourhood were Ionians; they were taught these letters by the Phoenicians and adopted them, with a few alterations, for their own use, continuing to refer to them as the Phoenician characters - as was only right, as the Phoenicians had introduced them. The Ionians also call paper 'skins' - a survival from antiquity when paper was hard to get, and they did actually use goat and sheep skins to write on. Indeed, even today many foreign peoples use this material. In the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Theba in Boeotia I have myself seen cauldrons with inscriptions cut on them in Cadmean characters - most of them not very different from the Ionian. There were three of these cauldrons; one was inscribed: 'Amphityron dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboae' and would date from about the time of Laius, son of Labdacus, grandson of Polydorus and great-grandson of Cadmus. Another had an inscription of two hexameter verses:

Scaeus the boxer, victorious in the contest,
Gave me to Apollo, the archer God, a lovely offering

This might be Scaeus the son of Hippocoon; and the bowl, if it was dedicated by him and not by someone else of the same name, would be contemporary with Laius' son Oedipus. The third was also inscribed in hexameters:

Laodamas, while he reigned, dedicated this couldron
To the good archer Apollo - a lovely offering.

It was during the reign of this Laodamas, the son of Eteocles, that the Cadmeans were expelled by the Argives and took refuge with the Encheles. The Gephyraei remained in the country, but were later forced by the Boeoeians to withdraw to Athens, where they have certain temples set apart for their own special use, which the other Athenians are forbidden to enter; one of them is the temple of Demeter Achaeia, in which secret rites are performed.

Tables and Charts:

Please make sure to view the tables, charts and graphics from links below.

Analytical Developmental Table of Phoenician Alphabet
Evolution of Picture Writing to Alphabet Writing
Comparison of Phoenician and Sinaitic script to Akkadian Cuneiform and Ugaritic Cuneiform
Evolution of Phoenician into Latin/Western Scripts and Arabic/Eastern Scripts
The Place of early Greek Letter forms in the development of Phoenician letter forms

Who is Arab? The origin of the word "Arab"

Hitherto, the first actual use of the word Arab in history is to be found in an Assyrian inscription of 853 B.C., commemorating the defeat of a mutinous chieftain, called Gindibu the Aribi during the reign of king Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C.). Arabs are then mentioned quite often, until the 6th century B.C. as Aribi or Arabuthat indicates a vassalage to the Assyrians. The first Greek who is accredited to have acquired some geographical knowledge was Homer, who flourished in 1000 or 800 B.C. He has referred to the Syrians under the name Arimi (the Biblical, Aram) and the Arabs under the name of Erembi. The place-name Arabia occurs for the first time in Greek writings. Herodotus (484-425 B.C,), followed by most other Greek and Latin writers, extended the term Arabia and Arab to the whole peninsula and everything in it, even including the eastern desert of Egypt between the Red Sea and the Nile. References to the Arabs, in addition, are also found in the anonymous "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea" (between 95 A.D. and 130 A.C.). The word Saracen, first used in Greek literature too, is a transcription of an Arabic word meaning "easterner." As for the Arabs' use of the word, it occurs for the first time in the ancient epigraphical material originating in southern Arabia, where it is clearly used for Bedouin. In the north, the word is used firstly in the 4th century A.D., in one of the oldest surviving records of the language that became classical Arabic.

Further account of the Arabs comes in the 10th chapter of Genesis of the Old Testament, which names the descendants of Noah, whose elder son, Shem is regarded as the ancestor of the Hebrews, Arabs and Armaens, - the speakers of Semitic language. But the term Arabs is not explicitly mentioned in Genesis. It is however suggested that the "mixed multitude" (Hebrew, erev) mentioned in Exodus (xii, 38) as having accompanied the Israelites into the wanderness from Egypt may be for Arabs. According to "Dictionary of the Bible" (ed. by James Hastings, New York, 1898, 1st vol., p. 135), "The employment of the name Arab for an inhabitant of any portion of the vast peninsula known to us as Arabia, begins somewhere in the 3rd century B.C., though the only trace of it in Old Testament is in the 2 ch., 21, where the Arabians that are near the Ethiopeans' would seem naturally to refer to the neighbours of the Habasha, whence there are grounds for placing in the extreme south of Yamen." The word arabia is expressly given to this country in the Old Testament (I Kings x. 15) when describing the visit of the Queen Sheba to Sololmon, which took place 1005 B.C. We also find the word arabah in Deut. i. 7 and ii. 8. Some writers hold that the village called Arabah, situated near Tehama, may be the name for the whole peninsula, an opinion scarcely deserving the least notice.

In the Bible, the name Arab is the first word used in the second book of Chronicles (xvii, 11) to refer to nomads from the east bank of the Jordan river in the time of king Jehosophat (900-800 B.C.), such as "...and the Arabians brought him flocks, seven thousand and seven hundred rams, and seven thousand and seven hundred he- goats."

The word arab or arabah is probably derived from a Semitic root related to nomadism. In the Arabic language, the word arab (derived from i'rab), means "those who speak clearly" as contrast with ajam (those who speak indistincly). In Holy Koran, the word arab has never used for the country of Arabia, but characterised the residence of Ismail, the son of Abraham as an "uncultivated land." In the time of Ismail his place of residence had no name, therefore, it was given the name of an "uncultivated land." In the Old Testament, the word midbar is used for Ismail's home, meaning a desert or a barren land, which closely corresponds to the Koranic description.

The peninsula was divided by the ancient geographers into Arabia Petraea, Arabia Felix and Arabia Deserta. The Arabia Petraea corresponded to the present Hijaz and eastern Najd. Arabia Felix to Yamen and Hazarmawt and Arabia Deserta comprised the rest of the country. Arab Peninsula (jazirat al-Arab) is situated in south-west Asia, embosomed with sea waters on its three sides, i.e., the Red Sea in the west, the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the east, and the Arabian Sea in the south; is considered to be a largest peninsula in the world with an area of about 1,230,000 sq. miles, i.e., about one third of Europe, or almost six times bigger than France, ten times that of Italy and eight times bigger than Switzerland. Geographically it is an extention of the Sahara desert. It is divided into various parts of which Hijaz, Najd, Yamen, Hazarmawt and Oman are most important. The whole land is almost barren. The climate is extremely hot in summer and the coastal tracts are among the most torrid regions.

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