Cuneiform.docx

Cuneiform Definition by Joshua J. Mark published on 15 March 2018 Listen to this article, narrated by Nitin Sil

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-3000 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE. The name comes from the Latin word cuneus for 'wedge' owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing. In cuneiform, a carefully cut writing implement known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to produce wedge-like impressions that represent word-signs (pictographs) and, later, phonograms or `word-concepts' (closer to a modern-day understanding of a `word'). All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations used cuneiform until it was abandoned in favour of the alphabetic script at some point after 100 BCE, including: 

Sumerians

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Akkadians

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Babylonians

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Elamites

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Hatti

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Hittites

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Assyrians

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Hurrians

When the ancient cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia were discovered and deciphered in the late 19th century CE, they would literally transform human understanding of history. Prior to their discovery, the Bible was considered the oldest and most authoritative book in the world. The brilliant scholar and translator George Smith (18401876 CE) changed the understanding of history with his translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh in 1872 CE. This translation allowed other cuneiform tablets to be interpreted which overturned the traditional understanding of the biblical version of history and made room for scholarly, objective explorations of history to move forward.

Cuneiform Writing

EARLY CUNEIFORM The earliest cuneiform tablets, known as proto-cuneiform, were pictorial, as the subjects they addressed were more concrete and visible (a king, a battle, a flood) but developed

in complexity as the subject matter became more intangible (the will of the gods, the quest for immortality). By 3000 BCE the representations were more simplified and the strokes of the stylus conveyed word-concepts (honour) rather than word-signs (an honourable man). The written language was further refined through the rebus which isolated the phonetic value of a certain sign so as to express grammatical relationships and syntax to determine meaning. In clarifying this, the scholar Ira Spar writes: This new way of interpreting signs is called the rebus principle. Only a few examples of its use exist in the earliest stages of cuneiform from between 3200 and 3000 B.C. The consistent use of this type of phonetic writing only becomes apparent after 2600 B.C. It constitutes the beginning of a true writing system characterized by a complex combination of word-signs and phonograms—signs for vowels and syllables—that allowed the scribe to express ideas. By the middle of the Third Millennium B.C., cuneiform primarily written on clay tablets was used for a vast array of economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents. (1)

THE GREAT LITERARY WORKS OF MESOPOTAMIA SUCH AS THE FAMOUS EPIC OF GILGAMESH WERE ALL WRITTEN IN CUNEIFORM. DEVELOPMENT OF CUNEIFORM One no longer had to struggle with the meaning of a pictograph; one now read a wordconcept which more clearly conveyed the meaning of the writer. The number of characters used in writing was also reduced from over 1,000 to 600 in order to simplify and clarify the written word. The best example of this is given by the historian Paul Kriwaczek who notes that, in the time of proto-cuneiform: All that had been devised thus far was a technique for noting down things, items and objects, not a writing system. A record of `Two Sheep Temple God Inanna’ tells us nothing about whether the sheep are being delivered to, or received from, the temple, whether they are carcasses, beasts on the hoof, or anything else about them. (63)

Cuneiform developed to the point where it could be made clear, to use Kriwaczek's example, whether the sheep were coming or going to the temple, for what purpose, and whether they were living or dead. By the time of the priestess-poet Enheduanna (22852250 BCE), who wrote her famous hymns to Inanna in the Sumerian city of Ur, cuneiform was sophisticated enough to convey emotional states such as love and adoration, betrayal and fear, longing and hope, as well as the precise reasons behind the writer experiencing such states.

Inscribed Stand Head

CUNEIFORM LITERATURE The great literary works of Mesopotamia such as the Atrahasis, The Descent of Inanna, The Myth of Etana, The Enuma Elish and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh were all written in cuneiform and were completely unknown until the mid 19th century CE, when men like George Smith and Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895 CE) deciphered the language and translated it into English. Rawlinson's translations of Mesopotamian texts were first presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of London in 1837 CE and again in 1839 CE. In 1846 CE he worked with

the archaeologist Austin Henry Layard in his excavation of Nineveh and was responsible for the earliest translations from the library of Ashurbanipal discovered at that site. George Smith was responsible for deciphering The Epic of Gilgamesh and in 1872 CE, famously, the Mesopotamian version of the Flood Story, which until then was thought to be original to the biblical Book of Genesis.

MANY BIBLICAL TEXTS WERE THOUGHT TO BE ORIGINAL WORKS UNTIL CUNEIFORM WAS DECIPHERED. Many biblical texts were thought to be original until cuneiform was deciphered. The Fall of Man and the Great Flood were understood as literal events in human history dictated by God to the author (or authors) of Genesis but were now recognized as Mesopotamian myths which Hebrew scribes had embellished on in The Myth of Etana and the Atrahasis. The biblical story of the Garden of Eden could now be understood as a myth derived from The Enuma Elish and other Mesopotamian works. The Book of Job, far from being an actual historical account of an individual's unjust suffering, could now be recognized as a literary piece belonging to a Mesopotamian tradition following the discovery of the earlier Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi text which relates a similar story. The concept of a dying and reviving god who goes down into the underworld and then returns, presented as a novel concept in the gospels of the New Testament, was now understood as an ancient paradigm first expressed in Mesopotamian literature in the poem The Descent of Inanna. The very model of many of the narratives of the Bible, including the gospels, could now be read in light of the discovery of Mesopotamian Naru Literaturewhich took a figure from history and embellished upon his achievements in order to relay an important moral and cultural message.

Flood Tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh Prior to this time, as noted, the Bible was considered the oldest book in the world, the Song of Solomon was thought to be the oldest love poem; but all of that changed with the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform. The oldest love poem in the world is now recognized as The Love Song of Shu-Sin dated to 2000 BCE, long before The Song of Solomon was written. These advances in understanding were all made by the 19th century CE archaeologists and scholars sent to Mesopotamia to substantiate biblical stories through physical evidence. Along with other Assyriologists (among them, T. G. Pinches and Edwin Norris), Rawlinson spearheaded the development of Mesopotamian language studies, and his Cuneiform Inscriptions of Ancient Babylon and Assyria, along with his other works, became the standard reference on the subject following their publication in the 1860's CE and remain respected scholarly works into the modern day.

George Smith, regarded as an intellect of the first rank, died on a field expedition to Nineveh in 1876 CE at the age of 36. Smith, a self-taught translator of cuneiform, made his first contributions to deciphering the ancient writing in his early twenties, and his death at such a young age has long been regarded a significant loss to the advancement in translations of cuneiform in the 19th century CE. The literature of Mesopotamia informed all the written works which came after. Mesopotamian motifs can be detected in the works of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman works and still resonate in the present day through the biblical narratives which they inform. When George Smith deciphered cuneiform he dramatically changed the way human beings would understand their history. The accepted version of the creation of the world, original sin, and many of the other precepts by which people had been living their lives were all challenged by the revelation of Mesopotamian - largely Sumerian - literature. Since the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform, the history of civilization has never been the same.

Cuneiform: 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about the world’s oldest writing system Cuneiform is an ancient writing system that was first used in around 3400 BC. Distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the world, first appearing even earlier than Egyptian hieroglyphics. Here are six facts about the script that originated in ancient Mesopotamia…    

September 24, 2018 at 11:30 am Curators of the world’s largest collection of cuneiform tablets – housed at the British Museum – revealed in a 2015 book why the writing system is as relevant today as ever. Here, Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor share six lesser-known facts about the history of the ancient script… 1 Cuneiform is not a language The cuneiform writing system is also not an alphabet, and it doesn’t have letters. Instead it used between 600 and 1,000 characters to write words (or parts of them) or syllables (or parts of them). The two main languages written in Cuneiform are Sumerian and Akkadian (from ancient Iraq), although more than a dozen others are recorded. This means we could use it equally well today to spell Chinese, Hungarian or English. Read more:

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2 Cuneiform was first used in around 3400 BC The first stage used elementary pictures that were soon also used to record sounds. Cuneiform probably preceded Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, because we know of early Mesopotamian experiments and ‘dead-ends’ as the established script developed – including the beginning of signs and numbers – whereas the hieroglyphic system seems to have been born more or less perfectly formed and ready to go. Almost certainly Egyptian writing evolved from cuneiform – it can’t have been an on-the-spot invention.

Amazingly, cuneiform continued to be used until the first century AD, meaning that the distance in time that separates us from the latest surviving cuneiform tablet is only just over half of that which separates that tablet from the first cuneiform.

c2044 BC, Sumeria, Ancient Iraq: Ur III clay administrative tablet, impressed with the scribes seal, which depicts a goddess leading a worshipper and the text Ur Gigir, scribe, son of Barran. The main text on the reverse (pictured) lists ploughmen employed by the state with the quantities of land assigned to them as wages. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) 3 All you needed to write cuneiform was a reed and some clay Both of which were freely available in the rivers alongside the Mesopotamian cities where cuneiform was used (now Iraq and eastern Syria). The word cuneiform comes from Latin ‘cuneus’, meaning ‘wedge’, and simply means ‘wedge shaped’. It refers to the shape made each time a scribe pressed his stylus (made from a specially cut reed) into the clay.

Most tablets would fit comfortably in the palm of a hand – like mobile phones today – and were used for only a short time: maybe a few hours or days at school, or a few years for a letter, loan or account. Many of the tablets have survived purely by accident. 4 Cuneiform looks somewhat impossible… Those who read cuneiform for a living – and there are a few – like to think of it as the world’s most difficult writing (or the most inconvenient). However, if you have six years to spare and work round the clock (not pausing for meals) it’s a doddle to master! All you have to do is learn the extinct languages recorded by the tablets, then thousands of signs – many of which have more than one meaning or sound. Read more: 

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5 … but children master it surprisingly quickly Children who visit the British Museum seem to take to cuneiform with a kind of overlooked homing instinct, and they often consider clay homework in spikey wedges much more exciting than exercises in biro on paper. In fact, many of the surviving tablets in the museum collection belonged to schoolchildren, and show the spelling and handwriting exercises that they completed: they repeated the same characters, then words, then proverbs, over and over again until they could move on to difficult literature. Read more: 

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Guidebook to the Ancient Egyptian afterlife (subscription)

6 Cuneiform is as relevant today as ever Ancient writings offer proof that our ‘modern’ ideas and problems have been experienced by human beings for thousands of years – this is always an astounding realisation. Through cuneiform we hear the voices not just of kings and their scribes, but children, bankers, merchants, priests and healers – women as well as men. It is utterly fascinating to read other people’s letters, especially when they are 4,000 years old and written in such elegant and delicate script.

QI: some quite interesting facts about cuneiform A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI has a cuneiform fetish

Easter parade: the islanders raised heads and wrote rongorongo Photo: Robert Harding Picture Library/Alamy

By Molly Oldfield and John Mitchinson 10:09AM GMT 12 Mar 2014

Writing is the geometry of the soul.- Plato Cuneiform The world’s oldest writing – older than any alphabet – is cuneiform, first used by the Sumerians who lived in and around what is now Iraq more than 5,000 years ago.

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The word means “wedge-shaped” from the Latin cuneus, “wedge”. The Sumerians – and several other ancient “Near Eastern” peoples, including the Hittites of Anatolia and the Urartians of Armenia – wrote by flattening a piece of clay in one hand, and marking it with a sharpened, wedge-shaped reed in the other. The most important tablets were baked in the oven, lesser ones left to dry in the sun, after which they became impervious to the elements. Thanks to this durability, we have recovered vast libraries from the Iraqi desert: as many as two million tablets at the last count, of which only 100,000 have been translated. As a result, we know far more about the lives of the people who wrote in cuneiform than we do about those of out own medieval ancestors. Related Articles

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Hieroglyphics Pregnancy-testing figures in several Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. The Brugsch Papyrus of around 1,350BC offers this test: “A watermelon pounded is mixed with the milk of a woman who has borne a son, and is given to the patient to drink: if she vomits, she is pregnant; if she has only flatulence, she will never bear again.” The Berlin Papyrus, written around 1,300BC is slightly more promising: “Wheat and spelt: let the woman water them daily with her urine like dates… If they both grow, she will bear: if the wheat grows, it will be a boy; if the spelt grows, it will be a girl. If neither grows, she will not bear.” Archaeologists tested this in 1963 and although the gender-testing didn’t work, using urine to germinate wheat and spelt proved a 70 per cent accurate predictor of pregnancy.

Runes In February, a runic code called jötunvillur was finally decrypted. Dating from the 12th century, it seems to have been used to encrypt the Viking equivalent of text messages. One piece of bone says “Kiss me” on it, others say “Interpret these runes”, and on one from Orkney, someone has written: “These runes were carved by the most rune-literate man west of the sea.” The Vikings and medieval Norse peoples carved runic codes on to sticks of wood and stones and they are so widespread over Scandinavia and Great Britain, it’s now thought that people learned to write in code at the same time as they learned how to read runes. Linear There are lots of languages that are yet to be deciphered. A British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, discovered a new language in 1893 when he purchased some ancient stones with mysterious inscriptions on them at a flea market in Athens. When excavating at Knossos on the island of Crete, he recognised one of the symbols from these stones and studied the engraved tablets being dug up. He discovered two different systems, which he called Linear A and Linear B. The latter turned out to be an early form of Greek and was deciphered in the early Fifties. Linear A remains a mystery. Rongorongo When Christian missionaries got to Easter Island (Rapanui) in the 1860s, they found wooden tablets carved with symbols. These appeared to be examples of a written language: the only one produced in Polynesia. It was called rongorongo which meant “to chant out” and featured glyphs representing humans, animals, fish and geometric shapes like crosses and chevrons. Some scholars aren’t convinced it’s “writing” and think it may be more of a mnemonic device to record genealogy and information about navigation and agriculture. The main problem is that at the time it was discovered almost none of the Rapanui islanders could read or interpret the glyphs. The language, if that’s what it was, had been the preserve of the ruling caste, most of whom had already being killed or captured by Chilean pirates; the inscribed tablets were being used as firewood or fishing reels. Hapax A hapax legomenon (from the Greek) is something said just once in the entire corpus of a given language, or a given text, or the work of a given author. Lots of hieroglyphs are currently averred to be hapax legomena. This may be because we haven’t discovered enough text to find more uses, or because they’re unique words. They pose a particular challenge in translation, because by definition they have only one context. The Old English word slæpwerigne, which occurs once in the Exeter Book, might mean “weary with sleep” or “weary for sleep”. We’ll probably never know for sure.

COMMUNICATIONS AND WRITING: How did they record their stories and history? The Ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphic symbols to record their stories and

history, but also used hieroglyphs as writing, to record everyday things.There are over 700 hieroglyphs, which are pictures of an object which stand for a word, an idea or a sound. It was a very elaborate form of picture writing and it is thought that the scribes deliberately made it complicated so that not too many people would learn it, and the scribes would maintain their important positions in their society. Scribes were near the top of Egyptian society and good ones could do very well. One even became a King - his name was Horemheb. The word hieroglyph means “sacred words” in Greek, and this type of script was used for 4000 years. It could be written from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. Only people called “scribes” were trained to write. For everyday work, they used more of a joined up form of writing similar to handwriting. This form of writing was able to be written more quickly - aways from right to left, and was called hieratic. The Ancient Egyptians also drew pictures to tell stories about their history, their Gods, the animals and birds, the fish in the Nile River, their ceremonies and rituals. Sometimes the pictures where just used to decorate pillars and doorways of buildings, or walls of pyramids. Hieroglyphs were written on papyrus, carved into stone in the tombs and the temple walls, and used to decorate everyday objects. They were also used on state monuments and religious papyri.

What tools and media were used in their writing? The tools and media that the Ancient Egyptians used in their writing included:

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Paper: the paper was made from Papyrus. Papyrus was made from the triangular-stemmed papyrus reed about 4 metres tall which grew widely along the banks of the Nile River and had tall shallow stems. To make the paper, the rind from the stems had to be peeled away to get to the soft pith inside. This was cut up into strips and using a mallet, it was pounded into flat sheets and joined into rolls. Papyrus paper was used in Egypt for over 3000 years. Paint or ink was made from pigment powder from plants mixed with a liquid. The Egyptians used a pot to grinding pigment. In ancient Egypt brushes and pens were made of reed.

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They used brush holders (for reed brushes) and palettes for mixing inks. Writing cases - a scribes pen-case contained reed pens and an inkwell. Scribes carried a grinder for crushing the pigments first. Often the scribe’s name and the name of his employer or the pharaoh would be carved into the case. Leather bags were used for holding coloured inks - made from grinding brightly coloured minerals mixed with water and gum. Charcoal or soot was used to make the colour black or from red ochre, or blue or green minerals. Scribes burnishers were used for smoothing down the surface of the freshly made papyrus.

Who was able to read and write? Not everyone learned to read and write. The only group of people allowed to have this knowledge were “scribes”. It is thought that only about four out of 1,000 Egyptians could read or write. Scribes were usually men, and to become a scribe, you had to had to learn how to read and write hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Usually it was the children of scribes that became scribes. From the age of nine, the students had to study for about four or five years to get through scribe school. They were taught writing, mathematics and astronomy.They learnt to read and write by copying and chanting wisdom texts which gave advice on morals and behaviour. These schools cannot have been pleasant places to be, as the children were regularly beaten.School exercises were often written on broken pieces of stone or pottery that had been thrown away.These pieces are known as ostraka. Young scribes would copy exercises out onto ostrakon and then have them corrected by the teacher. Many examples of corrected exercises have been discovered in Egypt. Training to become a scribe was hard work because of the number of symbols they had to learn. Scribes traditionally sat cross-legged with their writing materials on their laps. The hieroglyph for a scribe is made up of a water pot, a brush holder and a palette with cakes of ink. The Egyptian word for scribe or official wash sesh.

What were some of the functions and purposes of their writing? Scribes were professional writers who would copy out official records and documents. letters, poems and stories. Scribes were employed to keep records of everything produced. They recorded the state’s share of taxes, ordered supplies for the temples and ordered supplies for the Egyptian army. Scribes also worked out amounts of food needed to feed the workers. Everything was recorded carefully. If someone needed to write a letter, they could pay a scribe to write it for them. Many scribes worked in the government, copying out accounts, taxes, orders and laws. They were like civil servants. Some women who were doctors learnt to be scribes so that they could read medical texts. Draughtsman were scribes who specialised in draughtsmanship for royal monuments. Scribes were often important powerful people in ancient Egypt, and many statues of them have survived. The reason we know so much about ancient Egyptians is because of the written language they left behind. Inscriptions providing detailed information about their lives can be found on everything from obelisks to tombs. Comparison between ancient Egyptian communications and writing and our modern day communications: It is easy to see how our modern day communications and the way we record things is vastly different to the ancient egyptians in almost every way. The Egyptians were however very advanced for such an ancient civilisation though, and their almost obsessive recording of everything that happened around them on a daily basis by the scribes, is the only reason we know so much about their civilisation today. Since the Egyptian times, we have developed more advanced writing and art materials, books, a written language for recording music (sheet music), computers and now of course the internet. Communications technology is the area that has changed more than anything else in the last 20 years. We have even developed a written sign language for blind people. We have an alphabet and numbers rather than hieroglyphs, and every child has the opportunity to learn to read and write. We can make phone calls to any country in the world, we can send faxes, we can skype, sent e mails and text messages. We can communicate with groups of people from all around the world through social media and get almost instant access to news from anywhere around the world. We also have the

ability to communicate through music and to record the music itself onto records, cassettes, CD’s and now also our own personal electronic devices.

Writing The ancient Egyptians believed that it was important to record and communicate information about religion and government. Thus, they invented written scripts that could be used to record this information. The most famous of all ancient Egyptian scripts is hieroglyphic. However, throughout three thousand years of ancient Egyptian civilisation, at least three other scripts were used for different purposes. Using these scripts, scribes were able to preserve the beliefs, history and ideas of ancient Egypt in temple and tomb walls and on papyrus scrolls.

How did the Ancient Egyptians communicate with each other? Mainly, Ancient Egyptians communicated through writing; hieroglyphics and heratic. Since most people couldn’t learn the 2 languages; after all, hieroglyphs did have over 700 characters, so select people, called scribes, were taught the languages of Ancient Egypt to write them down for other people. People would write down things like the month’s harvest, or what was made during the week. People also communicated through plays and the theater, expressing their feelings and thoughts to the viewers, by acting out their thoughts. In these play’s, only men would be actors in the play’s, because women didn’t have that many rights. People would also, naturally, talk to each other to find out the day’s events and what was happening. They would also talk to communicate with their gods to pray and thank them, and ask for help with problems in their daily lives. The Ancient Egyptians would also communicate through drawings, pictures, and snapshots of their lives, and the important thing’s going on. They also drew to express their prophecies and their predictions for the outcome of the world. Another way the Ancient Egyptians could communicate is through their art. They would show pictures on their vases about the gods and demi-gods (the gods children) doing heroic deeds to save the world. To communicate their rank, people wore more expensive clothes, and their houses were bigger and fully furnished with ornately carved furniture and impressive works of art. Women also wore gold and lapis lazuli jewelry. Advertisements

COMMUNICATION AND WRITING In the Ancient times they didn't have fancy, multicoloured paper like we do and they didn't have the electronics we have now, they didn't have the knowledge and equipment to have what we have now. A Story from Ancient Egypt

How did they record their stories? If Ancient Egyptians wanted to record a story the average person couldn't, if they weren't a Scribe. Ancient Egyptians recorded their stories by getting a Scribe to carve the story into stonewall or write it down onto papyrus paper with a reed pen. The Scribes recorded their stories in hieroglyphics and the Scribes were the only people who could read and write so people would get one of the Scribes and ask them to write a story and they would write in hieroglyphics on rock walls with a stone or a reed pen on papyrus paper. Hieroglyphs was invented more than 7,500 years ago and was very unique to the Ancient Egyptian's as they were the only Ancient Civilisation that used them.

Hieroglyphics on a rock wall

Hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt

A picture of an Ancient Egyptian writing

What tools and media were used in their writing? Ancient Egypt didn't have all the knowledge and understanding of the world, so they didn't have the tools and experience we have now. In Ancient times in Egypt the Egyptians used papyrus paper made from papyrus plants. The papyrus plant had a big impact on Ancient Egyptians as it had many uses that were needed for the Egyptians. The papyrus plants grows along the bank of the Nile river which would of been handy as the Ancient Egyptians usually based their villages next to or closed to the Nile because the Nile gave them a lot of uses and made their lives a lot easier. Making papyrus paper was a long process but that’s the only way they knew. Ancient Egyptians also used walls and rocks to carve stories and signs into it. Ancient Egyptian used reed pens, sticks, paint and rocks to write with. The scribes wrote Ancient Egypt Literature, which is stories, poems, historical and biographical texts and scientific treatises: mathematical and medical texts. They wrote about their religion, recorder their medical knowledge, what they learn, how they learnt it. The scribes were very important to the Ancient Egyptians as they were they source of reading and writing resources.

Two Ancient Egyptians writing

What were some of the functions and purposes of their writing?

Who was able to read and write?

Ancient Egyptians weren't cavemen they had quite a bit of knowledge. When they found out factual information they would get Scribes to write it down. If the Ancient Egyptian Doctors or nurses found out important information like a cure to a sickness or infection or allergic reaction that would be very useful with another patient that may get those very same symptoms and illnesses then it would be written down

Not everyone was able to learn the knowledge of reading and writing in Ancient Egypt. Only one group had the comprehensions of reading and writing and they were called scribes. The scribes were people in Ancient Egypt generally men who were taught to read and write. To get into the "Scribes" groups was hard work and not everyone could learn it as it was very rare to get into scribes after 4-5 years

and used to treat the needs of that illness. If the Ancient Egyptians found out new things about how they got things for food, medicine, appearance anything that would be useful in other situation, they would get the Scribes to write it for them. By writing these things down on papyrus paper would make it much easier as they would know how to treat a person again, they would know where to find an important plant with many uses and by writing it down means that people will find it easier to live their life's in Ancient Egypt.

Letters-Hierogliphics

What value did their culture place on their written communication? Not a lot of their culture was based on written communication, as not many Ancient Egyptians could read and write. The only people that could read and write were Scribes. And you can only become a Scribe if you went through school and got accepted. Occasionally, Priests became Scribes so that they could record Gods.

of reading and writing school, if they wanted to learn how to read and write they had to go to a school were you learnt how to read and write complicated hieroglyphics and hieratic scripts and learnt to read and write signs. Scribes group was the only collection of people that could read and write, so they were the ones that could write the scripts and read the scripts.

Hieroglyphics for Gods

What links were there between their written communication and their religion? The Hieroglyphics have many links to their religion. A large quantity of their Hieroglyphs were based on their gods. They also had Hieroglyphic signs for all of their gods.

Every child learns the alphabet, but how much do any of us know about the history of it? In this lesson, we'll talk about one of the first major alphabets in Western history, and see how it impacted the ancient world.

The Phoenician Alphabet As children, one of the first things we learn is the alphabet. This is an important thing to learn, since our entire written language is based around the combinations of letters in the alphabet. Every letter represents a sound in the spoken language, which lets us create words through combinations of sounds. This system is much more efficient than a written language in which each symbol represents an entire word, so it's pretty cool. But where did it come from? The alphabet, as we know it, developed over thousands of years, but originated from the written language known as Phoenician. The Phoenician alphabet was one of the first widely used alphabets in the world. Maybe our children should be singing catchy mnemonic tunes about this alphabet as well.

Origins To understand the Phoenician alphabet, we first need to understand the Phoenician people. For that, we have to travel back to roughly 1500 BCE on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea around present day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. This territory was known to the Egyptians as Put, to the people of the eastern Mediterranean as Canaan, and to the ancient Greeks as Phoenicia. The Phoenicians

lived in trade-based city-states along the eastern Mediterranean, but also had colonies across the North African coast and some in Southern Europe.

On this map of ancient powers, the Phoenician colonies are in red

The Phoenician people spoke the Phoenician language, which was a member of the Northern Semitic group of languages, a common ancestor of many languages spoken in the Middle East to this day. The Mediterranean world around this time was an interesting place. It was here that the world's first cities appeared, here that agriculture was first perfected, and here that people first learned to turn their spoken language into a written language. That first written language (developed around 3500 BCE) was called cuneiform, and it was based on the language of the Mesopotamians. Cuneiform, like many other early written languages, used symbolic characters to represent the sounds of entire syllables. Over time, people tweaked this system to make it more efficient. They realized that they could drastically reduce the number of characters in the alphabet if they used symbols to represent individual sounds rather than entire syllables. That system, in which characters represent individual sounds, is how we formally define an alphabet. The Proto-Canaanite alphabet was one of the first major attempts to do this, but the Phoenicians took this one step further. They standardized an alphabet of major sounds and developed one of the most efficient and easy-to-use written languages in the world at that time. In fact, while cuneiform contained nearly 1,000 characters, the written Phoenician language contained only 22.

Phoenician alphabet

Structure The Phoenician language is based around an alphabet of 22 letters, each one representing a sound in the Phoenician language. However, not all of the sounds in the language are actually represented. Phoenician is a consonantal alphabet, which means that it only has letters to represent the consonants. There are no vowels in the Phoenician written language. Readers would simply imply the presence of the vowel sounds based on their knowledge of the written and spoken language. Written Phoenician is composed of these consonantal letters, written from right to left across clay tablets or pieces of early parchment.

Written Phoenician

Significance The oldest piece of Phoenician writing that we've discovered was from the Phoenician city of Byblos (today in Lebanon) dating to the 11th century BCE. From there, however, Phoenician began to appear in more and more cities around the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians were a maritime people, who built up a society of traders who shipped products to and from the various cities along the Mediterranean coast. As they built up their trade networks, they established colonies across Northern Africa and the Middle East, and even some in Southern Europe.

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Phoenician alphabet

Type

Abjad

Languages

Phoenician, Punic

Time period

c. 1200–150 BC[1]

Parent systems

Egyptian hieroglyphs [2]



Proto-Sinaitic



Phoenician alphabet

Child systems

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet Aramaic alphabet Greek alphabet Libyco-Berber Paleohispanic scripts

Sister systems

South Arabian alphabet

Direction

Right-to-left

ISO 15924

Phnx, 115

Unicode alias

Phoenician

Unicode range

U+10900–U+1091F

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains special characters.Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. History of the alphabet[show]

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v



t



e

The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. It is an alphabet of abjad[3] type, consisting of 22 consonant letters only, leaving vowel sounds implicit, although certain late varieties use matres lectionis for some vowels. It was used to write Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the ancient civilization of Phoenicia in modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel.[4] The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.[5] It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it was adopted and modified by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is a local variant of Phoenician,[6] as is the Aramaic alphabet, the ancestor of the modern Arabic. Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of Aramaic. The Greek alphabet (with its descendants Latin, Cyrillic, Runic, and Coptic) also derives from Phoenician. As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, they are mostly angular and straight, although cursive versions steadily gained popularity, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Romanera North Africa. Phoenician was usually written right to left, though some texts alternate directions (boustrophedon).

Contents 

   



   

1History o 1.1Origin o 1.2Spread of the alphabet and its social effects o 1.3Modern rediscovery 2Development 3Letter names 4Numerals 5Unicode o 5.1Block o 5.2History 6Derived alphabets o 6.1Middle Eastern descendants o 6.2Derived European scripts o 6.3Brahmic scripts 7Surviving examples 8See also 9References o 9.1Sources 10External links

History[edit] Further information: Abjad

Origin[edit] Further information: Proto-Sinaitic script and Proto-Canaanite script The earliest known alphabetic (or "proto-alphabetic") inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic (or Proto-Canaanite) script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle and Late Bronze Age. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite" script of the Bronze Age collapse period. The so-called Ahiram epitaph, from about 1200 BC, engraved on the sarcophagus of king Ahiram in Byblos, Lebanon, one of five known Byblian royal inscriptions, shows essentially the fully developed Phoenician script,[7] although the name "Phoenician" is by convention given to inscriptions beginning in the mid 11th century BC.[8]

Spread of the alphabet and its social effects[edit] Further information: History of the alphabet Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet thrived, including Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts. The alphabet's attractive innovation was its phonetic nature, in which one sound was represented by one symbol, which meant only a few dozen symbols to learn. The other scripts of the time, cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, employed many complex characters and required long professional training to achieve proficiency.[9] Another reason for its success was the maritime trading culture of Phoenician merchants, which spread the alphabet into parts of North Africa and Southern Europe.[10] 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.[11] The alphabet had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. Its simplicity not only allowed its easy adaptation to multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of literacy as an exclusive achievement of royal and religious elites, scribes who used their monopoly on information to control the common population.[12] The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these class divisions, although many Middle Eastern kingdoms, such as Assyria, Babylonia and Adiabene, would continue to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into the Common Era.

Modern rediscovery[edit] The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, but up to the 19th century its origin was unknown. It was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs,[13] which had been spectacularly deciphered shortly before. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single individual conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian.[14] It was eventually discovered that the proto-Sinaitic alphabet was inspired by the model of hieroglyphs.

Development[edit] The Phoenician letter forms shown here are idealized: actual Phoenician writing was cruder and less uniform, with significant variations by era and region. When alphabetic writing began in Greece, the letter forms were similar but not identical to Phoenician, and vowels were added to the consonant-only Phoenician letters. There were also distinct variants of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how those Phoenician characters that did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were used. The Ionic variant evolved into the standard Greek alphabet, and the Cumae variant 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.[15] The chart shows the graphical evolution of Phoenician letter forms into other alphabets. The sound values also changed significantly, both at the initial creation of new alphabets and from gradual pronunciation changes which did not immediately lead to spelling changes. Le tte r

Corresponding letter in N a m e

I m a g e

[

T e x t

1 6 ]

M e a n i n g

P h o n e m e

O r i g i n

A r a m a i c

H e b r e w

S y r i a c

A r a b i c

M a l e d i v a n T

S o u t h A r a b i

E t h i o p i a n G

E g G y r p e t e i k a n C o

A n a t o l i a n L

O l d I t a l i c

G S O G A e l l e r r a d o m m L v T r e a at i u g n n in c r i i i C k a a c y i n n R r c u il

M o n g o li a n

T i b e t a n

I n d i c D e v a n

B e n g a l i

B u r m e s e

S r i L a n k a n S

J a K T v h L h a m a a n e o i e r s e

h a e a n ' a e n z a

ʾ ʾ ā o 𐤀l x [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ﺍ 𓃾 א‬ e ʔ p ]

p t i c

y d i a n

n e s

Α Ⲁ ‫ 𓃾 𓃾 އ‬α ⲁ 𓃾 𓃾ᚨ

li c

A a

a g a r i

i n h a l e s e

ა / Ա А ⴀ / 𓃾 а / ա Ⴀ

𓃾 , 𓃾 , ꦨ 𓃾 𓃾 , , , ආ 𓃾 𓃾 ཨ , , 𓃾 , អ อ 𓃾ꦄ 𓃾𓃾𓃾 ඇ , , , 𓃾𓃾𓃾 ඈ , 𓃾 , 𓃾

h b b o Β Ⲃ B 𐤀ē u [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ 𓃾 𓃾 ބ ﺏ 𓃾 ב‬β ⲃ 𓃾 𓃾 ᛒ b t s b e ]

Б б , В в

ბ / Բ ⴁ / 𓃾 / բ Ⴁ

བ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 බ ប ꦧ , , , , , , บ 𓃾, མ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 භផ ꦨ

t h r o w i n g g ī 𐤀m s t l i c k / c a m

Г г , Ґ ґ

გ / Գ ⴂ / 𓃾 / գ Ⴂ

ค ག 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ග គ , 𓃾ꦒ ฅ

g

ᚷ C ‫ޖ‬ Γ Ⲅ , c, [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ ﺝ 𓃾 ג‬, 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 γ ⲅ G ɡ ‫ޗ‬ ᛃ g ]

e l d ā 𐤀l e t

d d ‫د‬ ‫ޑ‬ o , Δ Ⲇ D [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 ד‬ , 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾ᛞ o δ ⲇ d d r ‫ޛ ذ‬ ]

w i h n 𐤀ē d o w

h Ε Ⲉ E [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 𓃾 ހ ه 𓃾 ה‬ 𓃾 𓃾ᛖ ε ⲉ e h ]

w h w o 𐤀ā o [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ו‬ w w k ]

z a 𐤀y i n

w e a p o n

w a l l , ḥ c 𐤀ē o t u r t y a

z [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ז‬ z ]

ḥ

დ / Դ Д ⴃ / 𓃾 д / դ Ⴃ

ད 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ධ ឌ ฎ 𓃾ꦣ

Ե / Е ե е ე , , / Է Є ⴄ / - є / է , Ⴄ , Э Ը э / ը

ꦌ - 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 එ ហห 𓃾, ꦍ

Ff , ( U Ѵ ( u, ѵ Ϝ 𓃾 ), ‫ވ‬ ϝ , 𓃾 V Ⲩ 𓃾 ‫ ﻭ‬, 𓃾 𓃾 ), 𓃾 , ᚹ v, ⲩ У , 𓃾 ‫ޥ‬ у Υ 𓃾 Y , υ y, Ў ў W w

ვ / Վ ⴅ / / վ Ⴅ

ཝ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ව វ ว 𓃾ꦮ

‫ޒ‬ Ζ Ⲍ 𓃾 ‫ ﺯ‬, 𓃾 𓃾 ζ ⲍ ‫ޜ‬

ზ / Զ ⴆ / 𓃾 / զ Ⴆ

ཇ ช ꦗ , 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ජ ཛ , , , , ជ , 𓃾, , 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ඣ ซ ꦙ ཛྷ

Ի / ի , Խ Ⴈ / խ

གྷ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ඝ ឃ ฆ - ꦓ

𓃾 ‫ح‬ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ޙ‬ o , , , Η Ⲏ [ 𓃾 ‫𓃾 ח‬ , r η ⲏ ħ 𓃾 ‫𓃾 𓃾 ޚ خ‬ ]

Z 𓃾ᛉ z

З з

ᚺ H 𓃾/ h ᚻ

И и , Й й

ი / ⴈ /

r d ṭ w ṭ h [ 𐤀ē e t t e ˤ l ]

‫ط‬ ‫ޘ‬ , Θ Ⲑ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 ט‬ , 𓃾 𓃾 θ ⲑ ‫ދ ظ‬

l ā 𐤀m e d

𓃾 ཡ 𓃾 𓃾 , ය យย 𓃾ꦪ 𓃾

კ / Կ К ⴉ / 𓃾 к / կ Ⴉ

ཀ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 කក ก 𓃾ꦏ

ლ / Լ Л ⴊ Ll / 𓃾 л / լ Ⴊ

𓃾 ལ 𓃾 𓃾 , ළ លล 𓃾ꦭ 𓃾

მ / Մ ‫מ‬ Μ Ⲙ M М ⴋ [ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 𓃾 މ ﻡ‬ 𓃾 𓃾ᛗ / 𓃾 ‫ם‬ μ ⲙ m м / m մ ] Ⴋ

མ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ම ម ม 𓃾ꦩ

s e n r 𐤀ū p n e n t

Ⲓ 𓃾 ‫ 𓃾 𓃾 ޔ ي‬Ιι ⲓ

k ‫כ‬ Κ Ⲕ [ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 𓃾 ކ ﻙ‬ 𓃾 𓃾ᚲ ‫ך‬ κ ⲕ k ]

l g o [ a l d ]

w m a 𐤀ē t m e r

𓃾 , ཐ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ඣដ ฏ - ꦛ , 𓃾

Іі , Յ Ii, Її 𓃾 ᛁ 𓃾 ჲ / 𓃾 Jj , յ Ј ј

y h y a 𐤀ō n [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫י‬ d j d ] p a l m ( k o 𐤀ā f p a h a n d )

𓃾ᚦ -

თ ( / Թ Ѳ ⴇ / 𓃾 ѳ / թ ) Ⴇ

‫ލ‬ Λ Ⲗ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ ﻝ 𓃾 ל‬, 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾ᛚ λ ⲗ ‫ޅ‬

K k

m

n

‫ނ‬ ‫נ‬ Ν Ⲛ N [ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ ﻥ‬, 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾ᚾ ‫ן‬ ν ⲛ n n ‫ޏ‬ ]

ნ / Ն Н ⴌ / 𓃾 н / ն Ⴌ

𓃾 ང , , 𓃾 ཉ , , 𓃾 ན , 𓃾

𓃾 , 𓃾 , 𓃾 , 𓃾

𓃾 , 𓃾 , 𓃾 , 𓃾 , 𓃾

ඞ , ង ง 𓃾 ඤ, , , , ញ ณ𓃾 ණ, , , , ណน 𓃾 න

ꦔ , ꦚ , ꦟ , ꦤ

f i s h , d j e d

( Ѯ ს ѯ / Ս ), ⴑ / 𓃾 / ս Х Ⴑ х

សส 𓃾ꦯ 𓃾 𓃾 ས , , 𓃾 ස , , , , 𓃾 𓃾 ឞ ษ 𓃾ꦰ

ʿ ʿ Ο Ⲟ ‫ع‬ ‫ޢ‬ a e ο ⲟ , O y y [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ע‬ 𓃾 , 𓃾 𓃾 , , 𓃾 𓃾ᛟ 𐤀 o i e ʕ Ω Ⲱ ‫ޣ غ‬ n ] ω ⲱ

ო / Օ О ⴍ / 𓃾 о / օ Ⴍ

ꦎ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 , - , , , ඔ អុ - ꦎ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ꦴ

m o p 𐤀ē u t h

პ / Պ П ⴎ / 𓃾 п / պ Ⴎ

པ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ප ព 𓃾ꦥ , , , , , , ป , , ཕ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ඵ ភ 𓃾ꦦ

Ц ц , Ч ч , Џ џ

ც / Ց ⴚ / / ց Ⴚ

ཅ , ཆ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ච ច จ ꦕ , , , , , , , 𓃾, ཙ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ඡ ឆ ฉ ꦖ , ཚ

Ք / ք ქ , ( / Փ Ҁ ⴕ / 𓃾 ҁ / փ ) Ⴕ , Ֆ / ֆ

ข ཁ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ඛ ខ , 𓃾ꦑ ฃ

s ā 𐤀m e k

ṣ ā 𐤀d ē

? ( p a p y r u s ? )

Ξ 𓃾 ξ , [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ס‬ —— 𓃾 𓃾 , s Χ 𓃾 ] χ s

Ⲝ ⲝ , Ⲭ ⲭ

𓃾ᛊ X , , x 𓃾ᛋ

p

‫ފ‬ 𓃾 ‫פ‬ Π Ⲡ [ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ ف‬, 𓃾 , ‫ף‬ π ⲡ p 𓃾 ‫ޕ‬ ]

P 𓃾ᛈ p

ṣ

𓃾 ‫ص‬ ‫ޞ‬ , [ ‫צ‬ , 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 , 𓃾 𓃾 s ‫ץ‬ , ˤ ‫ޟض‬ 𓃾 ]

( Ϻ ϻ )

—𓃾—-

( n Ϙ Ϥ e ϙ ϥ e q ), , ‫ޤ‬ q d Ⲫ 𐤀ō l [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ ﻕ 𓃾 ק‬, 𓃾 𓃾 Φ ⲫ p e q ‫ގ‬ φ , e ] , Ⲯ y Ψ ⲯ e ψ r h r e 𐤀ē a [ š r d ]

𓃾 , 𓃾, 𓃾

Q q

Ρ Ⲣ R 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 𓃾 ރ ﺭ 𓃾 ר‬ 𓃾 𓃾ᚱ ρ ⲣ r

Р р

რ / Ր ⴐ / 𓃾 / ր Ⴐ

ར 𓃾 𓃾 -

ර រ ร 𓃾ꦫ

Ⲋ С ⲋ с შ t š ‫ش‬ , , / ‫ޝ‬ Շ ᛊ š o Σ , Ⲥ Ш ⴘ ī o [ 𓃾 𓃾 ‫ש‬ 𓃾 , 𓃾 𓃾 σ 𓃾 𓃾 / Ss / 𓃾 𐤀 ⲥ ш / n t ʃ ς շ ᛋ ‫ސ س‬ , , h ] Ⴘ Ϣ Щ ϣ щ t m t a 𐤀ā r [ w t k ]

Ⲋ ‫ت‬ ‫ތ‬ ⲋ , Τ Т 𓃾 𓃾 ‫𓃾 ת‬ , 𓃾 𓃾 , 𓃾 𓃾 ᛏ Tt τ т Ⲧ ‫ޘ ث‬ ⲧ

ტ Տ / / 𓃾 ⴒ տ /

ཤ 𓃾 𓃾 -

-

ឝศ - ꦯ

ต ཏ 𓃾 𓃾 𓃾 තត , 𓃾ꦠ ด

Alveolar Labial

Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal Plain

m

n

Voiceless

p

t

Voiced

b

d

Nasal

Emphatic

tˤ

k

ʔ

q

Stop

Voiceless

s

Voiced

z

ɡ

sˤ

ʃ

ħ

h

Fricative

Trill

r

Approximant

l

ʕ

j

w

Letter names[edit] Phoenician used a system of acrophony to name letters: a word was chosen with each initial consonant sound, and became the name of the letter for that sound. These names were not arbitrary: each Phoenician letter was based on an Egyptian hieroglyph representing an Egyptian word; this word was translated into Phoenician (or a closely related Semitic language), then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's Phoenician value.[17] For example, the second

letter of the Phoenician alphabet was based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for "house" (a sketch of a house); the Semitic word for "house" was bet; hence the Phoenician letter was called bet and had the sound value b. According to a 1904 theory by Theodor Nöldeke, some of the letter names were changed in Phoenician from the Proto-Canaanite script.[dubious – discuss] This includes:       

gaml "throwing stick" to gimel "camel" digg "fish" to dalet "door" hll "jubilation" to he "window" ziqq "manacle" to zayin "weapon" naḥš "snake" to nun "fish" piʾt "corner" to pe "mouth" šimš "sun" to šin "tooth"

Yigael Yadin (1963) went to great lengths to prove that there was actual battle equipment similar to some of the original letter forms.[18]

Numerals[edit] The Phoenician numeral system consisted of separate symbols for 1, 10, 20, and 100. The sign for 1 was a simple vertical stroke (𐤀). 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 (𐤀). The sign for 20 (𐤀) 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 (𐤀). The 100 symbol could be multiplied by a preceding numeral, e.g. the combination of "4" and "100" yielded 400.[19] The system did not contain a numeral zero.[20]

Unicode[edit] Phoenician Range

U+10900..U+1091F (32 code points)

Plane

SMP

Scripts

Phoenician

Assigned

29 code points

Unused

3 reserved code points

Unicode version history

5.0

27 (+27)

5.2

29 (+2)

Note: [21][22]

The Phoenician alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in July 2006 with the release of version 5.0. An alternative proposal to handle it as a font variation of Hebrew was turned down. (See PDF summary.) The Unicode block for Phoenician is U+10900–U+1091F. It is intended for the representation of text in Palaeo-Hebrew, Archaic Phoenician, Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyri, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Punic. The letters are encoded U+10900 𐤀 aleph through to U+10915 𐤀 taw, U+10916 𐤀, U+10917 𐤀, U+10918 𐤀 and U+10919 𐤀 encode the numerals 1, 10, 20 and 100 respectively and U+1091F 𐤀 is the word separator.

Block[edit] Phoenician[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+1090x

𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀

U+1091x

𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀 𐤀

𐤀

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 12.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

History[edit] The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Phoenician block:

Version

5.0

Final code points[a]

U+10900..10919, 1091F

Count

L2 ID

WG2 ID

Document

N1579

Everson, Michael (1997-0527), Proposal for encoding the Phoenician script

L2/97288

N1603

Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1997-10-24), "8.24.1", Unconfirmed Meeting Minutes, WG 2 Meeting # 33, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 20 June - 4 July 1997

L2/99013

N1932

Everson, Michael (1998-11-23), Revised proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS

L2/99224

Röllig, W. (1999-07-23), Comments on N2097, N2025proposals for the Universal Multiple2 Octed Coded Character Set

27 N2133

Kass, James; Anderson, Deborah W.; Snyder, Dean; Lehmann, Reinhard G.; Cowie, Paul James; Kirk, Peter; Cowan, John; Khalaf, S. George; Richmond, Bob (2004-0525), Miscellaneous Input on Phoenician Encoding Proposal

L2/04149

L2/04141R2

L2/04177

Response to comments on the question of encoding Old Semitic scripts in the UCS (N2097), 1999-10-04

N2746R2

Everson, Michael (2004-05-29), Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS

Anderson, Deborah (2004-0531), Expert Feedback on Phoenician

L2/04178

N2772

Keown, Elaine (2004-0604), REBUTTAL to “Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS”

L2/04181

L2/04190

Anderson, Deborah (2004-0604), Additional Support for Phoenician

N2787

Everson, Michael (2004-0606), Additional examples of the Phoenician script in use

L2/04187

McGowan, Rick (2004-0607), Phoenician Recommendation

L2/04206

Kirk, Peter (2004-06-07), Response to the revised "Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script" (L2/04141R2)

N2793

L2/04213

Rosenne, Jony (2004-06-07), Responses to Several Hebrew Related Items

L2/04217R

Keown, Elaine (2004-06-07), Proposal to add Archaic Mediterranean Script block to ISO 10646

L2/04226

Durusau, Patrick (2004-0607), Statement of the Society of Biblical Literature on WG2 N2746R2

L2/04218

N2792

Snyder, Dean (2004-06-08), Response to the Proposal to Encode Phoenician in Unicode

L2/05009

N2909

Anderson, Deborah (2005-0119), Letters in support of Phoenician

5.2

U+1091A..1091B

1.

2

L2/07206

N3284

Everson, Michael (2007-0725), Proposal to add two numbers for the Phoenician script

^ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

Derived alphabets[edit]

Each letter of Phoenician gave way to a new form in its daughter scripts. Left to right: Latin, Greek, Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic

Middle Eastern descendants[edit] See also: Languages currently written with the Arabic alphabet The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, used to write early Hebrew, was a regional offshoot of Phoenician; it is nearly identical to the Phoenician (in many early writings they are impossible to distinguish).[citation needed] The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew. The current Hebrew alphabet is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet, itself a descendant of the Phoenician script. The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic, is another descendant of Phoenician. Aramaic, being the lingua franca of the Middle East, was widely adopted. It later split off (due to political divisions) into a number of related alphabets, including Hebrew, Syriac, and Nabataean, the latter of which, in its cursive form, became an ancestor of the Arabic alphabet currently used in Arabic-speaking countries from North Africa through the Levant to Iraq and the Persian Gulf region, as well as in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. The Sogdian alphabet, a descendant of Phoenician via Syriac, is an ancestor of the Old Uyghur, which in turn is an ancestor of the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets, the former of which is still in use and the latter of which survives as the Xibe script. The Arabic script is a descendant of Phoenician via Aramaic. The Coptic alphabet, still used in Egypt for writing the Christian liturgical language Coptic (descended from Ancient Egyptian), is mostly based on the Greek alphabet, but with a few additional letters for sounds not in Greek at the time. Those additional letters are based on Demotic script.

Derived European scripts[edit] According to Herodotus,[24] the 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 estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BC, and claims that the Greeks did not know of the Phoenician alphabet before Cadmus.[25] Modern historians agree that Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician.[26] With a different phonology, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script to represent their own sounds, including the vowels absent in Phoenician. It was possibly more important in Greek to write out vowel sounds: Phoenician being a Semitic language, words were based on consonantal rootsthat permitted extensive removal of vowels without loss of meaning, a feature absent in the IndoEuropean Greek. (However, Akkadian cuneiform, which wrote a related Semitic language, did indicate vowels, which suggests the Phoenicians simply accepted the model of the Egyptians, who never wrote vowels.) In any case, the Greeks repurposed the Phoenician letters of consonant sounds not present in Greek; each such letter had its name shorn of its leading consonant, and the letter took the value of the now-leading vowel. For example, ʾāleph, which designated a glottal stop in Phoenician, was repurposed to represent the vowel /a/; he became /e/, ḥet became /eː/ (a long vowel), ʿayin became /o/ (because the pharyngeality altered the following vowel), while the two semi-consonants wau and yod became the corresponding high vowels, /u/ and /i/. (Some dialects of Greek, which did possess /h/ and /w/, continued to use the Phoenician letters for those consonants as well.) Cyrillic script was derived from the Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters (generally for sounds not in Mediaeval Greek) are based on Glagolitic forms, which in turn were influenced by the Hebrew or even Coptic alphabets.[citation needed]

The Latin alphabet was derived from Old Italic (originally a form of the Greek alphabet), used for Etruscan and other languages. The origin of the Runic alphabet is disputed: the main theories are that it evolved either from the Latin alphabet itself, some early Old Italic alphabet via the Alpine scripts, or the Greek alphabet. Despite this debate, the Runic alphabet is clearly derived from one or more scripts that ultimately trace their roots back to the Phoenician alphabet.[26][27]

Brahmic scripts[edit] See also: Aramaic hypothesis Many Western scholars believe that the Brahmi script of India and the subsequent Indic alphabets are also derived from the Aramaic script, which would make Phoenician the ancestor of virtually every alphabetic writing system in use today.[28] However, due to an indigenous-origin hypothesis of Brahmic scripts, no definitive scholarly consensus exists.

From Cuneiform to Text Messaging Rick Kern and Niek Veldhuis September 2009

Figure 1: A Babylonian tablet inscribed with the directions forbrewing beer (c. 3100 BCE)

Is there a difference between the digital emoticons of a text message today and the ancient pictographic script of 3,200 BCE? What can the study of “visible language” (i.e., writing and signing, as well as notated forms of music and dance) tell us about construing and sharing meanings, and, ultimately, of understanding ourselves in relation to the world? Since the origins of writing, many uses of language and other forms of symbolic expression have developed that allow communication among people who are not co-present in time or space. Concrete visible texts make it possible to review, to analyze, to revise, and to recontextualize language use. This has led some scholars, such as Walter Ong, to argue that writing and literacy have begotten nothing less than a transformation of human consciousness. However, we take issue with the notion of a “great divide” between so-called “oral” and “literate” societies. In the case of cuneiform text—and instant messaging and Web 2.0 applications today— trying to look at language use in terms of oral/literate dichotomies only obscures our understanding. Cultures of orality and literacy are so intertwined that we have to consider them together rather than separately.

Other scholars (e.g., Ignace Gelb) have construed a linear, evolutionary history of writing that moves from pictographic, to logographic, to syllabographic, finally coming to its own in the alphabet. Although such a scheme is attractive at first sight, its flaws become apparent when one realizes that mixed syllabographic/ logographic systems are still with us (in China, for instance) and that, arguably, text messaging and other newer forms of communication have re-introduced aspects of logographic and syllabographic writing. It seems better, therefore, to abandon all-too-general teleological and deterministic theories and to understand writing as a fundamentally historical phenomenon, bound by the technology of its medium on the one hand and by social context on the other hand. Cuneiform writing, the first writing system to be developed, was simple from a technological point of view. All one needed was some refined clay of the right consistency and a reed pen. Clay and reeds were both abundantly available in the southern area of what is now Iraq. The longevity of cuneiform, which was used for more than three millennia (from about 3,200 BCE to 100 AD), may in part be ascribed to its unassuming medium and its low costs. The other side of the coin is that clay is bulky and heavy and may be inscribed only for a certain period of time. Once the clay has dried out it becomes difficult to add more text—in practice a clay tablet cannot contain more than what one can write in a single day. Cuneiform was used primarily for administrative purposes, but the idea of a ledger, where one adds new items every day, was simply not within the realm of the possible. Instead, daily transactions were written on small tablets that were collected in a tablet basket. At the end of the accounting period the entire basket was summarized on a beautifully written multi-column tablet, which incorporated the information of each daily tablet and provided the totals at the end.

Email is the opposite of cuneiform in many respects. It is not bulky, and has no weight, but it requires a very complex technological infrastructure to work. Like clay tablets, however, it does not work well with a text that grows over time. The same is true for texting—but that hasn’t prevented Japanese authors from composing entire novels on their cell phones. The point is that technological restrictions are usually not decisive if there is a societal need or impetus strong enough to make people find a way around them.

Writing in its various forms is a social activity that is bound by social norms and follows strict conventions. The importance of conventions is hard to overestimate. Spelling, layout, headings, indexes and captions are all bound to conventions that facilitate understanding. Grammatical norms from written texts are very different from those in oral communication. Because every form of writing (and its technological means of production) has limitations, people develop conventions and specific writing styles to cope with those limitations. Developments in email and texting have made us aware that such conventions may develop differently; not only from one medium to another but also from one purpose and context to another within the same medium. Historically, the relation between written and spoken language is a complex one. Writing was not invented to reproduce spoken messages. The earliest written texts represent transactions rather than sentences. A beer account, for instance, lists the amounts of raw materials (primarily grains) delivered, the amount of beer expected and the name of the person responsible (Figure 1). The layout of the clay tablet in different columns (and with totals on the back) represents the syntax of the transaction. We assume that the words for beer and grain were those in use at the time in whatever language these ancient people spoke, but the words do not add up to a grammatically sound sentence. The structure of the earliest writing system may be compared to a modern software package that uses words from the colloquial language (in menus or field names) but does not mirror in any way the common use of such words in proper sentences.

Figure 2: Baude Cordier’s rondeau “Belle, Bonne, Sage”

Early writing developed as a response to a rapid increase in the complexity of society and as a means to control goods and information. The incapability of early writing to capture full sentences was not a flaw in the system, but rather a result of the societal need that brought writing into existence in the first place. Over the centuries the cuneiform writing system developed in ways that did make it possible to represent full grammatical sentences in various ancient languages. By the beginning of the second millennium BCE cuneiform writing was used for a wide variety of purposes, from poetry to personal letters and from administrative notes to medical handbooks. The basic technology of clay and reed had not changed, but an entire infrastructure of schools and school texts had been set up to educate new generations of scribes and to respond to the renewed demand for writing. More recent developments in writing suggest that the development of new conventions may be first driven by the peculiarities of the medium (such as the keys of a cell phone or the number of characters the screen can display) but are then solidified by the social cohesion and identity that they provide in the form of a shared code. We see this in the case of spelling: in the early days of printing, letters were added or subtracted as needed in order to maintain an even line length. Many of these “modified” spellings then became codified through dictionaries. In the early days of email,

when only ASCII characters could be used, people whose languages did not use the Latin alphabet wrote email in “romanized” script. However, even after Unicode became well established, allowing people to write in their native script, many chose to continue to write in romanized form, which had become natural and customary for email. In music, the notational techniques explained in Philippe de Vitry’s treatise Ars nova (c. 1322), which included the use of color, made it possible to notate things people had never thought about notating before; this gave rise to melodies of unprecedented complexity (ars subtilior). A famous example is the heart shaped manuscript by Baude Cordier (Figure 2), which uses the notation to iconic effect. Visible language is therefore about cultural practices that arise from the interaction of social environment and technical affordances of media. While technologies of writing, from cuneiform clay tablets to electronic media, are fundamentally different, the underlying human processes of adapting forms and functions to various technologies of writing and to the social needs of the time are nevertheless similar. The juxtaposition of different media from different periods in the history of writing brings new insights to light, both in terms of the technical aspects and the social practices associated with writing.

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