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Middle Bronze Age alphabets

Middle Bronze Age alphabets

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The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000
20th century BC
The 20th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2000 BC to 1901 BC.-Events:* 2000 BC: Arrival of the ancestors of the Latins in Italy.* 2000 BC: Town of Mantua is presumably founded....

-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...

s:
  • the Proto-Sinaitic script, discovered in Palestine
    Palestine
    Palestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...

     and Sinai in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie
    William Matthew Flinders Petrie
    Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie FRS , known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated at many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt,...

    , and dated to 1500 BCE, and
  • the Wadi el-Hol script, discovered in Middle Egypt
    Middle Egypt
    Middle Egypt is the section of land between Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, stretching upstream from Beni Suef in the north to Sohag in the south. Ancient Egypt was divided at the time into Lower and Upper Egypt. It wasn't until the 19th Century that archeologists felt the need to divide Upper...

     in 1999 by John and Deborah Darnell and dated to 1800 BCE.

The Proto-Sinaitic script


The Proto-Sinaitic script is best known from carved graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 in the Sinai peninsula
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai (sina; Egyptian Arabic: سينا sina; sina'a; is a triangular peninsula in Egypt. It lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, forming a land bridge between Africa and Southwest...

, most famously from a mining area of the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim
Serabit el-Khadim
Serabit el-Khadim is a locality in the south-west Sinai Peninsula where turquoise was mined extensively in antiquity, mainly by the ancient Egyptians...

 (سرابيت الخادم). These mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a West Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician. The Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions were found in a temple of Hathor
Hathor
Hathor , , was an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of feminine love, motherhood and joy. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt...

 , and appear to be votive texts.

Despite a century of study, researchers can agree on the decipherment of only a single phrase, cracked in 1916 by Alan Gardiner
Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...

: לבעלת (to the Lady) [ (Lady) being a title of Hathor and the feminine of the title
{{Expert-subject|Writing systems|date=September 2009}}
{{citecheck| trying to solicit input after req on EAR page|date=September 2009}}
{{alphabet}}

The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000
20th century BC
The 20th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2000 BC to 1901 BC.-Events:* 2000 BC: Arrival of the ancestors of the Latins in Italy.* 2000 BC: Town of Mantua is presumably founded....

-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...

s:
  • the Proto-Sinaitic script, discovered in Palestine
    Palestine
    Palestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...

     and Sinai in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie
    William Matthew Flinders Petrie
    Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie FRS , known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated at many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt,...

    , and dated to 1500 BCE, and
  • the Wadi el-Hol script, discovered in Middle Egypt
    Middle Egypt
    Middle Egypt is the section of land between Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, stretching upstream from Beni Suef in the north to Sohag in the south. Ancient Egypt was divided at the time into Lower and Upper Egypt. It wasn't until the 19th Century that archeologists felt the need to divide Upper...

     in 1999 by John and Deborah Darnell and dated to 1800 BCE.

The Proto-Sinaitic script


The Proto-Sinaitic script is best known from carved graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 in the Sinai peninsula
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai (sina; Egyptian Arabic: سينا sina; sina'a; is a triangular peninsula in Egypt. It lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, forming a land bridge between Africa and Southwest...

, most famously from a mining area of the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim
Serabit el-Khadim
Serabit el-Khadim is a locality in the south-west Sinai Peninsula where turquoise was mined extensively in antiquity, mainly by the ancient Egyptians...

 (سرابيت الخادم). These mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a West Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician. The Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions were found in a temple of Hathor
Hathor
Hathor , , was an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of feminine love, motherhood and joy. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt...

 ({{transl|ar|DIN|ḥatḥor}}), and appear to be votive texts.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

Despite a century of study, researchers can agree on the decipherment of only a single phrase, cracked in 1916 by Alan Gardiner
Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...

: לבעלת {{transl|ar|DIN|l bʿlt}} (to the Lady) [{{transl|ar|DIN|baʿlat}} (Lady) being a title of Hathor and the feminine of the title
{{Expert-subject|Writing systems|date=September 2009}}
{{citecheck| trying to solicit input after req on EAR page|date=September 2009}}
{{alphabet}}

The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000
20th century BC
The 20th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2000 BC to 1901 BC.-Events:* 2000 BC: Arrival of the ancestors of the Latins in Italy.* 2000 BC: Town of Mantua is presumably founded....

-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...

s:
  • the Proto-Sinaitic script, discovered in Palestine
    Palestine
    Palestine is a conventional name used, among others, to describe a geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.As a geographical term, Palestine can also refer to 'ancient Palestine,' an area...

     and Sinai in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie
    William Matthew Flinders Petrie
    Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie FRS , known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated at many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt,...

    , and dated to 1500 BCE, and
  • the Wadi el-Hol script, discovered in Middle Egypt
    Middle Egypt
    Middle Egypt is the section of land between Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, stretching upstream from Beni Suef in the north to Sohag in the south. Ancient Egypt was divided at the time into Lower and Upper Egypt. It wasn't until the 19th Century that archeologists felt the need to divide Upper...

     in 1999 by John and Deborah Darnell and dated to 1800 BCE.

The Proto-Sinaitic script


The Proto-Sinaitic script is best known from carved graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 in the Sinai peninsula
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai (sina; Egyptian Arabic: سينا sina; sina'a; is a triangular peninsula in Egypt. It lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, forming a land bridge between Africa and Southwest...

, most famously from a mining area of the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim
Serabit el-Khadim
Serabit el-Khadim is a locality in the south-west Sinai Peninsula where turquoise was mined extensively in antiquity, mainly by the ancient Egyptians...

 (سرابيت الخادم). These mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a West Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician. The Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions were found in a temple of Hathor
Hathor
Hathor , , was an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of feminine love, motherhood and joy. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt...

 ({{transl|ar|DIN|ḥatḥor}}), and appear to be votive texts.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

Despite a century of study, researchers can agree on the decipherment of only a single phrase, cracked in 1916 by Alan Gardiner
Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...

: לבעלת {{transl|ar|DIN|l bʿlt}} (to the Lady) [{{transl|ar|DIN|baʿlat}} (Lady) being a title of Hathor and the feminine of the title {{transl
Baal
' is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...

 (Lord) given to the Semitic god], although the word {{transl|ar|DIN|m’hb}} (loved) is frequently cited as a second word.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

The script has graphic similarities with the Egyptian hieratic
Hieratic
Hieratic is a cursive writing system used in pharaonic Egypt that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, allowing scribes to write quickly without resorting to the time consuming hieroglyphs...

 script, the less elaborate form of the hieroglyph
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

s. In the 1950s and 60s it was common to show the derivation of the Canaanite alphabet from hieratic, using William Albright
William F. Albright
William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, linguist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...

's interpretations of Proto-Sinaitic as the key. It was generally accepted that the language of the inscriptions was Semitic, that the script had a hieratic prototype and was ancestral to the Semitic alphabets, and that the script was itself acrophonic and alphabetic (more specifically, a consonantal alphabet or abjad
Abjad
An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....

). The word {{transl|ar|DIN|baʿlat}} (Lady) lends credence to the identification of the language as Semitic. However, the lack of further progress in decipherment casts doubt over the other suppositions, and the identification of the hieratic prototypes remains speculative.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

The Wadi el-Hol script


The Wadi el-Hol (Arabic وادي الحول {{unicode|Wādī al-Ḥūl}} 'Gulch of Terror') inscriptions were also carved in stone, along an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes
Thebes, Egypt
Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile . It was inhabited beginning in around 3200 BC. It was the eponymous capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome...

 and Abydos
Abydos, Egypt
Abydos , one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, is about 11 kilometres west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N...

, in a wadi
Wadi
Wadi is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley; in some cases it may refer to a dry riverbed that contains water only during times of heavy rain or simply an intermittent stream.-Variant names:...

 in the Qena
Qena
Qena is a city in Upper Egypt, and the capital of the Qena Governorate. It is situated on the east bank of the Nile. Qena was known as Kaine during the Greco-Roman period....

 bend of the Nile, at approx. {{Coord|25|57|N|32|25|E|}}. Two inscriptions are known in what appears to be a Semitic abjad, and there are dozens of other hieratic/hieroglyphic found at Wadi al-Hol as well. The script is graphically very similar to the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, but is older and further south, in the heart of literate Egypt. The shapes and angles of the glyphs best match hieratic graffiti from 2000 BCE, during the First Interdynastic Period
First Intermediate Period of Egypt
The First Intermediate Period, often described as a “dark period” in ancient Egyptian history, spanned approximately one hundred years after the end of the Old Kingdom from ca. 2181-2055 BC . It included the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and part of the eleventh dynasties. Very little monumental...

.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}} Frank M. Cross of Harvard University believes the inscriptions are "clearly the oldest of alphabetic writing", and are similar enough to later Semitic writing to conclude that "this belongs to a single evolution of the alphabet."

H1 is a figure of celebration [Gardiner A28], whereas h2 is either that of a child [Gardiner A17] or of dancing [Gardiner A32]. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic variants (such as two hieroglyphs both used to write the Canaanite word hillul "jubilation") rather than different consonants.
{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

Several scholars{{Who|date=July 2007}} agree that the רב rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is likely rebbe (chief; cognate with rabbi
Rabbi
Rabbi is the term in Judaism for a religious teacher. The word rabbi derives from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ in many senses, including "revered." The word comes from the Semitic root R-B-B, and is cognate to Arabic ربّ rabb, meaning "lord" Rabbi . Several scholars{{Who|date=September 2009}} have also asserted that the אל ’l at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ’el
El (god)
is the Northwest Semitic word for "deity", cognate to Arabic and Akkadian .In the Canaanite religion, or Levantine religion as a whole, Eli or Il was the supreme god, the father of humankind and all creatures and the husband of the Goddess Asherah as attested in the tablets of Ugarit.The word El...

 "(a) god".

Origin of alphabetic writing


The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was logosyllabic, that is, consisted of signs that stand for words, sounds, or place a word in a category. There was a complete set of uniliteral glyphs from at least 2700 BCE{{mdash}}that is, the hieroglyphic script contained an alphabetic subsystem (not including vowels) within it. While logographic systems such as Egyptian and Old Sumerian are extremely time-consuming to learn, they are sometimes considered superior to alphabets when it comes to reading. For literate Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians is the name of the nationality and Mediterranean North African ethnic group native to Egypt....

, whose livelihoods depended on their mastery of writing, there was little advantage to whittling the script down to a simple alphabet. Purely uniliteral (alphabetic) writing was used mainly to transcribe foreign names.

However, from the 22nd to 20th centuries BCE, central rule broke down. John and Debby Darnell found contemporary hieratic references to an Egyptian named "Bebi, General of the Asiatics".
They speculate that: {{quote|In the course of reunifying his fragmented realm, the reigning pharaoh attempted to pacify and employ roving bands of mercenaries who had come from outside Egypt to fight in the civil wars. The Egyptians were the quintessential bureaucrats, and under Bebi's command, there must have been a small army of scribes in the military whose job it was to keep track of these 'Asiatics.'}}

[Darnell] explains: {{quote|When you were captured, you were simply put to work doing your old job, but for the other side, and so these 'Asiatic' troops, who were probably already quite Egyptianized, had to find a way to talk to their new comrades.

They also had to deal with civil servants, all of whom could read and write hieratic. And somewhere out there in the desert, suggests Darnell, inventive scribes, to enable the captured troops to record their names and other basic information, apparently came up with a kind of easy-to-learn Egyptian shorthand.|Fellman (2000)}}

In other words, it was a utilitarian invention for soldiers and merchants. The assumption is that they developed a Semitic script based on acrophony, where the first sound of the Semitic name of an Egyptian glyph came to be the value of that glyph. Just as the numerals 1, 2, 3, etc. changed names but retained their graphic forms as they passed from India to Arabia to Europe, so the names of the letters were translated as they passed from the Egyptians to the Semites. For example, the name of the hieratic glyph for house changed from Egyptian pr to Canaanite bayt, and thus the glyph came to stand for /b/. House and most of the other letters were not uniliteral glyphs in Egyptian: the Semitic alphabet is not derived from the existing Egyptian alphabet, but rather from the full set of hieratic hieroglyphs. In fact, some of the letters, such as ה H, may have been determinative
Determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and...

s (semantic complements), and thus had no sound value in Egyptian. However, the Semitic names are not attested until c. 200 BCE, and some scholars doubt that acrophony
Acrophony
Acrophony is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself...

 had anything to do with the invention of the alphabet.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

Literature

  • Albright, Wm. F. (1966) The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment
  • Colless, Brian E., "The proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Sinai", Abr-Nahrain 28 (1990).
  • Colless, Brian E., "The proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan", Abr-Nahrain 29 (1991).
  • J. Darnell and C. Dobbs-Allsopp, et al., Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 2005.
  • Hamilton, Gordon J, The origins of the West Semitic alphabet in Egyptian scripts (2006)
  • Fellman, Bruce (2000) "The Birthplace of the ABCs." Yale Alumni Magazine, December 2000.http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/00_12/egypt.html

See also

  • Alphabet
    Alphabet
    An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols or graphemes each of which roughly represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or...

  • Abjad
    Abjad
    An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....

  • Byblos syllabary
    Byblos syllabary
    The Byblos syllabary, also known as the Pseudo-hieroglyphic script, Proto-Byblian, Proto-Byblic, or Byblic, is an undeciphered writing system, known from ten inscriptions found in Byblos. The inscriptions are engraved on bronze plates and spatulas, and carved in stone...

  • Egyptian hieroglyphs
    Egyptian hieroglyphs
    Egyptian hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...

  • Proto-Canaanite alphabet
    Proto-Canaanite alphabet
    The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is a consonantal alphabet of twenty-two acrophonic pictorial glyphs, found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age , by convention taken to last until a cut-off date of 1050 BC, after which it is called Phoenician...

  • Ugaritic script

External links



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