20a - The Earliest Alphabetic Writing

Summary

EARLY ATTEMPTS AT CANAANITE WRITING

Byblian

In the light of present information, the origin of the alphabet appears as the culmination of developments which took place in the Levant, where both Egyptian, and Mesopotamian (cuneiform) writing were known and occasionally used from the third millennium B.C. onwards.

That the earliest ‘Canaanite’ writing, from which the later Phoenician alphabet was to develop, arose from a local selective adaptation of Egyptian hieratic signs employed during the time of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties, has been suggested repeatedly; but there is no evidence to substantiate this hypothesis. However, an early but apparently abortive attempt to evolve a system of writing suited to local conditions is represented by the so-called pseudo-hieroglyphic script of Byblos. This system, represented by a total of about ten inscriptions on stone, or on bronze tablets and spatulae (besides one bronze spatula palimpsest), originated in Byblos and apparently never spread outside its place of origin. Dated formerly c. 2300 B.C. it is now attributed to the time between about 1800 B.C. and possibly the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C. The writing is in vertical columns or horizontal lines, running mostly from right to left, and word dividers (vertical strokes) appear occasionally. It includes so far perhaps 114 signs appearing in a more lapidary form on stone but in a more cursive ductus on bronze. These have been analysed by M. Dunand, according to whom many of the shapes are derived from representations of animals, plants, buildings etc., besides purely linear designs; nearly half of them can be compared with Egyptian hieroglyphic or more rarely hieratic signs, while there is also a smaller number of less close parallels with Minoan hieroglyphic and linear (A and B) writing and with Cypriot.