Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
Alfabeto protosinaítico (primer alfabeto)
- Date
- c. 1850 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Wadi el-Hol (Egypt) and Serabit el-Khadim (Sinai), Egypt
- Credited to
- Semitic (Canaanite) labourers and mercenaries in Egypt
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Some 25-30 signs taken from Egyptian hieroglyphs and assigned the value of the first consonant of their Semitic name (the acrophonic principle). It is the origin of all the world's alphabets: Phoenician, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Indic.
The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions (c. 1850 BCE) would predate those of Serabit el-Khadim (c. 1700-1500 BCE); their reading is largely conjectural. Ugarit developed a 30-sign cuneiform alphabet around 1400 BCE, an independent invention in form but not in principle.
What it led to
- Writing learnable in weeks rather than years, breaking the scribes' monopoly
- The Phoenician alphabet and its spread across the Mediterranean with trade
- The Greek alphabet with vowels, and written Greek literature and philosophy
- Literacy among merchants, soldiers and, eventually, the common people
Built on
- Egyptian hieroglyphsc. 3200 BCE
- Northwest Semitic language
- Sinai turquoise mining
Made possible
- Ugaritic alphabet (alphabetic cuneiform)c. 1400 BCE
- Phoenician alphabetc. 1050 BCE
- Aramaic alphabetc. 850 BCE
- South Arabian script (musnad)c. 800 BCE
- Greek alphabet with vowelsc. 800 BCE
- Meroitic scriptc. 170 BCE
- Vocalized Ge'ez script (Ethiopic abugida)c. 340
- Ahiram sarcophage1923
- Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet