The Phoenicians used hieroglyphic writing, similar to that of the Egyptians, and later adopted cuneiform writing. But in the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C., they created their own system of alphabetic writing, from which all current alphabets would emerge.

Newsroom (21/12/2022 15:37, Gaudium Press) [1] In ancient times, it was common for writing to be limited to restricted purposes, often of a religious nature, being a system reserved for a small portion of society. Its primitive form, ideographic, made its use and learning even more difficult and restricted.

Now, writing would not have reached its great development if it were not for the merit of a famous people of the Semitic race.

A new kind of writing emerges

Before the year 2000 B.C., the Phoenicians settled on the Canaanite-Phoenician coast of the Mediterranean Sea, corresponding to present-day Lebanon, which allowed them to readily excel in maritime commerce, achieving remarkable naval supremacy. This people had colonies in Sardinia, Sicily, and many others in North Africa, such as the city of Carthage, but they would stand out above all for revolutionizing the history of writing.

“After having made use for some time of hieroglyphic writing, similar to that of the Egyptians, and then cuneiform writing, there appeared among the Phoenicians, in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, a new type of writing: alphabetic writing, which no longer had contents of meaning in iconographic characters and no syllables, but rather strove to assign to each sound of the spoken language a written sign.”[2]

This step was decisive for writing to become universalized, since it was no longer necessary to know an abundant number of ideograms to know how to write, but only a small number of signs.

The first texts in the archaic Phoenician alphabet were composed of a system that registered 23 lineal signs that were spelled only with consonants, from right to left, and that allowed the phonetic formation of all the words contained in the language. Its simplicity, added to some historical circumstances, made Phoenician writing spread rapidly.

The Phoenicians, great merchants, soon realized the immense benefit that writing would grant them in commercial transactions. From then on, they would have the opportunity and the facility to register their negotiations, such as the entry and exit of goods. And it was from the need to record economic transactions that they spread their alphabet, first in the Middle East and Asia Minor, but also among Arabs, Greeks, Etruscans, extending to the Iberian Peninsula.

The Phoenician inscriptions from Cyprus (11th – 2nd century BC) and the Punic scripture from Carthage (9th to 142 BC) have transmitted to us the form of this alphabet, as have the Tabnit sarcophagus from Sidon (6th – 5th century BC) and the Karatepe inscriptions (which date from before 711 BC).

From Phoenician to Hebrew alphabet…

We know that all current alphabets originated from the Phoenician alphabet. Among the first people to adopt it is the Hebrew people, a race chosen by God to be the receptacle of the Revelation, and which would use its own alphabet – derived from Phoenician – to compose most of the Biblical Old Testament.

The Hebrews adopted the Phoenician alphabet between the 12th and 11th centuries B.C., and soon made their own adaptations, constituting what became known as Paleohebrew. The Samaritans still preserve their Bible – which has only the Pentateuch, that is, the first five books of the Holy Scriptures – in this writing.

The Hebrew of the biblical texts as we know it today is an evolution of the proto-alphabet. Among the similarities we find between both is that they are written from right to left; they start with the same letters aleph, beth, gimel, daleth…; and both were not vocalized, being formed only of consonants.

In this language, each word is composed, at its root, of only three consonants. Now, this made it possible to have ambiguities at the moment of understanding a text, since the vowels were not contained therein. We can exemplify with a real case: in Isaiah 9:7, we read: “The Lord utters a dbr against Jacob”. These three consonants (דבר) could be read in two ways, as dabar, “word,” or as deber, “death…”

Today, in the various translations the first form is considered, although the LXX Greek Bible had translated the Hebrew word as “death” (θάνατος).

It was only in the 7th century A.D. that a solution to this problem was found: some Jews, known as Masoretes, invented a system of vocalization of Hebrew, applying some signs under or over the consonants.

… and also to the Greek

Another major and very important alphabet formed from Phoenician was the Greek alphabet. Unlike Hebrew, the original language of almost all of the Old Testament, Greek was the language of the biblical New Testament.

The Phoenician alphabet entered Greece probably around the 9th century BC. C. through the islands of Tera, Medes and Crete, and was long called “Phoinikia Grammata” (Phoenician characters).

“About the fact of the appropriation of the Greeks to the Phoenician alphabet, there can be no doubt. The extreme similarity between the signs speaks for itself – at least from the Phoenician form to the archaic Greek form; later, the forms gradually changed. Also the names of the letters attest to this: Phoenician: aleph, beth, gimel, daleth… Greek: alpha, beta, gamma, delta… (hence the word ‘alphabet’).”[3]

At first, Greek writing, like Phoenician writing, was spelled with consonants only, from right to left. According to their needs, they adapted it to their language, adding vowels and using a system known as bustrophedon – a name derived from the action of the ox plowing the earth – in which each line was written in the opposite direction to the next: one line was written from right to left, and the next, from left to right, and so on.

“The art of writing spread throughout the territory occupied by the Greeks, reaching even the people themselves – although there were no public schools, only private instruction, which favored only the children of noble or wealthy parents. Yet Greek inscriptions are found on one of the colossal figures at Abu Simbel on the upper Nile, dating from 600 BC; they are by Greek mercenaries, who were in the service of the then Egyptian king, and show that these simple soldiers could write, however poorly.”[4]

Thus, the invention of alphabetic writing opened a door for men to develop this very fundamental art.

By João Pedro Serafim

[1] To see previous articles, go to The Origin of Writing Part I – Cuneiform Writing  and  The Origin of Writing Part II : Egyptian Hieroglyphics

[2] STORIG, Hans Joachim. The adventure of languages. Trad. Cloria Paschoal de Camargo. São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 2003, p. 68.

[3] Cf. ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 70.