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The Phoenician alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (or abjad) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BCE. It was one of the first alphabets, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region.
- Egyptian & Cuneiform Influence
- Similarities to Hebrew
- Evolution
Our knowledge of the Phoenician language is based on the few extant written texts in Phoenician. Before circa 1000 BCE Phoenician was written using cuneiform symbols that were common across Mesopotamia. The first signs of the Phoenician alphabet found at Byblos are clearly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and not from cuneiform. The 22 Phoenici...
By 1000 BCE the Phoenician and Hebrew languages had become distinct from Aramaic, which was spoken in Canaan. To give a few examples, the "ha-" prefix is used in both Phoenician and Hebrew to indicate a determinate noun, while in Aramaic the "-a" suffix is used. The pronoun for the first person is "ānōkī" while in Aramaic it is "anā" (as it is in m...
The Phoenician writing system is, by virtue of being an alphabet, simple and easy to learn, and also very adaptable to other languages, quite unlike cuneiform or hieroglyphics. In the 9th century BCE the Aramaeans had adopted the Phoenician alphabet, added symbols for the initial "aleph" and for long vowels. This Aramaic alphabet eventually turned ...
- Thamis
The Phoenician alphabetic script of 22 letters was used at Byblos as early as the 15th century. This method of writing, later adopted by the Greeks, is the ancestor of the modern Roman alphabet. It was the Phoenicians’ most remarkable and distinctive contribution to arts and civilization.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Oct 13, 2016 · When the Phoenicians created their new alphabet, they worked from symbols that were already in use among the Semitic-speaking peoples of Canaan and Mesopotamia. As early as 3000 BC, the Sumerians and the Egyptians had already invented writing systems based on symbols.
- Ancient-Origins
May 26, 2024 · The Phoenicians‘ revolutionary phonetic alphabet forever changed how humans record and transmit language, helping democratize literacy and providing the foundation for the interconnected, global civilization we know today.
The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, during the 15th century BC. Before then the Phoenicians wrote with a cuneiform script. The earliest known inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet come from Byblos and date back to 1000 BC.
Variations of the alphabet—now known as Phoenician, from the Greek word for the Canaanite region—have been found from Turkey to Spain, and survive until today in the form of the letters used ...
