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Phoenician language, Semitic language of the Northwestern group, spoken in ancient times on the coast of the Levant in Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and neighbouring towns and in other areas of the Mediterranean colonized by Phoenicians. Phoenician is very close to Hebrew and Moabite, with which it forms the Canaanite subgroup of the Northwestern ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- 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 ...
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The Phoenician alphabetic script was easy to write on papyrus or parchment sheets, and the use of these materials explains why virtually no Phoenician writings – no history, no trading records – have come down to us. In their cities by the sea, the air and soil were damp, and papyrus and leather moldered and rotted away.
- attested in Canaan proper from the 11th century BC to the 2nd century BC
Phoenician/Canaanite. 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. The Phoenician alphabet was perhaps the first alphabetic script to ...
The Phoenician alphabet [b] is a consonantal alphabet (or abjad) [2] used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BCE. It was the first mature alphabet, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script also ...
Feb 27, 2024 · Iberian alphabet. Phoenician alphabet, writing system that developed out of the North Semitic alphabet and was spread over the Mediterranean area by Phoenician traders. It is the probable ancestor of the Greek alphabet and, hence, of all Western alphabets. The earliest Phoenician inscription that has survived is the Ahiram epitaph at Byblos in ...
The Greeks borrowed 19 letters from the Phoenician alphabet, dropped three letters and changed two. The Phoenician A for “aeleph” became the Greek alpha. The Phoenicians B for “beth” became beta and D for “daleth” became delta. The most radical and innovative change made by the Greeks was the addition of vowels.
