The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to begin with a cut-off date of 1050 BC. It was used by the Phoenicians to write Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language. Modern alphabets thought to have descended from Phoenician include Arabic, Greek, Latin (via the Old Italic alphabet), Cyrillic (via the Greek alphabet) and Hebrew (via Aramaic). Like Proto-Canaanite, Arabic and Proto-Hebrew, Phoenician is a consonantal alphabet (an abjad), and contains no symbols for vowel sounds, which had to be deduced from context. (The Greek was the first alphabet to include vowels.)
| Phoenician alphabet | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Script type | |
Period | Began 1050 BC, and gradually died out as its evolved forms replaced it |
| Direction | Right-to-left script  |
| Languages | Phoenician |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Proto-Canaanite alphabet
|
Child systems | Paleo-Hebrew alphabet Aramaic alphabet Greek alphabet Many hypothesized others |
Phoenician inscriptions have been found in archaeological sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos (in present-day Lebanon) and Carthage in North Africa.
History
The original Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, in use from ca. 1500 BC in the Sinai and the Levant, probably by early West Semitic speakers. In Canaan it evolved into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet from ca. 1400 BC, adapted to writing a Canaanite (Northwest Semitic) language.
The Phœnician alphabet seamlessly continues the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention called Phœnician from the mid 11th century.
Some of the letter names were changed in Phœnician (possibly, gaml "throwing stick" to gimel "camel", digg "fish" to dalet "door", hll "jubilation" to he "window", ziqq "manacle" to zayin "weapon", naḥš "snake" to nun "fish", piʾt "corner" to pe "mouth", šimš "sun" to šin "tooth"). The meanings given are of the letter names in Phœnician. The Phœnician letter names are not directly attested and were reconstructed by Theodor Nöldeke in 1904.
As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman-era North Africa. Phœnician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written in boustrophedon (consecutive lines in alternate directions).
The Phœnician adaptation of the alphabet was extremely successful, and variants were adapted around the Mediterranean from ca. the 9th century, notably giving rise to the Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian and Iberian scripts.
The Alphabet
Various letters have alternative representations: e.g. the taw can be written more like a '+' than like a 'x', the heth can have two cross bars.
- The Latin letter X derives from a western Greek pronunciation of chi, and not directly from the samekh-inspired letter xi. However chi itself is probably a secondary derivation of Phoenician samekh.
| Letter | Unicode | Name | Meaning | Sound | Corresponding letter in | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | Arabic | Greek | Latin | Cyrillic | |||||
|
𐤀 | ʼāleph | ox | ʼ | א | ﺍ | Αα | Aa | Аа |
|
𐤁 | bēth | house | b | ב | ﺏ | Ββ | Bb | Бб, Вв |
|
𐤂 | gīmel | camel | g | ג | ﺝ | Γγ | Cc, Gg | Гг |
|
𐤃 | dāleth | door | d | ד | د،ذ | Δδ | Dd | Дд |
|
𐤄 | hē | window | h | ה | ﮬ | Εε | Ee | Ее, Єє |
|
𐤅 | wāw | hook | w | ו | ﻭ | (Template:Polytonic), Υυ | Ff, Uu, Vv, Ww, Yy | Уу |
|
𐤆 | zayin | weapon | z | ז | ﺯ | Ζζ | Zz | Зз |
|
𐤇 | ḥēth | fence | ḥ | ח | ح،خ | Ηη | Hh | Ии, Йй |
|
𐤈 | ṭēth | wheel | ṭ | ט | ط،ظ | Θθ | ||
|
𐤉 | yōdh | arm | y | י | ي | Ιι | Ii, Jj | Іі, Її, Јј |
|
𐤊 | kaph | palm (of a hand) | k | כ,ך | ﻙ | Κκ | Kk | Кк |
|
𐤋 | lāmedh | goad | l | ל | ﻝ | Λλ | Ll | Лл |
|
|
𐤌 | mēm | water | m | מ,ם | ﻡ | Μμ | Mm | Мм |
|
𐤍 | nun | fish | n | נ,ן | ﻥ | Νν | Nn | Нн |
|
𐤎 | sāmekh | pillar | s | ס | Ξξ, Χχ | Xx | Хх | |
|
𐤏 | ʼayin | eye | ʼ | ע | ع،غ | Οο | Oo | Оо |
|
𐤐 | pē | mouth | p | פ,ף | ﻑ | Ππ | Pp | Пп |
|
𐤑 | ṣādē | papyrus plant | ṣ | צ,ץ | ص،ض | (Template:Polytonic) | Цц, Чч | |
|
𐤒 | qōph | Eye of a needle | q | ק | ﻕ | (Template:Polytonic) | ||
|
𐤓 | rēš | head | r | ר | ﺭ | Ρρ | Rr | Рр |
|
𐤔 | šin | tooth | š | ש | س،ش | Σ(Template:Polytonic)σς | Ss | Сс, Шш |
|
𐤕 | tāw | mark | t | ת | ت،ث | Ττ | Tt | Тт |
Encoding
The Phoenician script was accepted for encoding in Unicode 5.0 in the range U+10900 to U+1091F. An alternative proposal to handle it as a font variation of Hebrew was turned down. (See PDF summary.) The letters are encoded U+10900 𐤀 aleph through to U+10915 𐤕 taw, U+10916 𐤖, U+10917 𐤗, U+10918 𐤘 and U+10919 𐤙 encode the numerals 1, 10, 20 and 100 respectively and U+1091F 𐤟 the word separator.
Derived alphabets
The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, used to write early Hebrew, is nearly identical to the Phoenician one. The Samaritan alphabet, used by the Samaritans, is a version of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic, is another descendant. Aramaic being the lingua franca of the Middle East, it was widely adopted. It later split off into a number of related alphabets, including the modern Hebrew alphabet, the Syriac alphabet, and the Nabatean alphabet, a highly cursive form that was the origin of the Arabic alphabet.
The Greek alphabet developed from the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks kept most of the sounds of the symbols, but used some letters which represented sounds that did not exist in Greek to represent vowels. This was particularly important as Greek, an Indo-European language, is much less consonant-dominated than most Semitic languages.
The Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets are derived from the Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters are based on Glagolitic forms, which were influenced by the Hebrew alphabet. Also, the old runes were likely derived from an early form of the Latin alphabet.
Many historians believe that the Brahmi script and the subsequent Indic alphabets are derived from this script as well, [citation needed] which would make it the ancestor of almost all major writing systems in use today, possibly including even Hangul, which is possibly derived from Phagspa, itself a derivative of a Brahmi script; this would mean that of all the scripts in use in the world today, only the Chinese script and its derivatives have an independent origin. (It is important to note, however, that the ancient scripts of the Maya and Sumerian cultures evolved independently, and that the Phoenician alphabet owes much of its inspiration to the Egyptian writing system, which was also an independent development.)
References
- Sanford Holst, Phoenicians: Lebanon's Epic Heritage, Cambridge and Boston Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
