Proto-Sinaitic script

Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan,[1] the North
Semitic alphabet,[2] or Early Alphabetic)[3] is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing
and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician
alphabet,[4] which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet.[5] According to
common theory, Canaanites who spoke a Semitic language (hypothetically reconstructed as
Proto-Semitic)[6] repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script.[7] The script is
attested in a small corpus of inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula,
Egypt dating to the Middle Bronze Age (2100–1500 BCE).[4]
 Proto-Sinaitic script

North Semitic script

A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script. The line running from the upper left to lower right may read mt l bʿlt
"... to the Lady"

Script type Abjad

Time period c. 19th–15th century BCE

Direction Mixed

Languages Northwest Semitic languages

Related scripts

Parent systems Egyptian hieroglyphs

Proto-Sinaitic script

Child systems Phoenician alphabet

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet

Ancient South Arabian script

Ancient North Arabian

Ge'ez script

ISO 15924

ISO 15924 Psin, 103 , ​Proto-Sinaitic

The earliest proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and
the mid-16th (late date) century BCE.

The principal debate is between an early date, around 1850 BCE, and a
late date, around 1550 BCE. The choice of one or the other date decides
 whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, and by extension
locates the invention of the alphabet in Egypt or Canaan respectively.[8]

However the discovery of the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions near the Nile River shows that the script
originated in Egypt. The evolution of proto-Sinaitic and the various proto-Canaanite scripts
during the Bronze Age is based on rather scant epigraphic evidence; it is only with the Bronze
Age collapse and the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the Levant that proto-Canaanite is clearly
attested (Byblos inscriptions 10th–8th century BCE, Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription c. 10th century
BCE).[9][10][11][12]

The proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and
Flinders Petrie. To this may be added a number of short proto-Canaanite inscriptions found in
Canaan and dated to between the 17th and 15th centuries BCE, and more recently, the discovery
in 1999 of the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, found in Middle Egypt by John and Deborah Darnell. The
Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of proto-Sinaitic writing from
the mid-19th to 18th centuries BCE.[13][14]

Discovery

In the winter of 1905, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda Petrie (née Urlin)
were conducting a series of archaeological excavations in the Sinai Peninsula. During a dig at
Serabit el-Khadim, an extremely lucrative turquoise mine used during between the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Dynasty and again between the Eighteenth and mid-Twentieth Dynasty, Petrie
discovered a series of inscriptions at the site's massive invocative temple to Hathor, as well as
some fragmentary inscriptions in the mines themselves. Petrie immediately recognized
hieroglyphic characters in the inscriptions, but upon closer inspection realized the script was
wholly alphabetic and not the combination of logograms and syllabics as Egyptian script proper.
He thus assumed that the script showed a script that the turquoise miners had devised
themselves, using linear signs that they had borrowed from hieroglyphics. He published his
findings in London the following year.[15]

Ten years later, in 1916, Alan Gardiner, one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-
20th century, published his own interpretation of Petrie's findings, arguing that the glyphs
appeared to be early versions of the signs used for later Semitic languages such as Phoenician,
and was able to assign sound values and reconstructed names to some of the letters by
assuming they represented what would later become the common Semitic abjad (one example
provided being the character , which Gardiner assigned the ⟨b⟩ sound to, on the grounds that it
derived from the Egyptian glyph for 'house' , and was very similar to the similarly-shaped
Phoenician character, , which is called bet. The name bet itself was commonly thought to
derive from the Semitic word for house, bayt, providing another layer of support to his thesis.)
Using this hypothesis, Gardiner was able to affirm Petrie's hypothesis that the mystery
inscriptions were of a religious nature, as his model allowed an often recurring word to be
reconstructed as lbʿlt, meaning "to Ba'alat" or more accurately, "to (the) Lady" – that is, the "lady"
Hathor. Likewise, this allowed another recurring word mʿhbʿlt to be translated as "Beloved of (the)
Lady", a reading which became very acceptable after the lemma was found carved underneath a
hieroglyphic inscription which read "Beloved of Hathor, Lady of Turquoise".[16] Gardiner's
hypothesis allowed researchers to connect the letters of the inscriptions to modern Semitic
alphabets, and resulted in the inscriptions becoming much more readable, leading to his
hypothesis' immediate acceptance.

Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions

Serabit inscriptions

The Sinai inscriptions are best known from carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in
the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor (ḥwt-ḥr). The
mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years.
Many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, and included large numbers of
Canaanites (i.e. speakers of an early form of Northwest Semitic ancestral to the Canaanite
languages of the Late Bronze Age) who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta.[14]

Most of the forty or so inscriptions have been found among much more numerous hieratic and
hieroglyphic inscriptions, scratched on rocks near and in the turquoise mines and along the
roads leading to the temple.[17]

The date of the inscriptions is mostly placed in the 17th or 16th century BC.[18]

Four inscriptions have been found in the temple, on two small human statues and on either side
of a small stone sphinx. They are crudely done, suggesting that the workers who made them
were illiterate apart from this script.
Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon (Iron Age I–II transition)[19]

Inscriptions in Canaan

Only a few inscriptions have been found in Canaan itself, dated to between the 17th and 15th
centuries BC. Researchers also claim to have discovered Canaanite snake spells. The passages
date from between 2400 to 3000 BC and appear to be written in proto-Sinaitic, a direct ancestor
of Biblical Hebrew.[20] They are all very short, most consisting of only a couple of letters, and
may have been written by Canaanite caravaners, soldiers from Egypt or early Israelites.[14] They
sometimes go by the name "proto-Canaanite",[21] although the term "proto-Canaanite" is also
applied to early Phoenician or Ancient Hebrew writings, respectively.[10][11]

Wadi el-Hol inscriptions

Traces of the 16 and 12 characters of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions

The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions (Arabic: ‫وادي الهول‬‎Wādī al-Hawl 'Ravine of Terror') were carved on the
stone sides of an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos, in the
heart of literate Egypt. They have been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 BC.[22] They
are in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, at approx. 25°57′N 32°25′E (https://geohack.toolforge.
org/geohack.php?pagename=Proto-Sinaitic_script&params=25_57_N_32_25_E_), among dozens
of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions.

The inscriptions are graphically very similar to the Serabit inscriptions, but show a greater
hieroglyphic influence, such as a glyph for a man that was apparently not read alphabetically:[14]
The first of these (h1) is a figure of celebration [Gardiner A28], whereas the second (h2) is either
that of a child [Gardiner A17] or of dancing [Gardiner A32]. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic
variants (such as two hieroglyphs both used to write the Canaanite word hillul "jubilation") rather
than different consonants.

Hieroglyphs representing, reading left to right, celebration, a child, and dancing.

The first appears to be the prototype for h1, while the latter two have been
suggested as the prototype for h2.

Some scholars (Darnell et al.) think that the ‫ רב‬rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is likely rebbe
(chief; cognate with rabbi); and that the ‫ אל‬ʾl at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ʾel "god". Brian
Colless has published a translation of the text, in which some of the signs are treated as
logograms (representing a whole word, not just a single consonant) or rebuses:

[Vertical] Banquet (mšt) excellent (r[ʾš]) of the celebration (h[illul]) of ʿAnat (ʿnt). Will provide
(ygš) ʾEl (ʾl)

[Horizontal] plenty (rb) of wine (wn) and victuals (mn) for the celebration (h[illul]). We will
sacrifice (ngṯ) to her (h) an ox (ʾ) and (p) a fatling (mX) prime (r[ʾš])."

This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, with
celebrations for the goddess Hathor involving inebriation.[23]
Proto-Canaanite

Synonym for Proto-Sinaitic

Proto-Canaanite, also referred to as Proto-Canaan, Old Canaanite, or Canaanite,[1] is the name

given to the proto-Sinaitic script (c. 16th century BC), when found in Canaan.[24][25][26][20]

Synonym for Paleo-Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew script

Proto-Canaanite is also used when referring to the ancestor of the Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew
script, respectively, before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BC, with an undefined affinity to
proto-Sinaitic.[27]

While no extant inscription in the Phoenician alphabet is older than c. 1050 BC,[28] proto-
Canaanite is used for the early alphabets as used during the 13th and 12th centuries BC in
Phoenicia.[29] However, the Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, and other Canaanite dialects were largely
indistinguishable before the 11th century BC.[12] A possible example of proto-Canaanite, the
inscription on the Ophel pithos, was found in 2012 on a pottery storage jar during the
excavations of the south wall of the Temple Mount by Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar in
Jerusalem. Inscribed on the pot are some big letters about an inch high, of which only five are
complete, and traces of perhaps three additional letters written in proto-Canaanite script.[25]

History

The letters of the earliest script used for Semitic languages have been shown to be derived from
Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the 19th century, the theory of Egyptian origin competed alongside other
theories that the Phoenician script developed from Akkadian cuneiform, Cretan hieroglyphs, the
Cypriot syllabary, and Anatolian hieroglyphs.[30] Then the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were studied
by Alan Gardiner who identified the word bʿlt "Lady" occurring several times in inscriptions, and
also attempted to decipher other words. William Albright in the 1950s and 1960s published
interpretations of proto-Sinaitic as the key to show the derivation of the Canaanite alphabet from
hieratic,[7] leading to the commonly accepted belief that the language of the inscriptions was
Semitic and that the script had a hieratic prototype.

The proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, along with the contemporary parallels found in Canaan and Wadi
el-Hol, are thus hypothesized to show an intermediate step between Egyptian hieratic and the
Phoenician alphabet.

According to the "alphabet theory", the early Semitic proto-alphabet reflected in the proto-Sinaitic
inscriptions would have given rise to both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Proto-
Canaanite alphabet by the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–1150 BCE).[29] Albright
hypothesized that only the graphic form of the proto-Sinaitic characters derive from Egyptian
hieroglyphs, because they were given the sound value of the first consonant of the Semitic
translation of the hieroglyph (many hieroglyphs had already been used acrophonically in
Egyptian.)

For example, the hieroglyph for pr "house" (a rectangle partially open along one side, "O1" in
Gardiner's sign list) was adopted to write Semitic /b/, after the first consonant of baytu, the
Semitic word for "house".[14][31] According to the alphabet hypothesis, the shapes of the letters
would have evolved from proto-Sinaitic forms into Phoenician forms, but most of the names of
the letters would have remained the same.

An alternative hypothesis was recently proposed by Brian Colless (2014), who believes that 18 of
the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet have counterparts in the Byblos syllabary, and it seems
that the proto-alphabet evolved as a simplification of the syllabary, moving from syllabic to
consonantal writing, in the style of the Egyptian script (which did not normally indicate vowels);
this goes against the Goldwasser hypothesis (2010) that the original alphabet was invented by
miners in Sinai.

Synopsis

Below is a table synoptically showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the proposed
correspondences with Phoenician letters. Also shown are the sound values, names, and
descendants of the Phoenician letters.[32]

For the Ancient South Arabian script only the letters with Proto-Canaanite correspondences are
shown.
Possible correspondences between Proto-Sinaitic, Ancient South Arabian and Phoenician
letters. Also modern Hebrew, Arabic and Latin letters are shown.
Ancient
Proto- IPA Proto- Archaic Imp
Hieroglyph Reconstructed name Phoenician South
Sinaitic value Canaanite Greek Ara
Arabian

/ʔ/ ʾalp "ox" 𐤀 𐩱

/b/ bayt "house" 𐤁 𐩨

/g/ gaml "throwstick" 𐤂 𐩴

/d/ dag "fish" 𐤃 𐩵

/h/ haw/hillul "praise" 𐤄 𐩠

/w/ waw/uph "fowl" 𐤅 𐩥

 /z/ zayn/zayt "oxhide
ingot",[33] "sword"
𐤆 𐩸

or
/ð/ ḏiqq "manacle"
𐩹

/ħ/ ḥaṣr "courtyard"

𐤇 𐩢

/x/ ḫayt "thread"

/tˤ/ ṭab "good" 𐤈 𐩷

/j/ yad "hand" 𐤉 𐩺

/k/ kap "palm" 𐤊 𐩫

 /l/ lamd "goad"
𐤋 𐩡

/m/ maym "water" 𐤌 𐩣

/n/ naḥaš "snake" 𐤍 𐩬

/s/ ṡamk "peg" 𐤎 𐩯

/ʕ/ ʿayn "eye" 𐩲

𐤏

𓎛 /ɣ/ ġabiʿ "calyx" 𐩶

/p/ pʿit "corner" 𐤐 𐩰

/sˤ/ ṣaday "plant" 𐤑 𐩮

/kˤ/
qoba
or
"needle/nape/monkey"
𐤒 𐩤
/q/
 /r/ raʾš "head" 𐤓 𐩧

/ʃ/ šimš "sun"

𐩦
śadeh (http://biblehub.
/ɬ/ com/hebrew/7704.h
tm) "field, land"
𐤔
ṯann (http://www.thefr
eedictionary.com/_/ro
/θ/ ots.aspx?type=Semitic 𐩳
&root=%C5%A1nn)
"bow"

/t/ tāw "mark" 𐤕 𐩩

The Other section shows the corresponding Archaic Greek, Modern Greek, Etruscan, and Latin
letters.

See also

Ugaritic alphabet

References

1. Garfinkel, Yosef; Golub, Mitka R.; Misgav, Haggai; Ganor, Saar (May 2015). "The ʾIšbaʿal Inscription from
Khirbet Qeiyafa". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 373 (373): 217–233.
doi:10.5615/bullamerschoorie.373.0217 (https://doi.org/10.5615%2Fbullamerschoorie.373.0217) .
 JSTOR 10.5615/bullamerschoorie.373.0217 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5615/bullamerschoorie.37
3.0217) . S2CID 164971133 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:164971133) .

2. "North Semitic alphabet" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/North-Semitic-alphabet) . Encyclopedia

Britannica. Retrieved 2020-12-28.

3. Rollston, C. (2020). The Emergence of Alphabetic Scripts. In R. Hasselbach‐Andee (Ed.), A Companion to

Ancient Near Eastern Languages (1st ed., pp. 65–81). Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781119193814.ch4 (https://d
oi.org/10.1002%2F9781119193814.ch4)

4. "Sinaitic inscriptions | ancient writing" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sinaitic-inscriptions) .

Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-08-21.

5. The Development of the Greek Alphabet within the Chronology of the ANE (http://www.arcalog.com/wp-c
ontent/uploads/2014/04/Near-Eastern-Chronology-and-the-development-of-the-Greek-Alphabet.pdf)
(2009), Quote: "Naveh gives four major reasons why it is universally agreed that the Greek alphabet was
developed from an early Phoenician alphabet.
1. According to Herodutous "the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus... brought into Hellas the
alphabet, which had hitherto been unknown, as I think, to the Greeks."

2. The Greek Letters, alpha, beta, gimmel have no meaning in Greek but the meaning of most of their
Semitic equivalents is known. For example, 'aleph' means 'ox', 'bet' means 'house' and 'gimmel'
means 'throw stick'.

3. Early Greek letters are very similar and sometimes identical to the West Semitic letters.

4. The letter sequence between the Semitic and Greek alphabets is identical. (Naveh 1982)"

6. Kitchen, A.; Ehret, C.; Assefa, S.; Mulligan, C. J. (29 April 2009). "Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of
Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East" (https://www.ncbi.nl
m.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2839953) . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 276
(1668): 2703–10. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.0408 (https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frspb.2009.0408) .
PMC 2839953 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2839953) . PMID 19403539 (https://pu
bmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19403539) .

7. William F. Albright, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment (1966)

8. Simons 2011:24

9. Coulmas (1989) p. 141.

10. "Earliest Known Hebrew Text in Proto-Canaanite Script Discovered in Area Where 'David Slew Goliath' " (ht
tps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081103091035.htm) . Science Daily. November 3, 2008.

11. "Most ancient Hebrew biblical inscription deciphered" (https://web.archive.org/web/20111005020653/htt

p://newmedia-eng.haifa.ac.il/?p=2043) . University of Haifa. January 10, 2010. Archived from the
original (http://newmedia-eng.haifa.ac.il/?p=2043) on October 5, 2011. Retrieved November 5, 2011.
12. Naveh, Joseph (1987), "Proto-Canaanite, Archaic Greek, and the Script of the Aramaic Text on the Tell
Fakhariyah Statue", in Miller; et al. (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion.

13. "Researchers also claim to have discovered Canaanite snake spells: "The passages date from between
2400 to 3000 BCE and appear to be written in Proto-Canaanite, a direct ancestor of Biblical Hebrew." "The
two latest discoveries, those found in the Wadi el-Hol, north of Luxor, in Egypt's western desert, can be
dated with rather more certainty than the others and offer compelling evidence that the early date [1850
BCE] is the more likely of the two (Simons 2011:24).

14. Goldwasser, Orly (Mar–Apr 2010). "How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs" (http://members.bib-ar
ch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=36&Issue=02&ArticleID=06) . Biblical Archaeology
Review. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society. 36 (1). ISSN 0098-9444 (https://www.worldcat.or
g/issn/0098-9444) . Retrieved 6 Nov 2011.

15. W. M. Flinders Petrie; C. T. Currell (1906), Researches in Sinai

16. Gardiner, Alan H. "The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3853586) .
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 3, no. 1, 1916, pp. 1–16. JSTOR. Accessed 18 May 2020.

17. "The proto-Sinaitic corpus consists of approximately forty inscriptions and fragments, the vast majority
of which were found at Serabit el-Khadim" (Simons 2011:16).

18. Goldwasser (2010): "The alphabet was invented in this way by Canaanites at Serabit in the Middle Bronze
Age, in the middle of the 19th century B.C.E., probably during the reign of Amenemhet III of the XIIth
Dynasty."

19. Sass, B., Garfinkel, Y., Hasel, M. G., & Klingbeil, M. G. (2015). The Lachish Jar Sherd: An Early Alphabetic
Inscription Discovered in 2014. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 374, 233–245.
https://doi.org/10.5615/bullamerschoorie.374.0233

20. Milstein, Mati (5 February 2007). "Ancient Semitic Snake Spells Deciphered in Egyptian Pyramid" (http://n
ews.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070205-snake-spells.html) .
news.nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved 10 April 2017.

21. Roger D. Woodard, 2008, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts

22. "Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier Date for Origin of the Alphabet" (https://archive.ny
times.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/111499sci-alphabet-origin.html) .
archive.nytimes.com.

23. https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/bitstream/123456789/6753/1/proto-alphabetic-inscriptions-wadi-
arabah.pdf Antiguo Oriente vol. 8 (2010) p. 91 Note: The 'y' appears in the Colless article p. 95, but not
in the Wikimedia Commons trace iamge inscr1.jpg

24. Woodard, Roger (2008), The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia.
25. Ngo, Robin (5 May 2017). "Precursor to Paleo-Hebrew Script Discovered in Jerusalem" (http://www.biblic
alarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/precursor-to-the-paleo-hebrew-script-discovered-in-
jerusalem/) . Bible History Daily. Biblical Archaeology Society.

26. Gideon Tsur on the Proto-Canaanite text discovered at Keifa (http://www.e-mago.co.il/magazine/qeiyafa-

ostracon.html) (Hebrew)

27. Coulmas, Florian (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-
21481-X.

28. Hoffman, Joel M. (2004). In the beginning: a short history of the Hebrew language (https://books.google.
com/books?id=Pj0TCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA23) . New York, NY [u.a.]: New York Univ. Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-
0-8147-3654-8. Retrieved 23 May 2017. "By 1000 B.C.E., however, we see Phoenician writings [..]"

29. John F. Healey, The Early Alphabet University of California Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-520-07309-8, p. 18.

30. Joseph Naveh; Solomon Asher Birnbaum; David Diringer; Zvi Hermann Federbush; Jonathan Shunary;
Jacob Maimon (2007), "ALPHABET, HEBREW", Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1 (2nd ed.), Gale, pp. 689–728,
ISBN 978-0-02-865929-9

31. This is in marked contrast to the history of adoption of the Phoenician alphabet in the Iron Age (where
ʾālep gave rise to the Greek letter aleph, i.e. the Semitic term for "ox" was left untranslated and adopted as
simply the name of the letter).

32. Based on Simons (2011),

Figure Two: "Representative selection of proto-Sinaitic characters with comparison to Egyptian
hieroglyphs" (p. 38),

Figure Three: "Chart of all early proto-Canaanite letters with comparison to proto-Sinaitic signs"
(p. 39),

Figure Four: "Representative selection of later proto-Canaanite letters with comparison to early
proto-Canaanite and proto-Sinaitic signs" (p. 40).
See also: Goldwasser (2010), following Albright (1966), "Schematic Table of Proto-Sinaitic Characters"
(fig. 1 (http://www.apocalypse2008-2015.com/images/Proto-Sinaitic_Table.gif) ).
A comparison of
glyphs from western ("Proto-Canaanite", Byblos) and southern scripts along with the reconstructed
"Linear Ugaritic" (Lundin 1987) is found in Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz, Die Keilalphabete: die
phönizisch-kanaanäischen und altarabischen Alphabete in Ugarit, Ugarit-Verlag, 1988, p. 102, reprinted in
Wilfred G. E. Watson, Nicolas Wyatt (eds.), Handbook of Ugaritic Studies (1999), p. 86 (https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=0Z2Jo01iq1YC&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false) .
See also Colless (2010)</ref
name="Colless2010">

33. Cross, F. M. (1980) Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts. Bulletin of
the American Schools of Oriental Research, 238, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1356511

Further reading
Albright, Wm. F. (1966) The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment

I. Biggs, M. Dijkstra, Corpus of Proto-sinaitic Inscriptions, Alter Orient und Altes Testament,
Neukirchener Verlag, 1990.

Butin, Romanus (1928). "The Serabit Inscriptions: II. The Decipherment and Significance of the
Inscriptions". Harvard Theological Review. 21 (1): 9–67. doi:10.1017/s0017816000021167 (htt
ps://doi.org/10.1017%2Fs0017816000021167) .

Butin, Romanus (1932). "The Protosinaitic Inscriptions". Harvard Theological Review. 25 (2):
130–203. doi:10.1017/s0017816000001231 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2Fs00178160000012
31) .

Colless, Brian E (1990). "The proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Sinai". Abr-Nahrain / Ancient Near
Eastern Studies. 28: 1–52. doi:10.2143/anes.28.0.525711 (https://doi.org/10.2143%2Fanes.2
8.0.525711) .

Colless, Brian E (1991). "The proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan". Abr-Nahrain / Ancient

Near Eastern Studies. 29: 18–66. doi:10.2143/anes.29.0.525718 (https://doi.org/10.2143%2Fa
nes.29.0.525718) .

Colless, Brian E., "The Byblos Syllabary and the Proto-alphabet", Abr-Nahrain / Ancient Near
Eastern Studies 30 (1992) 15–62.

Colless, Brian E (2010). "Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah". Antiguo Oriente.
8: 75–96.

Colless, Brian E., "The Origin of the Alphabet: An Examination of the Goldwasser Hypothesis",
Antiguo Oriente 12 (2014) 71-104.

Stefan Jakob Wimmer / Samaher Wimmer-Dweikat: The Alphabet from Wadi el-Hôl – A First
Try, in: Göttinger Miszellen. Beiträge zur ägyptologischen Diskussion, Heft 180, Göttingen 2001,
p. 107–111

Darnell, J. C.; Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W.; et al. (2005). "Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the
Wadi el-Hol: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt".
Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 59: 63, 65, 67–71, 73–113, 115–124.
JSTOR 3768583 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3768583) .

Hamilton, Gordon J, The origins of the West Semitic alphabet in Egyptian scripts (2006)

Fellman, Bruce (2000) "The Birthplace of the ABCs." Yale Alumni Magazine, December 2000.[1]
(https://web.archive.org/web/20050217061048/http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issue
s/00_12/egypt.html)
 Sacks, David (2004). Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z (https://
archive.org/details/letterperfect00davi) . Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-1173-3.

Goldwasser, Orly, How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs (http://members.bib-arch.org/
publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=36&Issue=02&ArticleID=06) Biblical Archaeology
Review 36:02, Mar/Apr 2010.

Lake, K.; Blake, R. (1928). "The Serabit Inscriptions: I. The Rediscovery of the Inscriptions".
Harvard Theological Review. 21 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1017/s0017816000021155 (https://doi.org/1
0.1017%2Fs0017816000021155) .

Millard, A. R. (1986) "The Infancy of the Alphabet" World Archaeology. pp. 390–398.

Ray, John D. (1986) "The Emergence of Writing in Egypt" Early Writing Systems; 17/3 pp. 307–
316.

B. Benjamin Sass (West Semitic Alphabets) – In 1988 a very important doctoral dissertation
was completed at Tel Aviv University, *Benjamin Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet and its
Development in the Second Millennium BC, Ägypten und Altes Testament 13, Otto
Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1988.

Simons, F., "Proto-Sinaitic – Progenitor of the Alphabet" Rosetta 9 (2011), 16–40 (http://www.r
osetta.bham.ac.uk/issue_09/simons_alphabet.pdf) .

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195079937/page/89/mode/1up

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Proto-Sinaitic script.

Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions (byu.edu) (http://net.lib.byu.edu/imaging/negev/origins.html)

Proto-Sinaitic - 18th-14th cent. B.C. (http://lila.sns.it/mnamon/index.php?page=Simboli&id=25

&lang=en) , Mnamon Ancient writing systems in the Mediterranean

Escritura Proto-sinaítica (in Spanish) (http://www.proel.org/index.php?pagina=alfabetos/pro

tosin) , Promotora Española de Lingüística (Proel).
Wadi el-Hol
USC West Semitic Research Project site on Wadi el-Hol, with photos (https://web.archive.org/
web/20150723031507/http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/information/wadi_el_hol/)

Yale news article on Wadi el-Hol from 2000 Dec (https://web.archive.org/web/200502170610

48/http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/00_12/egypt.html)
 Archeology article on Wadi el-Hol from 2000 Jan (http://www.archaeology.org/0001/newsbrie
fs/egypt.html)

New York Times article on Wadi el-Hol from 1999 Nov (http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/
mideast/alphorg.htm)

BBC article on Wadi el-Hol from 1999 Nov (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/521

235.stm)

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