Origin from 1050 BCE
The Phoenician script is a consonantal abjad developed by the Phoenicians around the eleventh century BCE. Spread through Phoenician maritime trade across the Mediterranean, it became the ancestor of the Aramaic abjad and, through Aramaic, of Arabic, Hebrew and the Brahmic scripts of South Asia, as well as of the Greek alphabet and, through Greek, of Latin and Cyrillic.
Facts
Directionality In Use Since (Year)Approximate; standard dating places the earliest Phoenician inscriptions in the eleventh century BCE. Connections
Ancestor Of
Source Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
The Greek alphabet adapted the Phoenician abjad around the eighth century BCE, repurposing several Phoenician consonant letters as vowel letters, the innovation that makes Greek the first true alphabet.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Associated With
This source names Hebrew directly: "abjad and, through Aramaic, of Arabic, Hebrew and the Brahmic scripts of South Asia, as well as of the Greek alphabet and, through Greek, of Latin and Cyrillic."
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Held Differently
Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Scripts Why this is disputed. The Proto-Sinaitic script that underlies Phoenician is widely, though not universally, held to have borrowed its letter shapes from Egyptian hieratic signs via acrophony, a case built mainly by William Albright from the 1950s on top of Alan Gardiner's earlier identification of the inscriptions as Semitic. Earlier 19th and 20th century scholars proposed alternative derivations from cuneiform, Cretan Linear or Cypriot syllabic scripts instead.
Source World History Encyclopedia
Sources
1. Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
World History Encyclopedia
World History Encyclopedia (formerly Ancient History Encyclopedia)Influenced By: Egyptian HieroglyphsView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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