History of the alphabet
aspect of history
The history of the alphabet goes back to a writing system for consonants. This was used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BC.[1]
Early history
changeHieroglyphs in Egypt
changeBy 2700 BC, the ancient Egyptians had developed a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent the consonants of their language. A 23rd seems to have been for word-initial or word-final vowels. The first purely alphabetic script may have been developed around 2000 BC for Semitic workers in central Egypt.[2]
Over the next 500 years, it spread north. All later alphabets around the world have either descended from it or been inspired by one of its descendants.[3][4]
References
change- ↑ Sampson, Geoffrey 1985. Writing systems: a linguistic introduction. Stanford University Press, p77. ISBN 0-8047-1254-9
- ↑ Hamilton, Gordon J. 2002. W.F. Albright and early alphabetic writing, Near Eastern Archaeology 65, #1 (March 2002): 35-42. page 39-49.
- ↑ Gaur, Albertine 1992. A history of writing. The British Library. ISBN 0-7123-0270-0
- ↑ Cristin, Anne-Marie (ed) 2002. A history of writing: from the hieroglyph to multimedia. Flammarion.