Saturday, March 27, 2010

How the Alphabet Was Born From Hieroglyphs



Biblical Archaeology Review: How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs.

It was here at Serabit, I believe, that the alphabet was invented—by Canaanites!

The invention of the alphabet ushered in what was probably the most profound media revolution in history. Earlier writing systems, like Egyptian hieroglyphic and Mesopotamian cuneiform with its curious wedge-shaped characters, each required a knowledge of hundreds of signs. To write or even to read a hieroglyphic or cuneiform text required familiarity with these signs and the complex rules that governed their use.

By contrast, an alphabetic writing system uses fewer than 30 signs, and people need only a few relatively simple reading rules that associate these signs with sounds.
This great invention had far-reaching social and cultural implications. With the alphabet, writing broke out of the “golden cage” of the professional scribal world. Writing was no longer their monopoly. When many more members of society could learn to read (and write), access to information and knowledge was no longer as limited as it had been. Alphabetic writing eventually gave many more people control over their lives and enabled larger segments of the population to take a more active role in the cultural and administrative affairs of their respective societies.
But how was it done?

Although, as I believe, the alphabet was invented by Canaanites, we still owe a significant debt to the Egyptians, for it was Egyptian hieroglyphs that provided the trigger and the means that made the invention of the alphabet possible.

To understand how this came about, we must first examine some very odd Serabit inscriptions—just a few dozen that markedly differ from the hundreds of hieroglyphic inscriptions at the site. The credit for first noticing one of these unusual inscriptions in Serabit goes to Hilda Petrie, wife of the famous Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who was leading an archaeological expedition to Serabit in 1905. It was she who called attention to some fallen stones on the ground by one of the mines, bearing several awkward signs that seemed not to be real hieroglyphs.

Then more of these inscriptions began turning up on rocks by the turquoise mines, and even inside the mines. A few came from the desert roads leading to the temple. From the temple precinct itself, however, only two small statues and a sphinx bore inscriptions in this strange new script.

Petrie studied these crude inscriptions and observed that they appeared to be a kind of imitation of hieroglyphic signs. Yet the repertoire of signs was very small. Petrie ingeniously identified these awkward signs as an alphabetic script, different from the Egyptian hieroglyphic system with its hundreds of signs. Yet Petrie was unable to read these strange inscriptions.

In 1916, some ten years later, Sir Alan Gardiner, the famous English Egyptologist, noticed a group of four signs that was frequently repeated in these unusual inscriptions. Gardiner correctly identified the repetitive group of signs as a series of four letters in an alphabetic script that represented a word in a Canaanite language: b-‘-l-t, vocalized as Baalat, “the Mistress.” Gardiner suggested that Baalat was the Canaanite appellation for Hathor, the goddess of the turquoise mines. Were these inscriptions carved by Canaanite workmen?

An important key to the decipherment was a unique bilingual inscription. It is inscribed on a small sphinx from the temple and features a short inscription in what appears to be parallel texts in Egyptian and in the new script.

15 comments:

Quantum_Flux said...

Isn't Biblical Archeology just a propaganda machine for the Pope and the country of Isreal though?

Quantum_Flux said...

...like Watchtower is for the Adventists.

OilIsMastery said...

QF,

"Isn't Biblical Archeology just a propaganda machine for the Pope and the country of Isreal though?"

I don't believe that. If the Pope and Israel say Pharaohs, meteorites, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes are real because they are in the Bible that doesn't make them propaganda.

Quantum_Flux said...

Both the magazine and the Bible are propaganda though.

OilIsMastery said...

Do you think the Devil planted the archaeological evidence in order to trick people to believe the Bible is historically accurate?

Quantum_Flux said...

No, I think the Pope and the state of Isreal are fabricating the "evidence" for myths.

Alexander Maccabee said...

I don't see it in the Hebrew. The rest seem fairly similar in a more than a few ways. - As a Bible believing Jew I am a bit biased. 8)

OilIsMastery said...

QF,

Do you think the Pope and Israel invented the Pharaohs, meteorites, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes for propaganda purposes?

Quantum_Flux said...

No, but like all mythical characters there is some history being distorted. Typically, the main characters of those stories are just made up to tell a story, similar to Hercules and Sir Robin are made up characters even though those stories take place in historical settings.

Quantum_Flux said...

LOL....there once was a man from Nantucket...

Quantum_Flux said...

Perhaps so, I just, I don't really see any kind of fluid connection in that alphabet transformation picture....it reeks of horrible fabrication.

Quantum_Flux said...

Oh no, wait, perhaps the alphabet could be given in a tree diagram instead, that might make better sense to look at it. I guess I was just over-reacting to something I'm not so familiar with.

Quantum_Flux said...

....what is up with that Hebrew "S"???

kunbaba said...

Opposite with the typical modern western theories (indo-european, and jewish-christian)the history of writing seems to be the same age to the history of humanity.
And the origins of writing is nothing to do with late hebrew quadrat fonts. The hebrews are the part of cultural history as well as any other nation. In the history of writing there are much older archeological patterns.

As far as I can see every powerful nation in history (like the world-jewish lobby today, or the English at the late of the 19th century, and every single little tribe)
wanted to "monopolise" the biggest cultural achievements, and that is the cause of theese pack of lies in the history of writing as well as the other part of history.
Preconceptions, from desire, from national proud, sometimes from hate and sovinism.
Very few scientist seems to be free from this effect.
This lies origins from a subconcius desire to create a great absolute past to the great present authority. Everybody is doing it. finding the truth in history, is like to find somebody in a huge maskarade festival.

kunbaba said...

As far as I know the inventor of this working-hypothesis was Sir Arthur Evans, who tried to explain the relativity between old greek, phoenitian, and other alphabets, but at the end of his life he called back this theory. It was too late, at that time this theory cemented into a Dogma, (because it was useful for somebodies cultural lobby) and very few scientist think over that. Nowadays everybody learns it in school, so this preconception goes very deep..

The base of Proto-Alphabet was an abstract, logically built, genial system, and we really dont know its origins.At best we can show the oldest sites, but those arent the roots, at that time the character set was alredy used.

The evolution of different writings from an Old One is a story of nivellation, and not an evolution.
The way from the perfect Proto Alphabet to many-many non logical corrupted writing systems.
The same story, like Babel in the Bible. (The old Alphabet, and the old Proto Language must have been in one package)
Cultural dispersion and decline. The best example is the latin alphabet, that contains an absolute irrational set of signs, in which you cant find a logic between the sounds, and the formal logic of signs, and it is a mix of different signs from different ages. But if you see it closely, you can find the Old Alphabet in fragments, below the surface...

With Regards to "Oil is Mastery".
(Sorry for my poor english)