THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET



Archeological discoveries continue to shed light on the mystery of the origin of the alphabet. The earliest form of written language is thought to originate from the Semitic countries. The word Semitic comes from the name Shem, named in Genesis (6:10) as the son of Noah, whose descendants lived in the Middle East. While pieces of the puzzle have yet to fall in place, there appears to be an evolution of the alphabet through the ages. The two earliest forms of writing were the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia.

The hieroglyphic script of Egypt is dated before 3200 BC, and is largely pictorial in nature with over 2000 symbols. The cuneiform script began with the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia, who existed before 3200 BC, and whose descendants were the Assyrians and Babylonians. The cuneiform script was known as Akkadian, named after the chief city of that region, Akkad.

A new type of script with about 90-100 signs, documented by ten monumental inscriptions in stone and bronze, dated as early as 2400-2000 BC, was unearthed in Byblos from 1928 to 1932 by Maurice Dunand, and is known as the Byblos Syllabary. Byblos, Phoenicia (now Lebanon) was known as Gebal in ancient times, as recorded in Joshua 13:5 of the Bible. While the script suggests Egyptian influence, the symbols present syllables rather than pictures, and may be a precursor to the Phoenician alphabet. A syllabary is a set of written symbols in which each character represents a syllable, for example, a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound.

Phoenicia is the name given to those city-states that grew on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and were identified as centers of trade in ancient times. Families began to inhabit the land around Byblos about 6000 BC. The Phoenicians were a peaceful, seafaring people expert in navigation and trade, and, beginning around 3200 BC, were the first to explore the Mediterranean Sea in boats made of cedar. Protected by the mountains of Lebanon from warring nations, they were able to differentiate from their Canaanite neighbors and form a distinct culture and society. Byblos, Tyre (2750 BC), and Sidon became main centers of commerce. In the ninth century BC, the Phoenician language extended as far north as Cilicia in Asia Minor. Between the ninth and sixth centuries BC, the naval proficiency of the Phoenicians established the first trading system to encompass the entire Mediterranean from their homeland, in what is now Lebanon, to colonies in Cyprus, Carthage, Sicily, Sardinia, and through the Straits of Gibraltar to Cadiz on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Lixus on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.



The Phoenicians developed the alphabet around 1400 BC in order to communicate with the diverse cultures and tongues of their trading partners. It was the Phoenician alphabet that was widely received in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean world, as it was only 22 letters based on sound, as opposed to the myriad of symbols in cuneiform and hieroglyphics prevalent at the time. The words phonic and phonetic have the same root as the word Phoenicia.
Hebrew was the original language of the Israelites. Hebrew tradition, the Torah itself, as well as Jesus and the New Testament writers name Moses as the divinely inspired author of the Pentateuch. It is believed that Moses lived in the latter part of the second millenium BC (1500-1200 BC). Archeology has yet to discover the precise time that Moses lived and led his people during the Exodus from Egypt, or the actual script utilized by Moses to write the Torah. Furthermore, no original manuscript by the author of any biblical book has yet been discovered!

The Arameans were associated with Damascus and the surrounding region of Syria. Recent excavations on the northern coast of Syria discovered the ancient city of Ugarit, a city of prominence around 1400 BC. A highly developed form of cuneiform script was uncovered in Ugarit, which contained a cuneiform alphabet that consisted of thirty signs. Ugarit was destroyed by the invasion of the Sea Peoples in the thirteenth century BC. The Arameans of Damascus survived well into the first millennium BC, and eventually modified the Phoenician alphabet for their own language. While the Arameans suffered multiple invasions from Assyria and Babylonia, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Middle East from about 700 BC to 700 AD. Jesus Christ and his Apostles spoke Aramaic.

Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic are known as Northwest Semitic languages.
Arabic is a Southwest Semitic language which did not become prominent until the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD and which for the most part replaced Aramaic. All are examples of Semitic languages, which have similar characteristics, such as the presence of guttural letters formed in the pharynx or larynx; a consonantal system with three-letter word roots to connote meaning; and changes in the form or morphology of the word root through the addition of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to determine the precise sense and function of the word.
The word Bible, which means "the book," is derived from the city of Byblos, which was a trading source for papyrus, the writing material for early books. The legend of the Phoenix, the bird consumed by fire only to regenerate, is based upon the Phoenician people, whose land was occupied and towns destroyed many times by warlike peoples, only to regenerate time and again. In fact, the Greeks were the ones that named the seafarers the Phoenicians, or phoinikes, the singular of which is phoinix. The Romans spelled it phoenix!
Jesus Christ commissioned his Apostles to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), and was the first to evangelize the Gentiles on his visit to Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:24-30). St. Paul stayed a week in Tyre after his return from his third missionary journey (Acts 21:2-3), and also stopped in Sidon on his fourth missionary trip to Rome (Acts 27:3). The land was known as Phoenicia at the time Jesus Christ lived.


REFERENCES
1 Maria Eugenia Aubet. The Phoenicians and the West. Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, London, 2001.
2 Sanford Holst. Phoenicians - Lebanon's Epic Heritage. Cambridge & Boston Press, Los Angeles, California, 2005.
3 RSV Navarre Bible. Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 2001.
4 Sabatino Moscati. The World of the Phoenicians. Translated from Italian by Alistair Hamilton. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1968.
5 Mansoor M. Biblical Hebrew - Step by Step, Volume One. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980, 24th Printing, 2007.
6 Lambdin TO. Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1971.
7 Spielvogel JJ. Western Civilization, Sixth Edition, Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont, California, 2006.

Our Lady of Lebanon
The Alphabet of Biblical Hebrew
The Greek Alphabet
The Bible