Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew R. Miller" <biblicalscribe AT hotmail.com>]

Shalom to B Hevritim:
I have been learning the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and have come into some
interesting idographic, morphological thoughts. That is, I know that there
is a commonly-accepted origin for some of the Hebrew letters. For example,
we all have probably learned that aleph is supposed to have once been an
ox, and I think it is safe to assume that most letters in most human
languages were probably once idiograms and pictographs to some extent (I
know, this is a generalized statement, but bear with me). Also, resh has
been described as having once been a rosh, etc. Well, I cannot help but
notice in my Egyptian studies that some of the Hebrew letters have an
amazing relation to some of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. For example, aleph
looks like a simply-stylized vulture. Am I reading too much into this? Has
this already been brought up? Is it possible that some of the Hebrew
letters, being Semetic, are somehow linguistically and morphologically
related to the Egyptian hieroglyphs? Am I just crazy? Thanks, Matthew
Miller