Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> The oldest known epigraphic West Semitic
> is the Wadi el-Hol inscription (in upper Egypt) of around 2000 BC. This
> inscription seems to use simplified Egyptian hieroglyph shapes to write
> the consonants of the Semitic language of Asiatic mercenaries serving in
> the Egyptian army. By 2000 BC cuneiform, complete with vowels, had been
> in use for a millennium for Sumerian and for several hundred years for
> Akkadian i.e. East Semitic.

Even if we accept that West Semitic writing derived from hieroglyphs, we are
still left with the question why the Egyptians seemingly did not mark
vowels. At least, we don't know for sure that vowels in Egyptian are
differentiated.

> >It seems to me that West Semitic is much closer to cuneiform (or,
perhaps,
> >vice versa) than to hieroglyphs. Cuneiform looks like cursive West
Semitic.
> >This is subjective, of course.
> >
> Looks are subjective, but the objective historical evidence proves that
> you are almost certainly wrong.

Would you please point out that evidence at least broadly? Wadi el-Hol shows
very limited resemblance to hieroglyphs, and that semblance could result
from assimilation of style, couldn't it?

> >>It seems to me that your theory requires an
> >>explanation of this point. If a vowelless writing system can
> >>only be explained by an absence of vowel differentiation,
> >>then significant phonemic differentiation of vowels would
> >>have created enormous pressure to adapt the writing system.
> >
> >It did. Masoretic vowel marks, Arabic diacritics.
>
> Which are not used by most modern writers of Hebrew or Arabic script.

They are fluent, sophisticated readers. I'd like to point again that
ancients are more like students in their reading skills - and students use
vowels. Also, as I mentioned, casual readers are satisfied with
understanding 25-27% of the text. Also, ambiguity of vowelless writing
increases in short texts, which are most common in antiquity.
It seems to me meaningless to develop a writing system that does not
distinguish, say, piel from paal - unless there was no distinction then.


Vadim Cherny