Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <abuian AT access4less.net>]

Uri Hurwitz wrote:
>    Yes, and, it appears  that  they boorrowed and modified the Egyptian signs earlier than the Ugaritic inventors of the alphabetic script. There does not seem a connection between the two, or is there? 
>  
>   It is however interesting that two separate scripts appeared roughly in the same time, give or take a couple of centuries. A script, incidentally, that uses, with some changes, but in practically the same order, the very letters of our electronic correspondence.

I thought it was pretty much the consensus that the Ugaritic wedge-abjad 
was based on the West Semitic linear script. Apparently they borrowed 
the consonantal inventory but created new and essentially unrelated 
signs that could be written more easily on clay (probably inspired by 
Akkadian cuneiform).

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics