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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] from right to left or from top to bottom?
  • Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 22:14:41 +0100

Hi,

I was brought up (so to speak, from university on) believing that Hebrew was written and read from right to left. Although, I always felt that Dr. Davila's explanation of how the letters of the Hebrew alphabet evolved from pictures lacked something (does that beth really look like a hous?).

Anyway, recently I've been broadening my research a lot and just lately I've been looking a lot at the origins of writing throughout the world. So, anyway, to get to the point take a quick look at the table of characters on this wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Canaanite_alphabet

So, looking at the second column in particular (the 'Phoenician' column) and trying to reconcile that with the pictures in the first column I noticed the following things:

1) The aleph looks a lot more like an oxes head if you turn it 90 degrees anti-clockwise

2) The beth looks a lot more like the frontal view of a flat roofed ANE house if you turn it 90 degrees anti-clockwise

3) The zen looks a lot more like a set of primitive handcuffs if you rotate it 90 degrees anti-clockwise (assuming that people in those days had hands on the left and right rather than one on the head and one in the tail)

4) The yad looks a lot more like the natural downward sloping position of the human arm if you rotate it 90 degrees anti-clockwise

5) The mem looks like water falling down a waterfall if you turn it 90 degrees anti-clockwise

6) The nun looks a lot more like a snake on the ground if you rotate it 90 degrees anti-clockwise


So anyway, my point is a lot of the characters make more sense if you rotate them 90 degrees anti-clockwise and this led me to the following question:

Was Hebrew written from top to bottom rather than from left to right?

i.e. taking any manuscript at random and turning it 90 degrees anti-clockwise could not Hebrew be just as easily be understood as a language that was written from top to bottom rather than from right to left? Has this been suggested anywhere else before?

James





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