Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Hi James.

Firstly, a reminder to put your full name at the end of your posts, please.

Secondly, that table in Wikipedia, is really weird. I think it shows the 
unpredictable value of Wikipedia, rather than the history of Semitic scripts. 
Some of the suggestions are completely out of left field.

The thing with the alphabet is not that the figures preserved the original 
pictograph, but rather were developed from pictographs into more schematic 
and easily written forms. That's the theory. Ease of writing is what matters, 
more than preservation of picture. So, whether the figures were turned around 
at all, we just don't know. Certainly it seems that the forms were rotated 
somewhat from their Semitic position to form the letters of the Greek 
alphabet - or the Greeks just looked at the alphabet from across the other 
side of the table (!). It's not hard to see how aleph developed into alpha, 
kaph into kapp, etc.

Boustrophedon is also a common phenomenon in the early Mediterranean world. 
This is where one line is written in one direction (say left to right) and 
the next line is written in the opposite direction (right to left). This 
produces a snaking-pattern for reading, rather than a singular direction. It 
happens a bit in Greek texts, but not so much in Semitic texts. In any case, 
I think it demonstrates that writing direction was, at one time, fairly 
fluid. Egyptian hieroglyphs are another case in point - they can be read in 
either direction, depending on the orientation of the glyphs.




Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au