Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Fred, you do need to get yourself a good book on the history of writing. We
have quite lengthy and complex compositions in both hieroglyphs and
cuneiform beginning about 3000 BCE. Both continued to be in use until about
the common era, but several forms of alphabetic writing entered the scene
sometime during the second millennium. One of these was Ugaritic, which took
its graphic form from cuneiform. The other was southern Canaanite, a.k.a.
"Proto-Canaanite" or "Proto-Sinaitic" (because the first examples to be
identified were found in Sinai), which took its form from the hieratic form
of hieroglyphs. Since Ugaritic was written on clay tablets, quite a lot,
including long epics and poems, was preserved. However the language and its
alphabet died when the city was destroyed about 1200 BCE. The southern
Canaanite alphabet is what developed into the 22-letter alphabet used by
Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic and so on, and eventually was adopted and
adapted by Greek and then Latin. However, since the regular writing material
were papyrus and parchment, much less of what was written in the damp
climate of Israel, Syria, Lebanon etc. has been preserved. The fact that we
have some inscriptions written on stone and pottery shows that there was a
scribal class familiar with writing. 

 

Yigal Levin

 

From: fred burlingame [mailto:tensorpath AT gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 11:33 PM
To: Yigal Levin
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] parent & child

 

Hello Yigal:

 

My points follow:

 

1. I did not realize that the current leading theory of alphabet genesis
included hieroglyphs.

 

2. The Edwin Smith Papyrus reveals the existence in 1500 b.c., of a high
level of literature and language via hieroglyphs. The Isaiah Scroll
discloses the existence in 150 b.c., of a high level literature and language
via the alphabet. Sometime between these two dates, the hieroglyphs
descended and the alphabet ascended as the means of literature expression.
The question is: when did the change happen. One author in one of the links
I posted, opines the 9th century b.c., as the answer. In any event, these
two documents, confirm the time gap between prevailing hieroglyph usage
(1500 b.c.) and dominant alphabet usage (150 b.c.)  for lengthy documents of
literature (versus brief graffiti or inscriptions) is closing.

 

The Gezer Calendar confirms the use of the alphabet 1000 b.c., but not for
lengthy documents of "book" or "newspaper" size.

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezer_calendar

regards,

 

fred burlingame

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> wrote:

Fred,

The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions were indeed an important discovery in our
understanding of the development of the alphabet, but the rest of your post
is really not clear. What is your point? The "gap" between 1500 and 150 is
full of inscriptions in Canaanite, Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Moabite and
so on.

Yigal Levin