The Phoenician Alphabet

The Ancient World's First Widely Used Form of Written Communication

Dec 26, 2007

A descendant of Mesopotamian cuneiform, the 22-character Phoenician alphabet was the template from which nearly all written language orginated.

The Phoenicians are considered by many to have been the inventors of trade and commerce. As a coastal nation, they had the advantage of location, and traded with just about every other coastal civilization, including the Greeks and the Etruscans. The Phoenicians also have another monumental distinction: they are considered the fathers of mass communication, developing a system of characters that allowed for accurate record-keeping and streamlined communication throughout history.

Early Record-Keeping

In the beginning of record-keeping history, it was the Mesopotamians that revolutionized a method of tracking accounts of business and law. They used a type of writing known as cuneiform. Etched on large clay tablets, the wedge-shaped characters were a popular way to keep track of all types of communications and transactions. The Phoenicians, like other Fertile Crescent cultures, also used cuneiform. However, as trade and commerce expanded, it became necessary for record-keeping to become more accurate and a little more portable.

The Egyptians attribute the development of the Phoenician alphabet to Tautos, a scholar from Byblos (a city in Phoenicia) who formulated a 22-character system around 2,000 B.C. Some evidence does suggest that some of the characters were developed and used even earlier – as far back as the 15th century B.C.

The Basics of the Phoenician Alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet was made up of 22 consonants and zero vowels. An alphabet without vowels has proved challenging for modern scholars who have worked to decipher and translate the script, as they are not as familiar with the ancient languages as the ancients themselves would have been. It was as assumption of the Phoenician scribes that the reader could speak the language, and thus fill in any vowel sounds automatically. Because of this, various spellings of names and other Phoenician vocabulary can be found.

Other challenges for modern translators include the right-to-left way in which the Phoenician alphabet was written. There were also no spaces between the words. This gradually evolved into dots separating words. By the ninth century B.C., the Phoenician alphabet had progressed into a very graceful type of script that was easily read by most.

The modern word “alphabet” can be traced back to the first two characters of the Phoenician script. Aleph, the first letter, was originally a triangular shape that represented a frontal form of a bull’s head, and then turned sideways in Phoenician. The modern ‘A’ comes from that letter being turned another ninety degrees through time. The second letter, Beth, meant house in Phoenician. The character was shaped like a basic Phoenician house. Modern ‘B’ is a result of this letter being turned sideways. When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, their first two letters became “alpha” and “beta”, and thus currently used word “alphabet”.

The Spread of the Alphabet

Many of Phoenicia’s trade partners adopted this revolutionary alphabet. Trade partners were able to communicate in a uniform way, allowing transaction to go more smoothly, and record-keeping was more accurate across the board. Both the Etruscans and the Greeks (among others) adopted the script and made it into their own. Eventually, the Romans developed an alphabet based on the Phoenician script, an alphabet still largely in use by Western civilization today. Even Far Eastern cultures adapted some form of the Phoenician alphabet, embracing the variations of it from their Near Eastern neighbors.

The Phoenician contribution to worldwide language, literature, and written communication is undeniable. The proof is in the writing; we see that all European alphabets are directly derived from the original Phoenician alphabet, and Asiatic scripts (including being written right to left) are directly linked to the Aramaic (Near Eastern) adaptations of it.

The copyright of the article The Phoenician Alphabet in Near Eastern History is owned by Robin Fowler. Permission to republish The Phoenician Alphabet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.