Virtually all the
alphabets in use today can be traced back to a common
ancestor : a
semitic adaptation of
Egyptian hieroglyphs that was invented circa 2000. BC.
First of all, let us stress the (obvious) fact that not all writing systems are alphabets. An alphabet is a writing system in which, roughly speaking, each sign corresponds to one single sound (vowel or consonant), even though this sound may not always be the same depending on context. A system in which all or most signs represent a
syllable instead of a pure sound cannot be considered as a pure alphabet, which rules out most
cuneiform scripts. More on this in the
Alphabet node. Let's proceed.
Proto-sinaitic script is the most well-known contender for the "First Alphabet Ever" title
(1). Proto-sinaitic writings were found in places were
semitic people lived under strong
Egyptian influence. They were
directly related to
hieroglyphs in the following way :
Picture yourself as an average west-semitic (say, a
Canaanite), with a very peculiar language and
no way to write it down correctly because you did not study
cuneiform
writing
(2). On the other hand, you do have some
(limited) knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs, because you have been working for/with Egyptians, but you can't use these highly
specific
ideograms "as is" for your own language. So what do you do ? Well,
being extremely
clever, you use a trick that was used every now and then by
Egyptian scribes :
Acronymy.
The idea is quite simple, really : you write
Egyptian hieroglyphs, but instead of expressing self-contained words, those
signs must now be read as
letters - namely,
the first letter of the
word they stand for in
your language. For example, if you want to write an A, you will draw
the hieroglyph that means
ox (that is, the head of an ox, slightly inclined towards the left), because
in your language "ox" begins with an "A".
BTW, do you know how they used to say "ox" in
(west-)semitic languages ? The word for "ox" is "
Aleph" - which happens
to be the name of the first letter of
Arabic and
Hebraic alphabets. The
same holds for "Bet", which is both the standard semitic word for "house" (Arabic has "bayt") and the
name of the second letter of these alphabets - and of course the hieroglyph for "B" (a kind of square) means "house".
Okay, you might think, this is all well and good, but what does this Semitic-centric story have to do with
our alphabet ? Well, look at the modern latin letter "A". Doesn't it look like the head
of an ox, turned upside down ? "Yeah, nice
coincidence", I hear you say -
well, it's not. The letters we use today are simply distant relatives of
Egyptian hieroglyphs.
To understand this we'll skip through several centuries - (zzzzzzip !) Enter the
Phoenicians (ancestors of the
Lebanese). Basically, they
are just another west semitic
tribe with nothing special about them, except one
nifty little thing : their huge
ships. At that time (1000 B.C.) their vessels
were the only ones that can "cut through" the sea : other boats are too
weak and
must closely follow the
coast. With these impressive
vessels, the
Phoenicians quickly established commercial contacts all over the
Mediterranean
Sea (founding
Carthago in the process), up to
Asia Minor,
Greece and
even
Italy.
The first
Greeks, who got quite tired of their cumbersome
Linear B script,
were impressed by the cleverness of the Phoenician
alphabet, and quickly
adopted it. Now by that time the old
hieroglyphs had undergone
severe modifications, but were still recognizable. If you have been through
high school, you can probably write a small (non-capital) "alpha". Look at it
again. Doesn't it look like the head of an ox, inclined 90° on the right - just
like the following
smiley (-: ? This inclination comes from an important step: the transition from right-to-left writing (still in use in semitic language nowadays) to a right-to-left writing, which the Greek found to be more convenient (for right-handed people at least). The change in writing direction led to a change in the orientation of the letter. Besides the Alpha, another striking example is the Greek
Sigma, which is a 90°-rotated version of the semitic S (a three-pointed letter, both in Hebraic and in
Arabic scripts).
The
Greek also kept the names of the letters, although those names had no meaning for them. This is how the Aleph-Bet became the
Alpha-
Beta, and later on (when the
Romans took it from the
Etruscans) our modern
Alphabet.
Summary :
Hieroglyphs begat
Proto-sinaitic.
Proto-sinaitic begat
Phoenician.
Phoenician, the true mother of all alphabets, begat
Greek (which indirectly begat
Latin, i.e. ours),
Aramaic (the first
Lingua Franca, before
Greek,
Latin,
French and
English) and
maybe Indic, which begat virtually all Southeast
Asian alphabetic scripts.
Aramaic begat
Hebrew,
Nabatean,
Syriac and
Arabic, among others.
The underlying idea is this :
virtually any writing system in the world which is technically an alphabet may be derived from semitic hieroglyphs. The only exceptions are some places of Asia and (of course) South America, although the term "alphabet" may be inappropriate for the latter (this is pretty much an ongoing debate).
Let me suggest a few
links :
- http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~armag/595hist3.html summaries many of the general ideas and allows for a comparison of many different scripts, from proto-sinaitic to Latin
- http://www.lib.byu.edu/~imaging/negev/mainfs.html at Brigham Young University is more centered on semitic scripts and culture, but tells you how all those things were found (and has many pictures, including the can of a chart with hieroglyphs, proto-sinaitic writings and hebraic letters side to side)
- http://www.wam.umd.edu/~rfradkin/ at the University of Maryland has lovely animated gifs which show the evolution of various scripts. The transition between proto-sinaitic and phoenician is particularly striking, if you remember that it is to be read from right to left (and even more so if you have some basic knowledge of greek letters).
- http://www.imprimerie-online.com/experts/caractere/histoire/alphabet_c2.htm compares phoenician, greek, etrusque and latin (modern) alphabets.
This is an extremely short list : there are hundreds of sites related to that topic (just ask
your favorite search engine).
And remember :
We all write in hieroglyphs.
(1) Older alphabetic inscriptions have been found recently in
Egypt; they are based on the same principles as proto-sinaitic inscriptions, and were used for a west-semitic language as well. See http://www.ngnews.com/news/1999/11/113099/alphabet_7600.asp (
National Geographic)
(2) In opposition to other semitic people such as
Akkadians, etc. Note that a cuneiform alphabet,
Ugaritic, appeared pretty much in the same period as proto-sinaitic - but it disappeared without any
successor.
Note: This is a strictly historical description of the origins of the alphabet. For a more poetic approach, see Kipling's How the alphabet was made or Gorgonzola's monumental (albeit delirious) How the alphabet began.