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I haven't yet read the comments above. I'm moving the Colless table here until/if we get some kind of consensus that the source is reliable. kwami ( talk) 01:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Only the Colless reconstruction is shown here. For the Albright identification of the Egyptian prototypes, see the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. A third interpretation can be found at the Phoenician alphabet article.
The alphabetical order of these scripts is unknown. They are conventionally presented in the ancient Levantine order because this corresponds to our own alphabet. However, the South Semitic order, h l ḥ m q w š r t s k n x b ..., is also attested from the Late Bronze Age and may be just as old as the Levantine. (See the Ugaritic alphabet.) It is not known if the Egyptians had an alphabetic order, but at least one Egyptian dictionary started with h as the South Semitic order does. This is because the first word was ibis (the tutelary animal of Thoth (dḥwty), the patron of writing), which started with an h in Egyptian, as reflected in its Greek form hībis.
Some of the distinctions listed here are lost or conflated in later Levantine alphabets. For instance, while Η continues the shape of the letter ḥasir, its Greek name eta appears to derive from the closely related fricative xayt. Evidently the two letters had been confounded by the time of the Levantine alphabets. Similarly, šim seems to have replaced θad, taking its place in the alphabet. Colless also reconstructs more than one letter for some phonemes, such as samek Ξ: The fish and the support/spine are alternative glyphs; they never appear together in the same inscription. In other cases there are significant graphic variants, as with šimš (sun), which is represented by a uræus that may not have the sun disk shown here; or naḥaš (snake), which may be represented by several snake hieroglyphs in addition to the one shown here.
Note that all proposals for Egyptian prototypes of the alphabet remain controversial. For example, a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that resembles the hieroglyph djet (snake) is identified with the letter נ Ν here, and has been ever since Gardiner, because the modern name of the corresponding Ethiopic letter is nahas, and the corresponding word in Hebrew, nāḥāš, means "snake". However, Peter T. Daniels is of the opinion that it seems very likely that the modern Ethiopic letter names date no further back than the sixteenth century AD, and so are irrelevant to the investigation of Proto-Sinaitic. [1]
conventional name (meaning) |
hieroglyph | Egyptian value |
Semitic value |
Phoenician | Hebrew | Greek | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
’alp (ox) |
|
ỉḥ | ’ [ʔ] | א | Α | |||||
bayt (house) |
|
pr | b | ב | Β | |||||
gaml (throw stick, boomerang) |
|
qm’ | g | ג | Γ | |||||
xayt (thread/ skein) |
|
ḥ | x | replaced by ḥ | ||||||
dalt (door) |
|
c’ | d | ד | Δ | |||||
hillul (jubilation) |
|
q’ | h | ה | Ε | |||||
waw (hook) |
– | – | w | ו | Ϝ | |||||
ziqq (manacle) |
– | – | z | ז | Ζ | |||||
ḥasir (court) |
|
– | ħ | ח | Η | |||||
ţab (good) |
|
nfr | ţ | ט | Θ | |||||
yad (arm/hand) |
|
c | y | י | Ι | |||||
kapp (palm [of hand]) kipp (palm branch) |
– |
d, drt – |
k | כ | Κ | |||||
šimš (sun uræus) |
|
rac | š | ש | Σ | |||||
lamd (crook/goad) |
|
cwt | l | ל | Λ | |||||
mu (water) |
|
nt | m | מ | Μ | |||||
ðayp (eyebrow) |
|
– | ð | replaced by z | ||||||
naħaš (snake) |
|
j | n | נ | Ν | |||||
samk (support [vine tutor]) samk (fish) |
|
jd, dd ỉn |
s | ס | Ξ | |||||
cayn (eye) |
|
ỉr | c [ʕ] | ע | Ο | |||||
pu (mouth) |
|
r, r’ | p | פ | Π | |||||
şirar (tied bag) |
|
sšr | ş | צ | Ϡ | |||||
qaw (cord [wound on stick]) |
|
wj | q | ק | Ϟ | |||||
ra’iš (head) |
|
tp | r | ר | Ρ | |||||
θad (breast) |
– | – | θ | replaced by š | ||||||
γinab? (grape?) (wine?) |
– | – | γ [ɣ] | – | ||||||
taw (mark) |
– | – | t | ת | Τ |
A comment on that "Ancient Hebrew Alphabet" link. If you look at what they call "Hebrew," (not "Modern Hebrew") it's actually something akin to the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Additionally, per its reliability, I emailed that site to point out that they had (frequently) confused the glyphs for ayin and alef. They emailed back thanking me and telling me they were unaware of this. Frankly I think it should be removed for questions of accuracy; or at least kept with a comment next to it. Michael Sheflin ( talk) 17:43, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Michael, you seem to have semi-volunteered to make images of the PS and WEH letters. They would be an obvious addition to the table if you ever do. Of course, we might need multiple tables since authors disagree as to which letters are which, and which hieroglyphs were the prototypes. kwami ( talk) 18:45, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I removed Colless's assertions, as well as those for the Wimmers, until we can cite the latter; and until the former publishes something. Even if one really liked or supported his blog, he has not blogged on Wadi el-Hol (I'm pretty sure I'm one of the (possibly only) very few to blog on possible translations). Here it is in case someone wants to spank me.
Stefan and Samaher Wimmer's readings of the two inscriptions, with alternate readings by Colless in brackets, are, with disagreements in bold,
Though my personal inclinations suggest that the Proto-Sinaitic and Wadi el-Hol languages and scripts are divergent, the scholarship has published no such division. The book (The Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia ed. by Woodward, the article by Hamilton (2002), and by Darnell et al (2005)) all imply that the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions are considered part of the Proto-Sinaitic script. My own correspondences with Darnell have confirmed this (attitude on 'their' part). Thus, until I (inshallah) publish my article, there is no scholarly source offering evidence that the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions form a script, they only form an earlier 'extension' of the earlier-discovered Proto-Sinaitic corpus. This poses a problem for the organization of the article. Michael Sheflin ( talk) 09:24, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I very much doubt "...Wadi el-Hol (Arabic وادي الهول Wādī al-Hūl)" translates as "Gulch of terror" - added in this edit - so I've removed it. Astronaut ( talk) 00:24, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't see anything wrong with "gulch of terror". If there is anything unusual, it's " gulch", translating " wadi", but I suppose that's at least as good as "valley". Telling people to look up Wehr after they have just cited Lane is a bit of a joke, too. -- dab (𒁳) 07:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I am all for merging poorly referenced article into a single article as a first step in cleaning things up. However, this doesn't mean that all titles that end up pointing to the main article are synonyms.
This article used to be called "Middle Bronze Age alphabets", which was a rather well-informed choice, because it proposed to treat recent discoveries of alphabetic writing that predate 1500 BC. These are very rare scattered inscriptions, and it makes sense to treat them together instead of keeping one stub per inscription.
By now, the article essentially treats "Bronze Age alphabets", i.e. covering the entire period of 1900 to 1100 BC. We need to realize that this 800 year period doesn't encompass anything like a single script, but a gradual evolution we can trace based on a handful of inscriptions. The way I understand it, we need to distinguish
I am not an expert in this and I am not sure I've got this right, but I have doubts whether it is correct to introduce the terminology as "Proto-Sinaitic, called Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan". There may be a diachronic twist to this. -- dab (𒁳) 13:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
"The Russian State University of the Humanities (Center of Comparative Linguistics) The Moscow Jewish University The Russian Academy of Sciences (Dept. of History and Philology) The Santa Fe Institute (New Mexico, USA) The City University of Hong Kong The Leiden University" ( http://starling.rinet.ru/babel.php?lan=en)
I missed an obvious point here. Pg. 3 of Woodward (2008) refers to the script - PC is an extension of PS that is seen in Canaan later - this is the growing academic assumption. PC, however, is also an archaic form of Phoenician linguistically. There's no contradiction; PS appears to be linguistically more similar to Ugaritic.
So, no contradiction; PC is both the paleographic extension of PS and the linguistic predecessor of Phoenician. Can't believe I missed that distinction.
(This also speaks pretty strongly to my point about why not translating these inscriptions makes it inappropriate to assume their linguistic content on a paleographic basis - which, Kwami is a similar point to the one you made about the Arabic inclusion in the table - language != script.) Michael Sheflin ( talk) 11:09, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
it isn't clear what you mean. Why "linguistically"? We are discussing scripts here, not languages.-- dab (𒁳) 16:49, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Since this entire article lacks inline citations, it is impossible for a non-expert to even guess the level of acceptance of a given statement or even determine if it is original research- I would suggest the experts go through and do this first and include anything that can be documented and hopefully most arguments then come down to adjectives ("widely accepted" versus "some think" etc). From what I gather, this article is on a class of early alphabet with 2 members, that much does not seem to be in debate. Are there more possible members or is this much accepted and by which sources? The data on which most of the article is based includes a few archalogical finds and probably some independently known information. Only a few people have worked on this topic and there seems to be controversy within the relevant communities about what is likely to be right. The immediate concern is about including the above table which may or may not be helpful in understanding current thought on the topic of "Middle Bronze Age Alphabets." I guess first if this table can be attributed and made relevant- has it been citted by other reliable secondary sources in the field to make realted points?- it would be worth including somewhere. But, since none of the rest of the article has inline citations, it is hard to tell how well the rest of the field is presented. So, maybe it would be easier to take what exists, or even put the table back in, and just start documenting sentence by sentence each claim made- which sources believe this which dispute it. As an analogy, consider even something like Creation Science where the entire topic is held as being without merit by many. It has a page and theories along with criticisms are included. The point here is to document who has stated what ideas not settle arguments- presumably a wikipedia reader may want to use wiki as a starting point for doing that or something similar but we have no way to evaluate merit here. Nerdseeksblonde ( talk) 12:35, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet → Proto-Sinaitic script – While the script is notable primarily because of the exciting possibility that it may be an alphabet, it may turn out not be an alphabet after all. The script is simply too poorly attested to say for sure. The current name of the page implies that the alphabet hypothesis has been proven, and it hasn't been. That's why I want to rename the page Proto-Sinatic script. I couldn't move the page myself because it conflicts with a redirect page with several redirect changes in its history. It would be awesome if an administrator could move it for me. Rppeabody ( talk) 02:27, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
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Alright, I should clarify something, maybe, not to be condescending at all: there are three sort of levels of analysis - paleography, orthography, and epigraphy. So the first, paleography, refers to the actual 'look' of the letters themselves - how are they written, their orientations, do they fit a broader trend, etc. The second, orthography, refers to how these identified letters fit the 'standard way of writing a word.' The third, epigraphy, refers to the linguistic connections of the language - and not script; so Hebrew was written both in Phoenician and Aramaic-inspired scripts - but the language was Hebrew.
So Kwami, when you bring up the valid example of the Latin and Greek character interchange - this is orthographic. But orthographic shifts are often patterned and so do not affect a broader orthographic reconstruction for like a language family for instance. So in contrast to IPA, which is I think phonetic in entirety; the idea of orthographic stability is that regardless of how things are 'written' or 'vocalized' letters can be reconstructed through comparative analysis of different languages' and dialects' orthographies. This is why you have patterned differences in British and American English that sometimes are phonetic or orthographic - i.e. organisation vs. organization. But when colloquial becomes written, if you were trying to determine the English word you would look at what it developed from - the dictionary word.
And this is why you get Ugaritic words written with ghayn that reflect dad or Zaa. Ghayn is sometimes written in Ugaritic, but the root - including in Ugaritic - is written properly. So, for instance, 3*lm (ghayn-lamed-mim) means "dark" in Ugaritic, but it comes from Z-l-m; and this is the Semitic reconstruction (Akkadian Salamu, etc.). Similarly the Common Semitic root S-3*-r in Akkadian is s.eheru; but the root is S-3*-r, not S-h_-r (which means 'rock'). Phonetically in Akkadian, ghayn was apparently velar or uvular. But this is not relevant to the orthographic reconstruction.
I know you probably at this point think I'm way off base and way longwinded, but check out this paper. Huehnergard is amazing, probably the most qualified Semiticist, particularly on Proto-Semitic. Rendsburg has also been pretty influential regarding cross-comparative Semitic orthographies and Proto-Semitic. Their paper may be able to say what I am clearly failing to ( http://utexas.academia.edu/JohnHuehnergard/Papers/170747/2009_A_Proper_View_of_Arabic_Semitic_and_More_A_Response_to_George_Mendenhall). I think it is difficult to believe that ayin was the earliest or most intuitive transcriptional interchange - since empirically also it wasn't. And if you examine the Ugaritic orthography of the relative pronoun z (Ugaritic d ; Arabian d_ ; Akkadian $) it is difficult to believe that this was not a hugely important character up front - also independent in Ugaritic.
This one is also useful ( http://utexas.academia.edu/JohnHuehnergard/Papers/170732/2008_Ugaritic_Vocabulary_in_Syllabic_Transcription_Additions_and_Corrections) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msheflin ( talk • contribs) 17:18, 11 September 2011 (UTC) sorry.. Michael Sheflin ( talk) 17:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I remember the old suite of articles on these scripts and that it was superior. I am a dedicated scholar of writing systems, especially pictographic phenomena therein. If anyone is interested in the improvement of the Wikipedia coverage of these topics, a reasonable comparison with the older article suite is in order.
Dwarfkingdom ( talk) 07:17, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
Look, if there is controversy or uncertainty, you are supposed to cite secondary sources, ideally a review article summarizing the debate. You can't just wave your hands and make sceptical noises on the assumption that introducing lots of caveats automatically makes the article more "scholarly".
"extreme scarcity of Proto-Sinaitic signs" "It has been argued that Proto-Sinaitic was an alphabet" " If correctly translated, the word baʿlat (Lady) lends credence to the identification of the language as Semitic." "According to the alphabet theory" "However, the lack of further progress in decipherment casts doubt over the other suppositions, and the identification of the hieratic prototypes remains speculative."
where are the references that cast the topic in this light? The Biblical Archaeology Review article doesn't pretend to present original speculation, it simply reports on the script and the history of its decipherment.
If you have another reference that is highly critical of this, by all means peruse it to put these claims into perspective. As long as we have no such critical source, it will not do to go "However, the lack of further progress in decipherment" on the article without as much as pretending to base this on any scholarly publication.
Btw, "Proto-Sinaitic script" is an unfortunate term, because it misleadingly suggests that there is a "Sinaitic script", it would more properly be referred to as the "Sinai(tic) proto-alphabet" or something similar. But it isn't, and the misnomer has just become the name of this thing, so we'll have to roll with it. -- dab (𒁳) 09:19, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
ok, I looked at google books and the internet in general, and finding literature from the 1980s, 1990s, and from 2011 (F. Simons), it becomes clear that I was much too charitable above. The article as it stood misrepresented scholarship.
There is debate on whether the "1850 BCE" date is tenable, but the latest possible estimate (mentioned as hardly tenable by Simons) is 1550 BCE.
Regardless of 1850 vs. 1550, there is no "alphabetic hypothesis"; the script is considered as deciphered, and it is clear that there is a gradual development of "early proto-Canaanite and proto-Sinaitic signs" into the "later proto-Canaanite letters" over the period of (at least) the 16th to 13th centuries.
You can quibble about the dates and about the names or reconstructions of individual glyphs, but there is no "alphabetic hypothesis" that is somehow open to debate on grounds of "the lack of further progress in decipherment" which "casts doubt over the other suppositions". It seems that this was just made up on Wikipedia. --
dab
(𒁳)
10:59, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
I see you have a little "warning" box above the section for the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, flagging it up as needing attention. I have found these in Daniel & Bright's (1996) The World's Writing Systems, and I thought that if someone more qualified than me wants to start a re-write of that section in the future, they may be useful. Some of the book's contributors seem to cast a rather critical eye on the hypothesis that Proto-Sinaitic was an alphabet, plus a number of sociolinguistic reasons, and also on the slant that Egyptian Hieroglyphs may have been the forerunners of the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.
On page 29 (in Section 2), Peter Daniels writes,
As [the Proto-Sinaitic script's] most systematic critic points out, this solution [i.e. Gardiner's interpretation of lb clt acrophonically as "to the Lady"] involves at least four assumptions: this is an alphabetic script; the signs have Egyptian prototypes; the letters are pictographic and acrophonic; and the language is Semitic (Sznycer 1975: 91). Furthermore, most of the occurrences of lb clt ['to the Lady'] are restorations. Gardiner took a snake-shaped character to be n because the modern Ethiopic name for the letter is nahas, and the corresponding word in Hebrew, nāḥāš, means "snake". But it seems very likely that the modern Ethiopic letter names date no further back than the sixteenth century C.E., and so are irrelevant to the investigation of Proto-Sinaitic (Daniels 1991).
M. O'Connor also mentions later, in Section 5, that the Proto-Sinaitic texts, as they have been deciphered, appear to be religious and votive texts...
...[raising] two questions that recur at every stage of the history of writing: (a) Are writing systems developed for religious or for economic (and social) purposes? (b) Are writing systems before the European Renaissance chiefly a concern of elites? One argument against current proposals for reading the Proto-Sinaitic texts (or reading them as the earliest alphabetic texts) is that miners [in those turquoise mines] seeking to honor a deity would not have come up with a writing system: this is plainly open to question, though the proposals are unsatisfactory on other grounds. [O'Connor doesn't mention what those "other grounds" are.]
-- 86.166.238.214 ( talk) 21:23, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
The following table of forms was taken from the confused page Proto-Canaanite alphabet. I placed it here because the letters are closest to Proto-Sinaitic. Kwami requested that I remove it on the grounds that the signs shown are not Proto-Sinaitic. I think I see what Kwami means. The forms are a bit sketchy, and they were probably drawn with the goal of showing an alphabet correspondence rather than loyalty to the data. But some of them are fairly good representations of Proto-Sinaitic. I think a table makes a big improvement to the article, so I would like to either find one that works or modify this one so that it's accurate and reliable. Perhaps we could take this table and remove the signs that Goldwasser does not include in the table in her article (I don't think we can use her table because it's not fair use). Thoughts? Rppeabody ( talk) 01:02, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician | Value and name | Descendants |
---|---|---|---|
ʼ ʾalp "ox" | א Α A ا | ||
b bet "house" | ב Β B ب | ||
g gaml "throwstick" | ג Γ C- G ج | ||
d digg "fish" | ד Δ D ذ- د | ||
h haw / hll "hurrah" | ה Ε E ه Є | ||
w waw "hook" |
ו Ϝ- Υ F- U- V- W- Y و | ||
z zen /ziqq "handcuff" | ז Ζ Z ز З | ||
ḥ ḥet "courtyard" | ח Η H خ- ح | ||
; | ṭ ṭēt "wheel" | ט Θ ظ- ط Ѳ | |
y yad "arm" | י Ι I- J ي | ||
k kap "hand" | כ Κ K ك | ||
l lamd "goad" | ל Λ L ل | ||
m mem "water" | מ Μ M م | ||
n naḥš "snake" | נ Ν N ن | ||
s samek "fish" | ס Ξ X Ѯ | ||
ʻ ʿen "eye" | ע Ο O غ- ع | ||
p piʾt "bend" | פ Π P ف | ||
ṣ ṣad "plant" | צ ϻ ص- ض ц | ||
q qup "monkey" | ק Ϙ Q ق Ҁ | ||
r raʾs "head" | ר Ρ R ر | ||
š/ś šimš "sun, the Uraeus" | ש Σ S ش- س Ш | ||
t taw "signature" | ת Τ T ث- ت |
Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician | Phoen. value | Phoen. name | Descendants |
---|---|---|---|---|
ʼ. | ʾalp "ox" | א Α A ا | ||
b. | bet "house" | ב Β B ب | ||
k | kap "hand" | כ Κ K ك | ||
m | mem "water" | מ Μ M م | ||
ʻ | ʿen "eye" | ע Ο O غ- ع | ||
r | raʾs "head" | ר Ρ R ر |
One more thing: It turns out that a similar table exists at History of the alphabet. Whatever we decide to do here we should also apply there. Rppeabody ( talk) 02:38, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Msheflin -- northern Arabic script was based on borrowing 21 letters from the Aramaic alphabet (ס was not borrowed), while Arabic had at least 28 distinct consonant phonemes, so an extra seven letters had to be created through contrasts in diacritical dotting.
Also, there's strong evidence that the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet had ambiguities (i.e. a single letter used to write multiple consonant phonemes) when it was borrowed to write the Old Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew languages, but no real evidence for such ambiguities when the Phoenician alphabet was used to write the Phoenician language itself... AnonMoos ( talk) 09:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
A link to an interesting table of signs by Brian Colless which is cited in this wiki for his translation of Wadi el-Hol inscriptions. https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/ABTEVNTBL.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ianniss ( talk • contribs) 14:52, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
The page doesn't have the entire Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, just a few letters that correspond with Phoenician letters! In my opinion the entire alphabet should be there. Why isn't it there? ThatGuy30722 ( talk) 19:29, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
HI I AM HENRY. I AM STUDING HEBREW LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY AND ALSO BIBLICAL HEBREW ONLINE. AS WELL AS QURANIC ARABIC. BUT I AM NO EXPERT. HOWEVER I HAVE MADE A FEW CHANGES OUTLINED BELOW.
in no particular order:
edited name of letter heth descriptor to ḥaṣr (from heyt) as the hebrew word for courtyard is hatser/hatzer (root = ḥ ṣ r)
changed ipa symbol for first letter heth entry to /ħ/ from /x/ - see phonology of biblical hebrew
changed second entry (hypothesized name) for heth - ḫa to ḫayt as the arabic word for thread is xayt (whence heth) not simply xa
- see proto semitic phonology for confirmation that proto semitic had both ḥ and ḫ
- see Semitic_languages#Phonology for confirmation that ḥ and ḫ merged into ḥ in hebrew not ḫ (x)
changed kaf to kap - originally letter pe only represented p not p/f therefore must have been kap not kaf/kaph
spirantization is only documented to have occurred 200 BCE way too late for proto sinatic
added definition to descriptor for letter qup. sewing needle/nape from wikipedia page for letter qoph
changed link for letter shin - šimš to page for letter shin, (from disambiguation page)
changed ipa symbol for entry zayin - zyn /second phoneme/ to ð from ḏ (see proto semitic phonology for confirmation)]
added citiation needed tag to second entry for zyn - namely hypothesized name ḏiqq (cannot find source)
changed hypothesized name for letter beth entry - 'en ('ayin) to 'ayn as this is how the name/word is listed in wiktionary Proto-Semitic/ʿayn-
changed hypothesized name for letter beth entry - bet (beth) to bayt as this is how the name/word is listed in wiktionary Proto-Semitic/bayt-
changed ipa symbol for letter Shin(sin) second entry from /s/ to /ɬ/. /s/ is modern hebrew pronunciation not biblical hebrew
/ɬ/ is attested as the sound in proto semitic - biblical hebrew >700 bce
changed spelling of hypothesized name sadeh to śadeh - this is how this phoneme is transcribed in the protosemitic phonology page
added link to external website verifying that śadeh means field (blueletterbible.org)
added citation needed tag to third hypothesized name ṯinn - no source quoted/cited
added citiation needed to letter he - hypothesized name haw - needs to be verified
added citation needed tag to entries for letters ̣sade/tsade, pe, waw/uph, daleth. names hypothesized for these letters have no citation/sources
changed definition for entry yad (letter yodh) to hand - yodh means hand not arm.
changed ipa entry for letter waw to /w/ from /u/. only later did waw begin to be used as a semi vowel. orig was only a consonant
PLEASE TAKE TIME TO REVIEW MY CHANGES. hopefully this improves the articles quality. -- 10:55, 15 January 2018 Henrylesliegraham
I believe there are some issues here.
1. Is that supposed to be the Egyptian Aa32 glyph? I'm thinking it should be T9, T9A, or T10 glyph. Because for one thing, the Jewish Encyclopedia says that the shin was originally a pictogram of a composite bow; Egyptian T9, T9A, and T10 all clearly depict a bow (all are used more or less interchangeably as logograms or determinatives expressing "bow"), while Aa32 is more obscure (it does look like a bow, but it is not used interchangeably with those other three, and its logographic meanings are "Nubian" and "mineral"). And additionally, the proto-Sinaitic shin glyph visually looks more like the T9, T9A, and T10 (all of which are horizontal) than the Aa32 (vertical).
2. If the glyph, in fact, did come from a glyph of a "bow", then why would the letter's original name have been šimš "sun"? The "bow" glyph looks nothing like the "sun" glyph. Something doesn't seem to add up here.
3. Even assuming the letter was named for "sun", why does the link direct us to Wikipedia's Apep page? That seems entirely irrelevant. 98.115.103.26 ( talk) 15:29, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm also extremely concerned about the accuracy of this article. I've added the {{ accuracy}} hatnote. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 06:15, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Hello! I found what I believe to be an error and I was going to edit but I thought I would bring it to the discussion first; someone else may be more knowledgeable than I and be able to better address. The "Possible correspondences between Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician" chart states that waw is connected to the hieroglyph for fowl, but when you go to the page for waw it states that it is from the hieroglyph for mace - which looks a lot more like all of the other examples for the script. The fowl appears to have nothing to do with waw, unless it was phonetically only. It doesn't appear the hieroglyph pronunciation is the same (hadj), so that may be why the fowl is used instead. If this is the case, should this be noted that the phonetic is different from the hieroglyph counterpart? It is rather confusing. It was first introduced to the table by ip 83.137.1.218 on 25 September 2017. Elowolfe ( talk) 15:32, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree. Here's a quote from Gordon J. Hamilton - The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts (2006, p. 91):
"While *waw- may have stemmed from an archaic noun that is now lost, the morphology of this letter name makes me suspicious that it may have been an ad hoc creation. On the one hand, *waw- is an archaic formation inasmuch as it violates a basic rule of West Semitic phonology, that almost all initial-w words became first-y (Bauer and Leander 1922: 229m-q; HALOT 1: 257).91 A West Semitic cognate noun should have the form *yaw or *yô. The often-cited cognate, wawîm/n in Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic, is thus suspect on phonological grounds. Although that noun is trans- lated “hooks, pins, or pegs” (BDB 255) or “nails, pegs” (HALOT I: 259), all biblical occurrences stem from one context in Exodus: the hooks from which the curtains are suspended in the 'ohel mô'eµd (HALOT I: 259). That meaning correlates closely with shapes of the letter waµw at any time after its head begins in late second millennium B.C. scripts. It seems more likely, therefore, that the rarely attested noun *waw- was generated from this letter’s name (and developed shape) and not vice versa (similarly, Hallo 2004: 286; cf. delta in Greek and delet in Jer 36:23 [BDB, 195]). The only information that wawîm/n communicates is that the Masoretes pointed it as a *qal- and not *qall- nominal form. On the other hand, one may find no etymology for *waw- because it may have been an early ad hoc creation on the pat- tern of acrophonic consonant-vowel or diphthong-same consonant, as in mêm/mîm (and nûn in most languages). Rhyming with taw may have also played a part in this possible creation, which must be dated to the second millennium B.C. because of the lengthened derivative"
The "nail" meaning is also favored by a few Christian groups who regard the Tetragrammaton as prophetic of Jesus/the crucifixion (i.e. YHWH = "hand + praise! + nail + praise!"). But "mace" seems to be the original meaning. See the rest of Hamilton's discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredrickson.n ( talk • contribs) 20:41, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
The PBS Nova episode "A-Z: The First Alphabet" (broadcast just recently) placed great emphasis on the word B`LT, and the acrophonic principle used to derive the sounds of the Northwest Semitic letters -- except for some reason the word "acrophonic" itself was avoided (though the process was described in detail). It also elided over the fact that the first letter of the Northwest Semitic alphabets denoted a glottal stop consonant sound, and NOT any kind of vowel... AnonMoos ( talk) 02:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
I read Britannica's article [2] on the "North Semitic alphabet" as the parent system of the Phoenician and Aramaic scripts. Seeing as it has no Proto-Sinaitic script article, and seeing as Wikipedia has no North Semitic script/alphabet article; I think this Wikipedia article and that one are on the same script but with different titles (and only two letters off when counting how many there are in the script). I'll add "North Semitic alphabet" as an alternative title for the script, alongside the others at the top of the article. Feel free to delete it if you have more insight on the connection between these. Ντόναλντ ( talk) 07:51, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
References
Should this article be changed to BCE/CE? Editor2020 ( talk) 01:31, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
I haven't yet read the comments above. I'm moving the Colless table here until/if we get some kind of consensus that the source is reliable. kwami ( talk) 01:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Only the Colless reconstruction is shown here. For the Albright identification of the Egyptian prototypes, see the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. A third interpretation can be found at the Phoenician alphabet article.
The alphabetical order of these scripts is unknown. They are conventionally presented in the ancient Levantine order because this corresponds to our own alphabet. However, the South Semitic order, h l ḥ m q w š r t s k n x b ..., is also attested from the Late Bronze Age and may be just as old as the Levantine. (See the Ugaritic alphabet.) It is not known if the Egyptians had an alphabetic order, but at least one Egyptian dictionary started with h as the South Semitic order does. This is because the first word was ibis (the tutelary animal of Thoth (dḥwty), the patron of writing), which started with an h in Egyptian, as reflected in its Greek form hībis.
Some of the distinctions listed here are lost or conflated in later Levantine alphabets. For instance, while Η continues the shape of the letter ḥasir, its Greek name eta appears to derive from the closely related fricative xayt. Evidently the two letters had been confounded by the time of the Levantine alphabets. Similarly, šim seems to have replaced θad, taking its place in the alphabet. Colless also reconstructs more than one letter for some phonemes, such as samek Ξ: The fish and the support/spine are alternative glyphs; they never appear together in the same inscription. In other cases there are significant graphic variants, as with šimš (sun), which is represented by a uræus that may not have the sun disk shown here; or naḥaš (snake), which may be represented by several snake hieroglyphs in addition to the one shown here.
Note that all proposals for Egyptian prototypes of the alphabet remain controversial. For example, a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that resembles the hieroglyph djet (snake) is identified with the letter נ Ν here, and has been ever since Gardiner, because the modern name of the corresponding Ethiopic letter is nahas, and the corresponding word in Hebrew, nāḥāš, means "snake". However, Peter T. Daniels is of the opinion that it seems very likely that the modern Ethiopic letter names date no further back than the sixteenth century AD, and so are irrelevant to the investigation of Proto-Sinaitic. [1]
conventional name (meaning) |
hieroglyph | Egyptian value |
Semitic value |
Phoenician | Hebrew | Greek | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
’alp (ox) |
|
ỉḥ | ’ [ʔ] | א | Α | |||||
bayt (house) |
|
pr | b | ב | Β | |||||
gaml (throw stick, boomerang) |
|
qm’ | g | ג | Γ | |||||
xayt (thread/ skein) |
|
ḥ | x | replaced by ḥ | ||||||
dalt (door) |
|
c’ | d | ד | Δ | |||||
hillul (jubilation) |
|
q’ | h | ה | Ε | |||||
waw (hook) |
– | – | w | ו | Ϝ | |||||
ziqq (manacle) |
– | – | z | ז | Ζ | |||||
ḥasir (court) |
|
– | ħ | ח | Η | |||||
ţab (good) |
|
nfr | ţ | ט | Θ | |||||
yad (arm/hand) |
|
c | y | י | Ι | |||||
kapp (palm [of hand]) kipp (palm branch) |
– |
d, drt – |
k | כ | Κ | |||||
šimš (sun uræus) |
|
rac | š | ש | Σ | |||||
lamd (crook/goad) |
|
cwt | l | ל | Λ | |||||
mu (water) |
|
nt | m | מ | Μ | |||||
ðayp (eyebrow) |
|
– | ð | replaced by z | ||||||
naħaš (snake) |
|
j | n | נ | Ν | |||||
samk (support [vine tutor]) samk (fish) |
|
jd, dd ỉn |
s | ס | Ξ | |||||
cayn (eye) |
|
ỉr | c [ʕ] | ע | Ο | |||||
pu (mouth) |
|
r, r’ | p | פ | Π | |||||
şirar (tied bag) |
|
sšr | ş | צ | Ϡ | |||||
qaw (cord [wound on stick]) |
|
wj | q | ק | Ϟ | |||||
ra’iš (head) |
|
tp | r | ר | Ρ | |||||
θad (breast) |
– | – | θ | replaced by š | ||||||
γinab? (grape?) (wine?) |
– | – | γ [ɣ] | – | ||||||
taw (mark) |
– | – | t | ת | Τ |
A comment on that "Ancient Hebrew Alphabet" link. If you look at what they call "Hebrew," (not "Modern Hebrew") it's actually something akin to the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Additionally, per its reliability, I emailed that site to point out that they had (frequently) confused the glyphs for ayin and alef. They emailed back thanking me and telling me they were unaware of this. Frankly I think it should be removed for questions of accuracy; or at least kept with a comment next to it. Michael Sheflin ( talk) 17:43, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Michael, you seem to have semi-volunteered to make images of the PS and WEH letters. They would be an obvious addition to the table if you ever do. Of course, we might need multiple tables since authors disagree as to which letters are which, and which hieroglyphs were the prototypes. kwami ( talk) 18:45, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I removed Colless's assertions, as well as those for the Wimmers, until we can cite the latter; and until the former publishes something. Even if one really liked or supported his blog, he has not blogged on Wadi el-Hol (I'm pretty sure I'm one of the (possibly only) very few to blog on possible translations). Here it is in case someone wants to spank me.
Stefan and Samaher Wimmer's readings of the two inscriptions, with alternate readings by Colless in brackets, are, with disagreements in bold,
Though my personal inclinations suggest that the Proto-Sinaitic and Wadi el-Hol languages and scripts are divergent, the scholarship has published no such division. The book (The Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia ed. by Woodward, the article by Hamilton (2002), and by Darnell et al (2005)) all imply that the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions are considered part of the Proto-Sinaitic script. My own correspondences with Darnell have confirmed this (attitude on 'their' part). Thus, until I (inshallah) publish my article, there is no scholarly source offering evidence that the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions form a script, they only form an earlier 'extension' of the earlier-discovered Proto-Sinaitic corpus. This poses a problem for the organization of the article. Michael Sheflin ( talk) 09:24, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I very much doubt "...Wadi el-Hol (Arabic وادي الهول Wādī al-Hūl)" translates as "Gulch of terror" - added in this edit - so I've removed it. Astronaut ( talk) 00:24, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't see anything wrong with "gulch of terror". If there is anything unusual, it's " gulch", translating " wadi", but I suppose that's at least as good as "valley". Telling people to look up Wehr after they have just cited Lane is a bit of a joke, too. -- dab (𒁳) 07:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I am all for merging poorly referenced article into a single article as a first step in cleaning things up. However, this doesn't mean that all titles that end up pointing to the main article are synonyms.
This article used to be called "Middle Bronze Age alphabets", which was a rather well-informed choice, because it proposed to treat recent discoveries of alphabetic writing that predate 1500 BC. These are very rare scattered inscriptions, and it makes sense to treat them together instead of keeping one stub per inscription.
By now, the article essentially treats "Bronze Age alphabets", i.e. covering the entire period of 1900 to 1100 BC. We need to realize that this 800 year period doesn't encompass anything like a single script, but a gradual evolution we can trace based on a handful of inscriptions. The way I understand it, we need to distinguish
I am not an expert in this and I am not sure I've got this right, but I have doubts whether it is correct to introduce the terminology as "Proto-Sinaitic, called Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan". There may be a diachronic twist to this. -- dab (𒁳) 13:37, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
"The Russian State University of the Humanities (Center of Comparative Linguistics) The Moscow Jewish University The Russian Academy of Sciences (Dept. of History and Philology) The Santa Fe Institute (New Mexico, USA) The City University of Hong Kong The Leiden University" ( http://starling.rinet.ru/babel.php?lan=en)
I missed an obvious point here. Pg. 3 of Woodward (2008) refers to the script - PC is an extension of PS that is seen in Canaan later - this is the growing academic assumption. PC, however, is also an archaic form of Phoenician linguistically. There's no contradiction; PS appears to be linguistically more similar to Ugaritic.
So, no contradiction; PC is both the paleographic extension of PS and the linguistic predecessor of Phoenician. Can't believe I missed that distinction.
(This also speaks pretty strongly to my point about why not translating these inscriptions makes it inappropriate to assume their linguistic content on a paleographic basis - which, Kwami is a similar point to the one you made about the Arabic inclusion in the table - language != script.) Michael Sheflin ( talk) 11:09, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
it isn't clear what you mean. Why "linguistically"? We are discussing scripts here, not languages.-- dab (𒁳) 16:49, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Since this entire article lacks inline citations, it is impossible for a non-expert to even guess the level of acceptance of a given statement or even determine if it is original research- I would suggest the experts go through and do this first and include anything that can be documented and hopefully most arguments then come down to adjectives ("widely accepted" versus "some think" etc). From what I gather, this article is on a class of early alphabet with 2 members, that much does not seem to be in debate. Are there more possible members or is this much accepted and by which sources? The data on which most of the article is based includes a few archalogical finds and probably some independently known information. Only a few people have worked on this topic and there seems to be controversy within the relevant communities about what is likely to be right. The immediate concern is about including the above table which may or may not be helpful in understanding current thought on the topic of "Middle Bronze Age Alphabets." I guess first if this table can be attributed and made relevant- has it been citted by other reliable secondary sources in the field to make realted points?- it would be worth including somewhere. But, since none of the rest of the article has inline citations, it is hard to tell how well the rest of the field is presented. So, maybe it would be easier to take what exists, or even put the table back in, and just start documenting sentence by sentence each claim made- which sources believe this which dispute it. As an analogy, consider even something like Creation Science where the entire topic is held as being without merit by many. It has a page and theories along with criticisms are included. The point here is to document who has stated what ideas not settle arguments- presumably a wikipedia reader may want to use wiki as a starting point for doing that or something similar but we have no way to evaluate merit here. Nerdseeksblonde ( talk) 12:35, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Proto-Sinaitic alphabet → Proto-Sinaitic script – While the script is notable primarily because of the exciting possibility that it may be an alphabet, it may turn out not be an alphabet after all. The script is simply too poorly attested to say for sure. The current name of the page implies that the alphabet hypothesis has been proven, and it hasn't been. That's why I want to rename the page Proto-Sinatic script. I couldn't move the page myself because it conflicts with a redirect page with several redirect changes in its history. It would be awesome if an administrator could move it for me. Rppeabody ( talk) 02:27, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
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Alright, I should clarify something, maybe, not to be condescending at all: there are three sort of levels of analysis - paleography, orthography, and epigraphy. So the first, paleography, refers to the actual 'look' of the letters themselves - how are they written, their orientations, do they fit a broader trend, etc. The second, orthography, refers to how these identified letters fit the 'standard way of writing a word.' The third, epigraphy, refers to the linguistic connections of the language - and not script; so Hebrew was written both in Phoenician and Aramaic-inspired scripts - but the language was Hebrew.
So Kwami, when you bring up the valid example of the Latin and Greek character interchange - this is orthographic. But orthographic shifts are often patterned and so do not affect a broader orthographic reconstruction for like a language family for instance. So in contrast to IPA, which is I think phonetic in entirety; the idea of orthographic stability is that regardless of how things are 'written' or 'vocalized' letters can be reconstructed through comparative analysis of different languages' and dialects' orthographies. This is why you have patterned differences in British and American English that sometimes are phonetic or orthographic - i.e. organisation vs. organization. But when colloquial becomes written, if you were trying to determine the English word you would look at what it developed from - the dictionary word.
And this is why you get Ugaritic words written with ghayn that reflect dad or Zaa. Ghayn is sometimes written in Ugaritic, but the root - including in Ugaritic - is written properly. So, for instance, 3*lm (ghayn-lamed-mim) means "dark" in Ugaritic, but it comes from Z-l-m; and this is the Semitic reconstruction (Akkadian Salamu, etc.). Similarly the Common Semitic root S-3*-r in Akkadian is s.eheru; but the root is S-3*-r, not S-h_-r (which means 'rock'). Phonetically in Akkadian, ghayn was apparently velar or uvular. But this is not relevant to the orthographic reconstruction.
I know you probably at this point think I'm way off base and way longwinded, but check out this paper. Huehnergard is amazing, probably the most qualified Semiticist, particularly on Proto-Semitic. Rendsburg has also been pretty influential regarding cross-comparative Semitic orthographies and Proto-Semitic. Their paper may be able to say what I am clearly failing to ( http://utexas.academia.edu/JohnHuehnergard/Papers/170747/2009_A_Proper_View_of_Arabic_Semitic_and_More_A_Response_to_George_Mendenhall). I think it is difficult to believe that ayin was the earliest or most intuitive transcriptional interchange - since empirically also it wasn't. And if you examine the Ugaritic orthography of the relative pronoun z (Ugaritic d ; Arabian d_ ; Akkadian $) it is difficult to believe that this was not a hugely important character up front - also independent in Ugaritic.
This one is also useful ( http://utexas.academia.edu/JohnHuehnergard/Papers/170732/2008_Ugaritic_Vocabulary_in_Syllabic_Transcription_Additions_and_Corrections) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msheflin ( talk • contribs) 17:18, 11 September 2011 (UTC) sorry.. Michael Sheflin ( talk) 17:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I remember the old suite of articles on these scripts and that it was superior. I am a dedicated scholar of writing systems, especially pictographic phenomena therein. If anyone is interested in the improvement of the Wikipedia coverage of these topics, a reasonable comparison with the older article suite is in order.
Dwarfkingdom ( talk) 07:17, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
Look, if there is controversy or uncertainty, you are supposed to cite secondary sources, ideally a review article summarizing the debate. You can't just wave your hands and make sceptical noises on the assumption that introducing lots of caveats automatically makes the article more "scholarly".
"extreme scarcity of Proto-Sinaitic signs" "It has been argued that Proto-Sinaitic was an alphabet" " If correctly translated, the word baʿlat (Lady) lends credence to the identification of the language as Semitic." "According to the alphabet theory" "However, the lack of further progress in decipherment casts doubt over the other suppositions, and the identification of the hieratic prototypes remains speculative."
where are the references that cast the topic in this light? The Biblical Archaeology Review article doesn't pretend to present original speculation, it simply reports on the script and the history of its decipherment.
If you have another reference that is highly critical of this, by all means peruse it to put these claims into perspective. As long as we have no such critical source, it will not do to go "However, the lack of further progress in decipherment" on the article without as much as pretending to base this on any scholarly publication.
Btw, "Proto-Sinaitic script" is an unfortunate term, because it misleadingly suggests that there is a "Sinaitic script", it would more properly be referred to as the "Sinai(tic) proto-alphabet" or something similar. But it isn't, and the misnomer has just become the name of this thing, so we'll have to roll with it. -- dab (𒁳) 09:19, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
ok, I looked at google books and the internet in general, and finding literature from the 1980s, 1990s, and from 2011 (F. Simons), it becomes clear that I was much too charitable above. The article as it stood misrepresented scholarship.
There is debate on whether the "1850 BCE" date is tenable, but the latest possible estimate (mentioned as hardly tenable by Simons) is 1550 BCE.
Regardless of 1850 vs. 1550, there is no "alphabetic hypothesis"; the script is considered as deciphered, and it is clear that there is a gradual development of "early proto-Canaanite and proto-Sinaitic signs" into the "later proto-Canaanite letters" over the period of (at least) the 16th to 13th centuries.
You can quibble about the dates and about the names or reconstructions of individual glyphs, but there is no "alphabetic hypothesis" that is somehow open to debate on grounds of "the lack of further progress in decipherment" which "casts doubt over the other suppositions". It seems that this was just made up on Wikipedia. --
dab
(𒁳)
10:59, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
I see you have a little "warning" box above the section for the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, flagging it up as needing attention. I have found these in Daniel & Bright's (1996) The World's Writing Systems, and I thought that if someone more qualified than me wants to start a re-write of that section in the future, they may be useful. Some of the book's contributors seem to cast a rather critical eye on the hypothesis that Proto-Sinaitic was an alphabet, plus a number of sociolinguistic reasons, and also on the slant that Egyptian Hieroglyphs may have been the forerunners of the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.
On page 29 (in Section 2), Peter Daniels writes,
As [the Proto-Sinaitic script's] most systematic critic points out, this solution [i.e. Gardiner's interpretation of lb clt acrophonically as "to the Lady"] involves at least four assumptions: this is an alphabetic script; the signs have Egyptian prototypes; the letters are pictographic and acrophonic; and the language is Semitic (Sznycer 1975: 91). Furthermore, most of the occurrences of lb clt ['to the Lady'] are restorations. Gardiner took a snake-shaped character to be n because the modern Ethiopic name for the letter is nahas, and the corresponding word in Hebrew, nāḥāš, means "snake". But it seems very likely that the modern Ethiopic letter names date no further back than the sixteenth century C.E., and so are irrelevant to the investigation of Proto-Sinaitic (Daniels 1991).
M. O'Connor also mentions later, in Section 5, that the Proto-Sinaitic texts, as they have been deciphered, appear to be religious and votive texts...
...[raising] two questions that recur at every stage of the history of writing: (a) Are writing systems developed for religious or for economic (and social) purposes? (b) Are writing systems before the European Renaissance chiefly a concern of elites? One argument against current proposals for reading the Proto-Sinaitic texts (or reading them as the earliest alphabetic texts) is that miners [in those turquoise mines] seeking to honor a deity would not have come up with a writing system: this is plainly open to question, though the proposals are unsatisfactory on other grounds. [O'Connor doesn't mention what those "other grounds" are.]
-- 86.166.238.214 ( talk) 21:23, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
The following table of forms was taken from the confused page Proto-Canaanite alphabet. I placed it here because the letters are closest to Proto-Sinaitic. Kwami requested that I remove it on the grounds that the signs shown are not Proto-Sinaitic. I think I see what Kwami means. The forms are a bit sketchy, and they were probably drawn with the goal of showing an alphabet correspondence rather than loyalty to the data. But some of them are fairly good representations of Proto-Sinaitic. I think a table makes a big improvement to the article, so I would like to either find one that works or modify this one so that it's accurate and reliable. Perhaps we could take this table and remove the signs that Goldwasser does not include in the table in her article (I don't think we can use her table because it's not fair use). Thoughts? Rppeabody ( talk) 01:02, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician | Value and name | Descendants |
---|---|---|---|
ʼ ʾalp "ox" | א Α A ا | ||
b bet "house" | ב Β B ب | ||
g gaml "throwstick" | ג Γ C- G ج | ||
d digg "fish" | ד Δ D ذ- د | ||
h haw / hll "hurrah" | ה Ε E ه Є | ||
w waw "hook" |
ו Ϝ- Υ F- U- V- W- Y و | ||
z zen /ziqq "handcuff" | ז Ζ Z ز З | ||
ḥ ḥet "courtyard" | ח Η H خ- ح | ||
; | ṭ ṭēt "wheel" | ט Θ ظ- ط Ѳ | |
y yad "arm" | י Ι I- J ي | ||
k kap "hand" | כ Κ K ك | ||
l lamd "goad" | ל Λ L ل | ||
m mem "water" | מ Μ M م | ||
n naḥš "snake" | נ Ν N ن | ||
s samek "fish" | ס Ξ X Ѯ | ||
ʻ ʿen "eye" | ע Ο O غ- ع | ||
p piʾt "bend" | פ Π P ف | ||
ṣ ṣad "plant" | צ ϻ ص- ض ц | ||
q qup "monkey" | ק Ϙ Q ق Ҁ | ||
r raʾs "head" | ר Ρ R ر | ||
š/ś šimš "sun, the Uraeus" | ש Σ S ش- س Ш | ||
t taw "signature" | ת Τ T ث- ت |
Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician | Phoen. value | Phoen. name | Descendants |
---|---|---|---|---|
ʼ. | ʾalp "ox" | א Α A ا | ||
b. | bet "house" | ב Β B ب | ||
k | kap "hand" | כ Κ K ك | ||
m | mem "water" | מ Μ M م | ||
ʻ | ʿen "eye" | ע Ο O غ- ع | ||
r | raʾs "head" | ר Ρ R ر |
One more thing: It turns out that a similar table exists at History of the alphabet. Whatever we decide to do here we should also apply there. Rppeabody ( talk) 02:38, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Msheflin -- northern Arabic script was based on borrowing 21 letters from the Aramaic alphabet (ס was not borrowed), while Arabic had at least 28 distinct consonant phonemes, so an extra seven letters had to be created through contrasts in diacritical dotting.
Also, there's strong evidence that the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet had ambiguities (i.e. a single letter used to write multiple consonant phonemes) when it was borrowed to write the Old Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew languages, but no real evidence for such ambiguities when the Phoenician alphabet was used to write the Phoenician language itself... AnonMoos ( talk) 09:15, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
A link to an interesting table of signs by Brian Colless which is cited in this wiki for his translation of Wadi el-Hol inscriptions. https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/ABTEVNTBL.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ianniss ( talk • contribs) 14:52, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
The page doesn't have the entire Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, just a few letters that correspond with Phoenician letters! In my opinion the entire alphabet should be there. Why isn't it there? ThatGuy30722 ( talk) 19:29, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
HI I AM HENRY. I AM STUDING HEBREW LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY AND ALSO BIBLICAL HEBREW ONLINE. AS WELL AS QURANIC ARABIC. BUT I AM NO EXPERT. HOWEVER I HAVE MADE A FEW CHANGES OUTLINED BELOW.
in no particular order:
edited name of letter heth descriptor to ḥaṣr (from heyt) as the hebrew word for courtyard is hatser/hatzer (root = ḥ ṣ r)
changed ipa symbol for first letter heth entry to /ħ/ from /x/ - see phonology of biblical hebrew
changed second entry (hypothesized name) for heth - ḫa to ḫayt as the arabic word for thread is xayt (whence heth) not simply xa
- see proto semitic phonology for confirmation that proto semitic had both ḥ and ḫ
- see Semitic_languages#Phonology for confirmation that ḥ and ḫ merged into ḥ in hebrew not ḫ (x)
changed kaf to kap - originally letter pe only represented p not p/f therefore must have been kap not kaf/kaph
spirantization is only documented to have occurred 200 BCE way too late for proto sinatic
added definition to descriptor for letter qup. sewing needle/nape from wikipedia page for letter qoph
changed link for letter shin - šimš to page for letter shin, (from disambiguation page)
changed ipa symbol for entry zayin - zyn /second phoneme/ to ð from ḏ (see proto semitic phonology for confirmation)]
added citiation needed tag to second entry for zyn - namely hypothesized name ḏiqq (cannot find source)
changed hypothesized name for letter beth entry - 'en ('ayin) to 'ayn as this is how the name/word is listed in wiktionary Proto-Semitic/ʿayn-
changed hypothesized name for letter beth entry - bet (beth) to bayt as this is how the name/word is listed in wiktionary Proto-Semitic/bayt-
changed ipa symbol for letter Shin(sin) second entry from /s/ to /ɬ/. /s/ is modern hebrew pronunciation not biblical hebrew
/ɬ/ is attested as the sound in proto semitic - biblical hebrew >700 bce
changed spelling of hypothesized name sadeh to śadeh - this is how this phoneme is transcribed in the protosemitic phonology page
added link to external website verifying that śadeh means field (blueletterbible.org)
added citation needed tag to third hypothesized name ṯinn - no source quoted/cited
added citiation needed to letter he - hypothesized name haw - needs to be verified
added citation needed tag to entries for letters ̣sade/tsade, pe, waw/uph, daleth. names hypothesized for these letters have no citation/sources
changed definition for entry yad (letter yodh) to hand - yodh means hand not arm.
changed ipa entry for letter waw to /w/ from /u/. only later did waw begin to be used as a semi vowel. orig was only a consonant
PLEASE TAKE TIME TO REVIEW MY CHANGES. hopefully this improves the articles quality. -- 10:55, 15 January 2018 Henrylesliegraham
I believe there are some issues here.
1. Is that supposed to be the Egyptian Aa32 glyph? I'm thinking it should be T9, T9A, or T10 glyph. Because for one thing, the Jewish Encyclopedia says that the shin was originally a pictogram of a composite bow; Egyptian T9, T9A, and T10 all clearly depict a bow (all are used more or less interchangeably as logograms or determinatives expressing "bow"), while Aa32 is more obscure (it does look like a bow, but it is not used interchangeably with those other three, and its logographic meanings are "Nubian" and "mineral"). And additionally, the proto-Sinaitic shin glyph visually looks more like the T9, T9A, and T10 (all of which are horizontal) than the Aa32 (vertical).
2. If the glyph, in fact, did come from a glyph of a "bow", then why would the letter's original name have been šimš "sun"? The "bow" glyph looks nothing like the "sun" glyph. Something doesn't seem to add up here.
3. Even assuming the letter was named for "sun", why does the link direct us to Wikipedia's Apep page? That seems entirely irrelevant. 98.115.103.26 ( talk) 15:29, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm also extremely concerned about the accuracy of this article. I've added the {{ accuracy}} hatnote. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 06:15, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Hello! I found what I believe to be an error and I was going to edit but I thought I would bring it to the discussion first; someone else may be more knowledgeable than I and be able to better address. The "Possible correspondences between Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician" chart states that waw is connected to the hieroglyph for fowl, but when you go to the page for waw it states that it is from the hieroglyph for mace - which looks a lot more like all of the other examples for the script. The fowl appears to have nothing to do with waw, unless it was phonetically only. It doesn't appear the hieroglyph pronunciation is the same (hadj), so that may be why the fowl is used instead. If this is the case, should this be noted that the phonetic is different from the hieroglyph counterpart? It is rather confusing. It was first introduced to the table by ip 83.137.1.218 on 25 September 2017. Elowolfe ( talk) 15:32, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
I agree. Here's a quote from Gordon J. Hamilton - The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts (2006, p. 91):
"While *waw- may have stemmed from an archaic noun that is now lost, the morphology of this letter name makes me suspicious that it may have been an ad hoc creation. On the one hand, *waw- is an archaic formation inasmuch as it violates a basic rule of West Semitic phonology, that almost all initial-w words became first-y (Bauer and Leander 1922: 229m-q; HALOT 1: 257).91 A West Semitic cognate noun should have the form *yaw or *yô. The often-cited cognate, wawîm/n in Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic, is thus suspect on phonological grounds. Although that noun is trans- lated “hooks, pins, or pegs” (BDB 255) or “nails, pegs” (HALOT I: 259), all biblical occurrences stem from one context in Exodus: the hooks from which the curtains are suspended in the 'ohel mô'eµd (HALOT I: 259). That meaning correlates closely with shapes of the letter waµw at any time after its head begins in late second millennium B.C. scripts. It seems more likely, therefore, that the rarely attested noun *waw- was generated from this letter’s name (and developed shape) and not vice versa (similarly, Hallo 2004: 286; cf. delta in Greek and delet in Jer 36:23 [BDB, 195]). The only information that wawîm/n communicates is that the Masoretes pointed it as a *qal- and not *qall- nominal form. On the other hand, one may find no etymology for *waw- because it may have been an early ad hoc creation on the pat- tern of acrophonic consonant-vowel or diphthong-same consonant, as in mêm/mîm (and nûn in most languages). Rhyming with taw may have also played a part in this possible creation, which must be dated to the second millennium B.C. because of the lengthened derivative"
The "nail" meaning is also favored by a few Christian groups who regard the Tetragrammaton as prophetic of Jesus/the crucifixion (i.e. YHWH = "hand + praise! + nail + praise!"). But "mace" seems to be the original meaning. See the rest of Hamilton's discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredrickson.n ( talk • contribs) 20:41, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
The PBS Nova episode "A-Z: The First Alphabet" (broadcast just recently) placed great emphasis on the word B`LT, and the acrophonic principle used to derive the sounds of the Northwest Semitic letters -- except for some reason the word "acrophonic" itself was avoided (though the process was described in detail). It also elided over the fact that the first letter of the Northwest Semitic alphabets denoted a glottal stop consonant sound, and NOT any kind of vowel... AnonMoos ( talk) 02:31, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
I read Britannica's article [2] on the "North Semitic alphabet" as the parent system of the Phoenician and Aramaic scripts. Seeing as it has no Proto-Sinaitic script article, and seeing as Wikipedia has no North Semitic script/alphabet article; I think this Wikipedia article and that one are on the same script but with different titles (and only two letters off when counting how many there are in the script). I'll add "North Semitic alphabet" as an alternative title for the script, alongside the others at the top of the article. Feel free to delete it if you have more insight on the connection between these. Ντόναλντ ( talk) 07:51, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
References
Should this article be changed to BCE/CE? Editor2020 ( talk) 01:31, 18 April 2021 (UTC)