Goldwasser, O. 2010. “How the Alphabet was Born from Hieroglyphs.” Biblical Archaeology Review 36/2 (March/April): 40-53. Award: "Best of BAR" award for 2009-2010. (Discussion with Anson Rainey: http://www.bib-arch.org/scholars-study/alphabet.asp)

O R LY G O L D WA S S E R AlphAbet TENU N/RE CANA A r Rive Nile hershel shanks BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 Amenemhet IV, Egypt was at the height of its power. A lively trade was conducted with Nubia to the south. Imports from the Levant entered Egypt by land and sea. Gold and precious stones were quarried in the eastern desert. And a large-scale enterprise was regularly conducted to search for turquoise in the high mountains of southern Sinai, at a site today called Serabit el-Khadem. On this mountain deep in the Sinai desert, prey to merciless winds and scorching heat, are the remains of an ancient Egyptian temple to the goddess Hathor, “The Mistress of Turquoise.” Founded by Sesostris I, the second king of the XIIth Dynasty (c. 1953–1908 B.C.E.), the temple continued in existence, with some interruptions, until the end of the New Kingdom—for about 800 years. Building on the work of Sesostris I, pharaohs Amenemhet III and Amenemhet IV exploited Serabit’s rich turquoise mines. The precious blue stone A POWerFUl MinOriTY. This colorful but worn painting from the tomb of an egyptian oicial of the Xiith Dynasty shows a family of “Asiatic” nomads entering egypt with their animals and belongings. During the Middle Kingdom, similar groups of semitic Asiatics from syria and canaan poured across egypt’s borders to settle in the well-watered and fertile regions of the eastern nile Delta, the Biblical land of goshen. By the end of the period, Asiatics were involved in nearly every aspect of egyptian society and, for a time, even managed to gain political control over much of egypt. recOnsTrUcTing The serABiT sAncTUArY. Although serabit’s temple is today little more than a jumble of ruins, for nearly 800 years the site was continually maintained and expanded by the pharaohs of egypt’s Middle and new Kingdoms. The site was surrounded by a large enclosure wall that was entered through a small gate (see above). Upon entering the temple complex, worshipers walked along a processional way that was outitted with numerous chapels, the walls and courtyards of which were adorned with the stelae and carvings of earlier generations. At the end of the processional way was an open courtyard that gave access to the temple’s inner sanctum, a small grotto hewn into the hillside dedicated to the egyptian goddess hathor, mistress of turquoise. A number of stelae at serabit are decorated with depictions of the goddess and her distinctive curling hairdo (right). was a much-sought-after luxury item in royal circles. No fewer than 28 expeditions to the Serabit turquoise mines are recorded during the reign of Amenemhet III alone. To ensure the blessing of the gods, the earlier temple was dramatically enlarged by Amenemhet III and Amenemhet IV. Shrines and numerous commemorative stelae with hieroglyphic inscriptions were erected on the path leading to the temple, especially honoring Hathor, the goddess of turquoise. Where did all the people who engraved these inscriptions come from? Most were probably from the Delta. The turquoise expeditions to Serabit brought together high officials, scribes, priests, architects, physicians, magicians, scorpion charmers, interpreters, caravan leaders, donkey drivers, z . radovan/ www.biblel andpictures .com 38 PreViOUs PAges: siTe OF The reVOlUTiOn. Amid the desolate, windswept hills of southern sinai stand the jumbled remains of serabit el-Khadem. Trailing out from the ruins of the site’s temple of hathor are stelae and stones inscribed with the names and prayers of countless oicials, laborers and itinerant travelers who worked the rich turquoise mines during the egyptian Middle Kingdom (c. 1950–1800 B.c.e.). While many of the messages were carved in arcane egyptian hieroglyphs, others were inscribed in canaanite using, for the irst time, a simple but ingenious alphabetic script made up of only a few dozen hieroglyphic-inspired signs. This invention, developed by humble workmen in the turquoise mines of sinai, would forever change human communication. je an-cl aude golvin T o the Asiatics, as they were called, the lush Nile Delta, with its open marshlands rich with fish and fowl, was a veritable Garden of Eden. From earliest times, Canaanites and other Asiatics would come and settle here. Indeed, this is the background of the Biblical story of the famine in Canaan that led to Jacob’s descent into Egypt (Genesis 46:1–7). By the beginning of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (a few years after 2000 B.C.E.), the pressure of immigrants on the eastern Delta was so strong that the Egyptian authorities built a series of forts at strategic points to “repel the Asiatics,” as the story of Sinuhe tells us.1 More than a century later, however, Egyptian policy toward the Asiatics changed. Instead of trying to prevent them from coming in, the Egyptians cultivated close relations with strong Canaanite city-states on the Mediterranean coast and allowed select Asiatic populations to settle MEDITERRANEAN in the eastern Delta. The last SEA DEAD of the great pharaohs of the Nile SEA Delta XIIth Dynasty, Amenemhet Avaris III (c. 1853–1808 B.C.E.) and (Tell el-Daba) Amenemhet IV (c. 1808–1799 Timna B.C.E.), even established a SINAI EGYPT new town for them. Serabit The XIIth Dynasty was folel-Khadem lowed by the much weaker XIIIth Dynasty. Thousands of immigrants from Syria, Lebanon and Canaan then flooded into the eastern Delta, creatRED SEA ing the large Canaanite settleWadi el-Hol ment that would become Avaris (modern Tell el-Daba), the N 0 100 mi capital of the famous Hyksos. The Hyksos were Canaanites who seized power from the Egyptian pharaohs and ruled all Egypt for more than a hundred years (c. 1638–1530 B.C.E.). But before this, at the end of the XIIth Dynasty during the reigns of Amenemhet III and miners, builders, soldiers and sailors. And many members of the expeditions left inscriptions in the temple precinct. Some contain only a name or a drawing. All sought the blessing of the gods for success in their dangerous enterprise—as well as for a safe journey home. These records also tell us of the hundreds of miners and stone workers active during the mining seasons, as well as those who were engaged in the building projects at the temple. MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 39 AlphAbet AlphAbet egYPTiAn TiFFAnY’s. During the Middle Kingdom, egyptian pharaohs like Amenemhet ii supported mining expeditions to the mountains of southern sinai in search of turquoise, a semi-precious blue-greenish stone that had become a prized commodity in royal circles across egypt and the near east. These gold necklaces and armlets, once worn by Amenemhet ii’s daughter Khnumet, include hieroglyphicshaped pendants and accents made of turquoise. A WOMAn’s TOUch. During William Matthew Flinders Petrie’s archaeological expedition to serabit in 1905, his wife hilda, herself an egyptologist, noticed some fallen stones inscribed with unusual signs that were clearly not typical egyptian hieroglyphs. Although Petrie determined that the signs represented an alphabetic script based on hieroglyphic pictograms, he was unable to decipher the curious inscriptions. This photo shows the Petries at the ancient egyptian capital of Memphis in 1910. jÜrgen liepe Were these miners and workmen Egyptian? Canaanite? Both? Egyptian society at this time was relatively tolerant, so foreigners were quickly accepted and integrated into Egyptian society, as long as they were not political enemies of the state. Some high officials who left inscriptions at the Serabit temple present themselves as Egyptians, yet they also mention that they are Asiatic in origin or have an Asiatic mother. Despite this ancestry, they consider themselves Egyptian. Only Asiatics who came from outside Egypt are identified as such. Canaanites from Egypt who arrived with the Egyptian expeditions from the Delta were not labeled Canaanites in the inscriptions; they are simply regarded as Egyptians. The expedition lists at Serabit also contain the names of many “interpreters.” The presence of these dragomans is strong evidence that some language barrier must have existed. The hundreds of recorded donkeys that served as pack animals were probably driven by Asiatic caravan experts, who would be able to direct turquoise shipments back to Egypt. And no doubt Asiatic soldiers in 40 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 Egyptian service escorted these caravans. The bottom line: There were surely many more Canaanites at Serabit than are listed as such in the hieroglyphic inscriptions at the site. One final note: Nowhere in the many inscriptions at the site is there a mention of slaves. Canaanites, yes; slaves, no. It was here at Serabit, I believe, that the alphabet was invented—by Canaanites! T HE INVENTION OF THE ALPHABET USHERED in what was probably the most profound media revolution in history. Earlier writing systems, like Egyptian hieroglyphic and Mesopotamian cuneiform with its curious wedge-shaped characters, each required a knowledge of hundreds of signs. To write or even to read a hieroglyphic or cuneiform text required familiarity with these signs and the complex rules that governed their use. By contrast, an alphabetic writing system uses fewer than 30 signs, and people need only a few relatively simple reading rules that associate these signs with sounds. This great invention had far-reaching social and ALTHOUGH, AS I BELIEVE, THE ALPHABET WAS invented by Canaanites, we still owe a significant debt to the Egyptians, for it was Egyptian hieroglyphs that provided the trigger and the means that made the invention of the alphabet possible. To understand how this came about, we must first examine some very odd Serabit inscriptions— just a few dozen that markedly differ from the hundreds of hieroglyphic inscriptions at the site. The credit for first noticing one of these unusual inscriptions in Serabit goes to Hilda Petrie, wife of the famous Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who was leading an archaeological expedition to Serabit in 1905. It was she who called attention to some fallen stones on the ground by one of the mines, bearing several awkward signs that seemed not to be real hieroglyphs. Then more of these inscriptions began turning up on rocks by the turquoise mines, and even inside the mines. A few came from the desert roads leading to the temple. From the temple precinct itself, however, only two small statues and a sphinx bore inscriptions in this strange new script. Petrie studied these crude inscriptions and observed that they appeared to be a kind of imitation of hieroglyphic signs. Yet the repertoire of signs was very small. Petrie ingeniously identified these awkward signs as an alphabetic script, different from the Egyptian hieroglyphic system with its hundreds of signs. Yet Petrie was unable to read these strange inscriptions. In 1916, some ten years later, Sir Alan Gardiner, university college london, petrie museum of egyptian arcaheology cultural implications. With the alphabet, writing broke out of the “golden cage” of the professional scribal world. Writing was no longer their monopoly. When many more members of society could learn to read (and write), access to information and knowledge was no longer as limited as it had been. Alphabetic writing eventually gave many more people control over their lives and enabled larger segments of the population to take a more active role in the cultural and administrative affairs of their respective societies. But how was it done? the famous English Egyptologist, noticed a group of four signs that was frequently repeated in these unusual inscriptions. Gardiner correctly identified the repetitive group of signs as a series of four letters in an alphabetic script that represented a word in a Canaanite language: b-‘-l-t, vocalized as Baalat, “the Mistress.” Gardiner suggested that Baalat was the Canaanite appellation for Hathor, the goddess of the turquoise mines. Were these inscriptions carved by Canaanite workmen? An important key to the decipherment was a unique bilingual inscription. It is inscribed on a small sphinx from the temple and features a short inscription in what appears to be parallel texts in Egyptian and in the new script. The Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription on the sphinx reads: “The beloved of Hathor, the mistress of turquoise.” The text in the strange script, now identified as a Canaanite text, reads: m-’-h (b) B-‘-l-t, “The beloved of Baalat” (see drawing A on p. 42). MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 41 AlphAbet AlphAbet [british museum]/photo benjamin sass Proto-Sinaitic “B” 42 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 A B Approximate Scale 0 5 cm Each of the critical letters in the word Baalat is a picture—a house, an eye, an ox goad and a cross. Gardiner correctly saw that each pictograph has a single acrophonic value: The picture stands not for the depicted word but only for its initial sound. Thus the pictograph bêt, “house,” drawn as the four walls of a dwelling (shown in margin at lower left) represents only the initial consonant b. Baalat is written as shown in the drawing above, in the blue highlighted areas (although the final tav is not legible in line A). This ingenious principle is at the root of all of our alphabetic systems. Each sign in this script stands for one consonant in the language. (Vowels were not represented. The representation of vowels came later, and in different ways in different alphabetic systems.) The alphabet was invented in this way by Canaanites at Serabit in the Middle Bronze Age, This shOrT egYPTiAn hierOglYPhic inscriPTiOn from serabit (below) includes ive examples of a igure with two raised arms (highlighted in orange), This sign was possibly used to designate the egyptian word for “foreman.” goldwasser believes that the canaanite inventors of the alphabet, who must have associated this sign with the foreman’s loud calls to work (Hoy! ), modeled both the shape and phonetic value of the Proto-sinaitic letter “h” (shown in the margin above right) after this sign. Kingdom inscriptions at Serabit. (Its phonetic reading in Egyptian in this specific use in Sinai, however, is unknown.) This hieroglyph is rare even in later New Kingdom Egyptian inscriptions at Serabit. And it hardly ever appears anywhere else in Egypt.4 A letter in the new Proto-Sinaitic alphabet looks very much like this Middle Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyph. The Proto-Sinaitic sign (shown in margin at lower right) almost certainly stems directly from the Egyptian hieroglyph. The Canaanites at Serabit probably connected this pictogram, which they saw everywhere at the site, with a loud call or order emitted by an official when he raised his hands to assemble the people, a typical shout such as Hoy! (also known in Biblical Hebrew),5 which may be the origin of the letter h in the Proto-Sinaitic script. If I am correct that the first alphabetic script was invented at Serabit el-Khadem in the reign of Amenemhet III (mid-19th century B.C.E.), I believe I can plausibly explain the process by which it was invented—not by sophisticated scribes, but by comparatively unlettered Asiatic workers. The inventors at Serabit clearly used models of hieroglyphs taken from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom inscriptions around them. The Proto-Sinaitic pictograms were adapted from the hieroglyphic pictograms and appear mostly in the area of the turquoise mines and the roads leading to the mines. It may seem strange, but I believe the inventors of the alphabet were illiterate—that is, they could not read Egyptian with its hundreds of Sinai Hieroglyph Proto-Sinaitic “H” from gardiner , THE INSCRIPTIONS OF SINAI, PART I B The riDDle OF The sPhinX. This 10-inch-long sphinx fashioned from sandstone proved to be the key to deciphering the Protosinaitic script. it was discovered by Petrie amid the ruins of serabit’s hathor temple and includes dedicatory inscriptions on both sides of the base (underlined in yellow in the photos above and at left) and on the right shoulder (shown in photo above). Both inscriptions on the base are written in the Proto-sinaitic alphabetic script. The inscription on the right shoulder is written in egyptian hieroglyphs, The hieroglyphic text identiies the name of the goddess to whom the sphinx is dedicated as hathor, “the mistress of turquoise.” The famous egyptologist Alan gardiner observed that each of the signs in the Proto-sinaitic texts represented not an entire word, as in hieroglyphic, but only its initial sound. Four of these strange signs (written left-to-right) spelled the name Baalat, a canaanite word also meaning “the Mistress.” Thus was gardiner able to translate “Baalat,” the irst word deciphered in alphabetic script. in the drawing (above right) of the Proto-sinaitic inscriptions on the base, the letters forming the key word, Baalat, are highlighted in blue. from gardiner , THE INSCRIPTIONS OF SINAI, PART I trustees of the british museum A in the middle of the 19th century B.C.E., probably during the reign of Amenemhet III of the XIIth Dynasty. We are reasonably confident about the place of the invention because almost all of the examples of the new script—which we may now identify by the name scholars call it, Proto-Sinaitic—come from this one site.2 We are also confident about the time of the invention because there are some very specific connections between the Middle Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs in Sinai and the new script.3 There is one hieroglyph that appears to have a special use, with very few exceptions, only in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions in the Sinai during the Middle Kingdom. We might call this the “Sinai Hieroglyph.” The sign looks like a striding man with bent, upraised arms (shown in margin at upper right). In the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions in Sinai, this sign is a logogram; that is, it stands for an entire word, not just part of a word. It probably means something like “foreman.” This hieroglyph appears dozens of times in Egyptian Middle MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 43 AlphAbet AlphAbet when the Hebrew letters have lost all iconic connection to the old pictorial models (we can’t recognize what the letters are supposed to picture), most letters are still named after the old pictures! The modern Hebrew letter aleph is the ’alp, the word for “ox”; the letter bêt is the bayt or “house”; the letter ‘ayin, “eye,” is the name of the old pictorial letter in Proto-Canaanite script (see drawings in right margin on p. 49). But looking at a modern Hebrew aleph, bêt or ‘ayin, we can no longer see the ox, house or eye (nor are these original pictograms evident in the Latin letters A or B). Mostly by taking Egyptian hieroglyphs as pictorial models, the Canaanite inventors of the alphabet used the small selection of pictograms they chose in a completely new way, with no reference to (and no knowledge of ) the correct reading of the signs daniel berti hershel shanks 44 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 An Evolving Alphabet Proto- Phoenician & Early Hieroglyphic Sinaitic Paleo-Hebrew Greek hershel shanks Mining WiTh A PrAYer. During the egyptian Middle Kingdom, countless canaanite workers toiled in serabit’s dark, cavernous mines (shown above) searching for turquoise. Working in cramped, poorly ventilated caves supported by only a handful of stumpy rock-hewn pillars, the miners no doubt looked to their gods for protection and guidance. Were the inscriptions they carved on the walls of the mines meant to secure the eternal blessing of the gods as the miners searched for the precious turquoise? Their inscriptions, which number only a few dozen, are crudely and often haphazardly carved into serabit’s stones and rock faces, with little or no attention given to the scribal “rules” that govern more formal writing traditions. in this inscription (shown above right), which W.F. Albright read as “Thou, O shaphan, collect from ’Ababa eight(?) minas (of turquoise). shime‘a, groom of the chief of the car[avaneers(?)],” the irst half of the text is oriented vertically, while the second half continues in a horizontal direction. This casual method of writing suggests that the miners who invented the alphabet did not know how to read or write the highly formalized, rulegoverned hieroglyphic script they saw all around them. chArTing The hisTOrY OF The AlPhABeT. The ABcs have come a long way since they were invented more than 3,500 years ago. The workmen of serabit adapted most of the original Proto-sinaitic letters from pictographs found in Middle egyptian hieroglyphs. This easily learned alphabetic script survived relatively unchanged for hundreds of years until, around 1200 B.c.e., a more linear, abstracted script developed among the cities and kingdoms of iron Age syria and Palestine. As the alphabet was adopted for Phoenician, greek and then latin, the letters became ever more abstracted, and in the end, no longer bore any resemblance to the original pictorial characters invented by the serabit miners. Modern hebrew letters (shown at far right) developed through the Aramaic alphabetic tradition, although they retain the names of many of the original Proto-sinaitic letters. hieroglyphic signs. Why do I think so? The letters in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are very crude. They are not the same size. They are not written in a single direction: Some are written left to right, others right to left and some from top to bottom. This suggests that the writers had mastered neither Egyptian hieroglyphic nor any other complex, rule-governed script. For these illiterate Canaanites the pictorial meanings of the new letters were paramount. The iconic meaning of the hieroglyphs (what they actually pictured) served as an important mnemonic tool for the Canaanite adopters. The iconic meaning of the hieroglyphs was so important that even today, Greek Latin Modern Hebrew t c v f n b g r , a in Egyptian! Confirming their ignorance of the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Canaanite inventors of the alphabet would sometimes conflate two different hieroglyphic pictograms. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphic distinguishes two different kinds of snakes. One sign pictures a cobra generally; the other depicts a horned viper (both signs are shown in the margin at upper right). These different pictograms are signs for different sounds in Egyptian, the first for the sound “DG” and for the second, “F.” These two snakes are never confused in Egyptian writing. The Canaanite inventors of the alphabet, however, failed to note the distinction and simply conflated the two snakes into a single Proto-Sinaitic sign that they used for the letter “N,” from their word for “snake,” probably nahash (shown in right margin at bottom). For a few letters, the Canaanites took as models not hieroglyphs, but important objects from their own world.6 For example, a drawing of the palm of the hand represents “K,” kaf in Canaanite (see right margin on p. 49); there is no pictogram of a palm of the hand in Egyptian hieroglyphic. Similarly with the Proto-Sinaitic sign depicting a composite bow; there is no comparable sign in Egyptian. In ProtoSinaitic it stands for “SH”; the word for a composite bow in Canaanite was ša-na-nu-ma or the like.7 These examples represent independent creativity on the part of the Canaanite inventors of the alphabet and tend to confirm that they took the Egyptian hieroglyphic signs idiosyncratically and without regard to their function or value in Egyptian. WE MIGHT BE EVEN MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT who the inventors of the alphabet were: We may even know their names. They apparently emerged from among the circle of one Khebeded. He is mentioned in several Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions at the site and is referred to as the “Brother of the Ruler of Retenu.” Retenu was the area between Gaza and the Baqaa in Lebanon. “Ruler of Retenu” was the title carried by rulers in this area of the Levant. When Asiatic rulers migrated to the eastern Delta, it seems that they kept the title “Ruler of Retenu.” It is clear that this “Khebeded, brother of the Ruler of Retenu” is a Canaanite. In one stela at Serabit (Stela 112), Khebeded pictures himself proudly riding on a donkey with an attendant both fore and aft. No Egyptian would picture himself riding on a donkey. On another stela at the Cobra Hieroglyph Horned Viper Hieroglyph Proto-Sinaitic “N” AlPhA MAle. This Asiatic man depicted on the walls of the Beni hassan tomb carries a compound bow (called a ša-nanu-ma in canaanite), which was used as the model for the Protosinaitic letter “sh” (see last row of chart at left). MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 45 AlphAbet AlphAbet 46 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 inscription on Stela 92 would have been an embarrassment for an educated Egyptian scribe (see drawing on p. 49).8 Hieroglyphic signs of different sizes are crammed next to each other, and vacant spaces appear at the end of the line. But the hieroglyphic pictograms in Stela 92 bear a remarkable resemblance to the signs in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. Perhaps most striking is the pictogram for “house,” (shown at top in left margin) in the Egyptian hieroglyphic text of Stela 92. The resemblance to the house in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions representing bêt (shown at bottom in left margin) is unmistakable gardiner , iNSCRIPTIONS OF SINAI, PART I Proto-Sinaitic “B” Hieroglyphic “house” SANCTUAIRE D’HATHOR Khebeded’s “house” pictogram site, Khebeded is pictured with the typical Canaanite “mushroom” hair dress. From the references in these stelae, it appears that Khebeded was involved with Egyptian expeditions to Serabit for more than a decade. He is clearly the highest-ranking Canaanite who left a hieroglyphic inscription in the Serabit temple. He was probably a leader of the Canaanite work force. The quality of the hieroglyphs in an inscription that Khebeded added on a stela (he only added his inscription to an existing stela with much better hieroglyphs) in the temple is very poor. His MUshrOOM hAirDO. This drawing of a hieroglyphic stela inscription (below) shows a procession of egyptian oicials, of whom the canaanite Khebeded (shown last in line, at left) is depicted with the typical mushroom-shaped headdress sported by “Asiatic” men. The same hairstyle adorns the head of a small statue (right) of a canaanite ruler found at the hyksos capital of Avaris (Tell el-Daba) in egypt’s eastern Delta. Together these mushroom hairdos conirm Khebeded’s identity as a proud canaanite. cost lives. The Canaanites watched the Egyptians praying, worshiping and writing to the gods. When a name was written, it remained with the god forever. When a blessing was sought, it remained with the god long after the moment of prayer. The isolation, fear, pressure and the sudden appreciation of “eternalizing the name” would naturally lead the Canaanites to try to write their own calls to their own gods (Baalat and El ) in their own language.10 Was it the cognitively seductive nature of the hieroglyphic script, with its hundreds of little pictures, that made some Canaanite workers at Serabit feel that they could “almost read” and that gave them the feeling of “Yes, we can”? As already noted, the vast majority of the inscriptions in this alphabet come from the Serabit area—more than 30 of them. Only one has come from elsewhere in Egypt (the two-line Wadi elHôl inscription). Some few, very short inscriptions (most only a couple of letters) have been found in Canaan dating to the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age (c. 1750–1200 B.C.E). archives austrian academy gardiner, iNSCRIPTIONS OF SINAI, PART I SANCTUAIRE D’HATHOR inVenTOr OF The AlPhABeT? On one of the serabit elKhadem stelae (shown at right), Khebeded, “the brother of the ruler of retenu,” is shown proudly seated atop a donkey being led by two attendants (see detail and drawing above). While such a depiction would have been considered an insult by most egyptians, for the canaanites who labored at the mines, it was a sign of Khebeded’s elevated, even royal status and, most probably, his high rank within the canaanite workforce. Was he the canaanite who invented the alphabet? and is very different from the original Egyptian hieroglyph (shown in the right margin). The only Egyptian inscriptions where the square house is consistently used come from this area of Sinai and from the Middle Kingdom. And it appears unequivocally several times in Stela 92, which is probably a hieroglyphic Egyptian text made by Canaanites who were familiar with the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. They confused the picture of their own “house”-letter with the correct Egyptian hieroglyph! The Proto-Sinaitic alphabet may well have been invented in the circle of the Canaanite Khebeded and his followers, many of whose names appear in his stela. John Darnell, who discovered a two-line inscription in the Wadi el-Hôl (near Thebes) similar to the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions from Serabit (see box on p. 48), has suggested that the alphabet must have been invented in Egypt in a location with “a plurality of cultural contexts.”9 But isn’t “a plurality of contexts” an exact description of Serabit in the Middle Kingdom? It was indeed a world unto itself. The workers in the mines spent long days and nights in the isolated desert, secluded in their camps. The difficult, dangerous work and the long expeditions no doubt MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 47 AlphAbet The Wadi el-Hôl Inscription: Earlier than Serabit? In 1993 Egyptologist John Darnell discovered in the Wadi el-Hôl near Luxor, Egypt, an alphabetic inscription similar to those at Serabit el-Khadem discussed in the accompanying article. Initially, it was thought that this inscription might be earlier than the Serabit inscriptions. If so, was the alphabet invented earlier than the Serabit inscriptions and somewhere other than Serabit, perhaps near the Wadi el-Hôl? Although there was some early scholarly speculation that this indeed might be the case, this view has now been largely abandoned. the el-hôl inscription is faintly carved into a limestone wall on the ancient road between thebes and Abydos. the inscription could be read “(the) besieger h,ug, ‘el’s trickle,’ ” (see drawing above and at right).1 On the same rock face as this alphabetic inscription are some egyptian cursive hieroglyphic inscriptions that can be dated paleographically. If the alphabetic inscription can be dated by the date of the egyptian inscriptions, perhaps we can determine whether Serabit or el-hôl is earlier. however questionable this dating procedure might be, this is all we have to go on. but even if the hieroglyphic inscriptions are used as a basis for dating the alphabetic inscription at el-hôl, the latter would be slightly later than alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit. Almost all scholars, including John Darnell, now agree that the adjacent hieroglyphic inscriptions at el-hôl date to the late Middle Kingdom (17th century b.C.e.). this would place the el-hôl alphabetic inscription slightly later than the alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit. the alphabetic inscription from el-hôl represents an early and slightly deviating version from its origins at Serabit. the el-hôl inscription exhibits features of inluence from the egyptian writing system, as well as the inscription’s Canaanite communicators. here is an example of each: In the vertical portion of the el-hôl text (pictured above; see drawing at right), the “seated man” sign is used as an unpronounced determinative or classiier; this sign is not a letter, but rather tells the reader that the preceding word belongs to a particular category or classiication [MAN]. this is a typical hieroglyphic characteristic. It is not used in any alphabetic writing system. In this respect, the el-hôl inscription is not as “purely” alphabetic as the Serabit inscriptions. the pictorial style of the el-hôl letters, however, indicates that the Serabit system was communicated (probably by a Canaanite) m k Canaanite “mushroom” headdress to the Wadi el-hôl scribe. the letter resh, for example, (fourth letter from the top) was carved in the shape of a head with the typical Canaanite “mushroom” headdress (see image above left) and does not follow the model of the egyptian hieroglyphic head (see image above right). Most probably the el-hôl alphabetic inscription was brought here by some Canaanites who used the typical Canaanite head. After all, it is “their” script. 1I would like to thank professor Steve Fassberg, chair in Ancient Semitic languages at the hebrew University in Jerusalem, for his help in reading the inscription. BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 t r [classiier for man] ˛ w t p k g u , p f ’ t l k culture there ... The alphabet’s first documented use boils down to the most basic and touching form of communication—‘I was here.’ ”11 The Middle Kingdom in Egypt was followed by what is known as the Hyksos period (the XVth through XVIIth dynasties: 17th–16th centuries B.C.E.). In the Hyksos period, Canaanites ruled Egypt. (This period is sometimes cited as a model for Joseph’s rise to power in Egypt, as described in Genesis 37–47.) As noted earlier, the Hyksos capital at Tell el-Daba has been intensively excavated for During this early period (until the 13th–12th centuries) the script continued to be used in a very restricted way, mainly to record personal and divine names. No administration, institution or scribal school was involved. No official power-holders would have an interest in sustaining or developing this subversive fringe invention of the nomads. That is probably why individual re-creations of the signs differ so widely, even though they always preserved their fundamental iconicity. During the 12th century B.C.E., the dominant civilizations that had cultivated the complex hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts in Egypt and Mesopotamia fell out of power. New peoples—Israelites, Phoenicians, Moabites and Arameans—appeared in Canaan and the Levant. For these new people, emerging on the periphery of the old great cultures, it was only natural to write in the fringeborn system of writing that traveled in their own milieu. It suited their languages, their social needs and their newly established identities. Sometime during this period of change, the new script must have become institutionalized, maybe even promulgated in schools. As a result, the script quickly underwent a process of linearization and ox or ’alp = ’ house or beth = “B” hand or kaf = “K” water or mayim = “M” snake or nahash = “N” An hOnesT MisTAKe? On another Khebeded stela (below and right), our author noted an interesting scribal mistake that suggests the canaanite prince Khebeded had already started learning (or even creating) the irst alphabet. Although Khebeded wrote this text in egyptian, many of the hieroglyphic signs he uses are either poorly carved or incorrect. One sign in particular (highlighted in orange), bears a remarkable resemblance to the Proto-sinaitic letter bêt (B), rather than its hieroglyphic character. Did Khebeded confuse the new letter bêt with the original hieroglyphic “house” sign on whose shape it had been based? eye or ‘ayin = “ ” ‘ head or rosh = “R” gardiner , iNSCRIPTIONS OF SINAI, PART I THE ALPHABET WAS NOT AN INSTANT SUCCESS— at least based on the existing examples. One thing is certain: It did not travel fast. Only rarely did a Canaanite caravaneer or soldier bring the alphabet elsewhere. For a half millennium after its invention, this alphabet was rarely used—at least as far as it is reflected in the archaeological record. As the Semitist Seth Sanders has observed: “In this earliest phase, the alphabet is a quick and dirty tool of foreign workers, scrawled in desolate places: the mines, the gush of terror. There is no high 48 Egyptian hieroglyphic head n f , r almost 40 years by Viennese archaeologist Manfred Bietak and his team. Not a single Proto-Sinaitic inscription has been found there. The Canaanite rulers of Avaris would never adopt such an undeveloped, “primitive,” low-class script for their own records. When they presented themselves in inscriptions (which are scarce in Avaris), it was naturally in prestigious Egyptian hieroglyphs. As the alphabetic script wandered with Canaanite caravans, it piously retained its pictorial forms for hundreds of years. People learned the letters from one another orally. For this kind of use, the pictorial nature of the signs was very important. It was easy to learn the alphabet simply by memorizing the pictures. The first sound of the picture was the letter. To remember the alphabet, all one had to do was memorize the pictures. The rest followed from that: The “name” of the letter leads one to a picture, which helps to recreate the form of the letter: In the margin at right you can see the ox-shaped head of the letter aleph, the box-shaped house (bêt) for “B,” the hand-like kaf for “K,” wavy lines representing mayim (“water”) or “M,” the snake-like nahash for “N,” the eye for ‘ayin and the head (rosh) for “R.” MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 49 Alphabet A Cuneiform Alphabet at Ugarit During the 14th and 13th centuries B.C.E., many of the royal scribes in the Canaanite coastal city of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra in Syria) were trained in a unique form of the wedge-shaped cuneiform script. Unlike the normal cuneiform script, which includes hundreds of signs, the new Ugaritic script is made up of only a couple dozen. After studying the script, scholars realized that Ugaritic is, in fact, an “alphabetic” cuneiform script that adapted the techniques of cuneiform writing (i.e., clay tablets, stylus and wedge-shaped signs) to an alphabetic system. thirty cuneiform characters were used to write all sorts of documents, from letters to literary texts. toward the end of the late bronze Age, the Ugaritic alphabet spread to Canaan. Single tablets in this special cuneiform script have been found at Canaanite beth Shemesh, taanach, Nahal tabor and other locations. In Canaan, during the 13th and 12th centuries b.C.e., two alphabetic writing systems lived side by side: the cuneiform Ugaritic alphabet, practiced by educated scribes in the urban centers, and the “script of the caravaneers” born in the mines of Serabit el-Khadem and practiced occasionally and in a limited form (mostly for writing names) by the nonurban Canaanite populations who inhabited the hill country and the urban fringes. Does this mean that the alphabet was invented again, independently, by the learned continued from page 50 1 scribes in Ugarit, several hundred years after the Canaanite miners of Serabit had already come up with the same idea? the answer is no. the sophisticated scribes of Ugarit only domesticated the brilliant traveling innovation of the miners and caravaneers of Serabit that they somehow learned. the scribes of Ugarit “translated” what probably looked to them like weird iconic (pictorial) signs into their own “civilized” wedge-shaped script. the proof that we are not dealing with an independent alphabetic invention is two-fold. First, the order of the cuneiform alphabetic signs is essentially the same as the order of the iconic proto-Canaanite alphabetic signs. Second, the names of the alphabetic cuneiform signs go back to the iconic meanings of the signs of the proto-Canaanite script.1 In other words, the names of these wedgeshaped signs are very similar to the names of the proto-Canaanite pictorial letters, although the Ugaritic cuneiform is not pictorial at all. All this is evidenced in abecedaries like this found in Ugarit (pictured above). abstraction.12 More experienced writers could relinquish the pictorial link between the letter and its name. At this stage, the “script of the caravans” lost one of its greater assets: its mnemonic power. From this moment on (12th–11th centuries), the user of the script would have to learn a list of arbitrary signs. It would be difficult if not impossible to find the pictures of a bull, a head or a snake in the script. During the ninth century B.C.E., the alphabet became the official script of the entire Near East. With its adoption—first for Greek, and later for Latin—the alphabetic script, invented in the milieu of Canaanite miners in the remote Sinai desert, became the script of Western civilization. The alphabet was invented only once. All alphabetic scripts derive from this original one, which we may call the Serabit alphabetic script. 50 DiFFerenT scriPT, sAMe AlPhABeT. This cuneiform clay tablet found at the ancient syrian coastal city of Ugarit is in fact impressed with wedge-shaped alphabetic signs. Was the alphabet invented twice? During the “translation” process, the wedge characters of the Ugaritic script renounced the iconic relationship between the name of the letter and its appearance. In this way, the mnemonic power of the proto-Canaanite alphabet was completely lost to the Ugaritic scribes. Ultimately, the cuneiform alphabet of Ugarit disappeared from the historical stage probably by the end of the 12th century b.C.e. It ceased to exist a few decades after the city-based schools, scribes and institutions that promoted it vanished with the fall of the great late bronze Age civilizations. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 18–22. 2 A few very short, similar inscriptions have turned up in Canaan—called Proto-Canaanite— but they are dated later, to the late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom (17th–16th century B.C.E. at the earliest). See especially the examples of the Shechem plaque, the Gezer sherd and the Lachish dagger in Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography, reprint of 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1997), pp. 26–7. See also the Tell Nagila sherd in Gordon J. Hamilton, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2006), p. 392. Another small, two-line example comes from Wadi el-Hôl (near Thebes) from a wall with Egyptian inscriptions which date to the late Middle Kingdom (late Dynasty XII and Dynasty XIII) and Second Intermediate period. These inscriptions seem also to date a little later than the Sinai inscriptions. 3 See Orly Goldwasser, “Canaanites Reading Hieroglyphs: Horus is Hathor?—The Invention of the Alphabet in Sinai,” Egypt & Levant 16 (2006), pp. 121–160 for a detailed table with all references. 4 One example is known from an Egyptian inscription in Tell el-Daba and another from Wadi Gasus. 5 Hamilton, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts, p. 84. 6 See recently Anson F. Rainey, “Review of The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts, by G.J. Hamilton,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 354 (2009), p. 85. 7 Hamilton, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Script, p. 242 (after Huehnergard). 8 Dated to year 13 of Amenemhet III. 9 John C. Darnell, Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hôl. New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt (together with: Meredith S. Chesson et al., Results of the 2001 Kerak Plateau Early Bronze Age Survey), Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59 (Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2005), p. 91. 10 The god El is mentioned at least three times in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions in Serabit (Sinai 377, 378, 363), and once in Wadi el-Hôl. The god El plays a central role in the Book of Judges. See recently André Lemaire, The Birth of Monotheism—The Rise and Disappearance of Yahwism (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeo- logy Society, 2007), pp. 14–17. 11 Seth L. Sanders, “What Was the Alphabet For? The Rise of Written Vernaculars and the Making of Israelite National Literature,” Maarav 11 (2004), p. 44. 12 From the 12th century B.C.E., see the Qubur el-Walaydah fragment (northwest Negev) and the Izbet Sartah ostracon in Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet, pp. 36–37. For a recently discovered mid-tenth-century B.C.E. example, see the Tel Zayit abecedary in Ron Tappy et al., “An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century from the Judaean Shephelah,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344 (2006), p. 27. A stratified ostracon carrying a text (probably a letter) dated to the tenth century B.C.E. was also found recently at Khirbet Qeiyafa near Beit Shemesh by Yossef Garfinkel. He identified the site as a Judean city from the time of King David. See “Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time,” BAR, January/February 2009 and “Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered in Israelite Fort on Philistine Border,” on p. XX of this issue. For a different, later dating of these inscriptions, see Benjamin Sass, The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium. The Journal of the Institute of Archeology of Tel Aviv Univ. Occasional Publications No. 4 (2005). However, the dates of these finds is still highly debated. 1 See Frank Moore Cross and thomas lambdin, “A Ugaritic Abecedary and the Origins of the proto-Canaanite Alphabet,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 160 (1960), pp. 21–26, now conveniently available in Frank Moore Cross, Leaves From an Epigrapher’s Notebook (Winona lake, Indiana: eisenbraums, 2003), pp. 313–316. The invention of the alphabet altered, in the long run, the lives of millions of people for millennia. It was not invented by learned scribes in schools, however. It was the child of a few great minds— perhaps one—who lived among the Canaanites working in the turquoise mines of Sinai. Egyptian hieroglyphs, however, made this invention possible. Through the invention of the alphabet, the longlost ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs secretively live within our own script to this day. a I would like to thank Professors Joseph Naveh and Benjamin Sass, both of whom contributed greatly to my understanding of various aspects of ancient epigraphy treated in this article. Thanks also to Dan Elharrar of the Hebrew University for his invaluable technical assistance in preparing images for this article. E N D N O T E S O N PA G E 7 4 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW • MARCH/APRIL 2010 MARCH/APRIL 2010 • BIB 7 51