Phoenician alphabet
Script type
Time period
c. 1200–150 BC[1]
LanguagesPhoenician, Punic
Related scripts
Parent systems
Child systems
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
Aramaic alphabet
Greek alphabet
?Libyco-Berber
?Paleohispanic scripts
Sister systems
South Arabian alphabet
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Phnx (115), ​Phoenician
Unicode
Unicode alias
Phoenician
U+10900–U+1091F
 This page contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad[3] consisting of 22 letters, all consonants, with matres lectionis used for some vowels in certain late varieties. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia.

The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.[4] It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is a local variant of the Phoenician alphabetical script.[5] Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script. The Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants, such as Latin, Cyrillic, Runic, and Coptic) was also derived from Phoenician.

As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most of the shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman-era North Africa. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written in boustrophedon.

History

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Origin

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The earliest known alphabetic (or "proto-alphabetic") inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic (or Proto-Canaanite) script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle and Late Bronze Age. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC.

The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite" script of the Bronze Age collapse period. The so-called Ahiram epitaph, from about 1200 BC, engraved on the sarcophagus of king Ahiram in Byblos, Lebanon, one of five known Byblian royal inscriptions, shows essentially the fully developed Phoenician script,[6] although the name "Phoenician" is by convention given to inscriptions beginning in the mid 11th century BC.[7]

Spread of the alphabet and its social effects

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Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. The alphabet's success was due in part to its phonetic nature; Phoenician was the first widely used script in which one sound was represented by one symbol, which meant that there were only a few dozen symbols to learn. This simple system contrasted with the other scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, which employed many complex characters and were difficult to learn.[8]

Another reason for its success was the maritime trading culture of Phoenician merchants, which spread the use of the alphabet into parts of North Africa and Europe.[9] Phoenician inscriptions have been found in archaeological sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos (in present-day Lebanon) and Carthage in North Africa. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt.[10]

Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. Its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of writing systems only being learned and employed by members of the royal and religious hierarchies of society, who used writing as an instrument of power to control access to information by the larger population.[11] The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these class divisions, although many Middle Eastern kingdoms, such as Assyria, Babylonia and Adiabene, would continue to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into the Common Era.

Modern rediscovery

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The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, but up to the 19th century its origin was unknown. It was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs.[12] This idea was especially popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian.[13] This latter notion is reminiscent of the eventual discovery that the proto-Sinaitic alphabet was inspired by the model of hieroglyphs.

Development

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The Phoenician letter forms shown here are idealized: actual Phoenician writing was cruder and more variable in appearance. There were also significant variations in Phoenician letter forms by era and region.

When alphabetic writing began in Greece, the letter forms used were similar but not identical to the Phoenician ones and vowels were added because the Phoenician alphabet did not contain any vowels. There were also distinct variants of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how those Phoenician characters that did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were used. The Ionic variant evolved into the standard Greek alphabet, and the Cumae variant into the Latin alphabet, which accounts for many of the differences between the two. Occasionally, Phoenician used a short stroke or dot symbol as a word separator.[14]

The chart shows the graphical evolution of Phoenician letter forms into other alphabets. The sound values often changed significantly, both during the initial creation of new alphabets and from pronunciation changes of languages using the alphabets over time.

Letter Name[15] Meaning Phoneme Origin Corresponding letter in
Image Text Hebrew Syriac Arabic South Arabic Ge'ez Greek Latin Cyrillic Georgian
  𐤀 ʾālep ox ʾ [ʔ] 𓃾 א ܐ 𐩱 Αα Aa Аа /ⴀ/Ⴀ
  𐤁 bēt house b [b] 𓉐 ב ܒ 𐩨 Ββ Bb Бб, Вв /ⴁ/Ⴁ
  𐤂 gīml throwing stick/camel g [ɡ] 𓌙 ג ܓ 𐩴 Γγ Cc, Gg Гг, Ґґ /ⴂ/Ⴂ
  𐤃 dālet door d [d] 𓇯 ד ܕ د, ذ 𐩵 Δδ Dd Дд /ⴃ/Ⴃ
  𐤄 window h [h] 𓀠 ה ܗ ه 𐩠 Εε Ee Ее, Єє, Ээ /ⴄ/Ⴄ
  𐤅 wāw hook w [w] ו ܘ 𐩥 (Ϝϝ), Υυ Ff, Uu, Vv, Yy, Ww (Ѵѵ), Уу, Ўў /ⴅ/Ⴅ
  𐤆 zayin weapon z [z] 𓏭 ז ܙ 𐩹 Ζζ Zz Зз /ⴆ/Ⴆ
  𐤇 ḥēt wall, courtyard [ħ] 𓉗 ח ܚ ح, خ 𐩢, 𐩭 , Ηη Hh Ии, Йй /ⴈ/Ⴈ
  𐤈 ṭēt wheel [] 𓄤 ט ܛ ط, ظ 𐩷 Θθ (Ѳѳ) /ⴇ/Ⴇ
  𐤉 yōd hand y [j] 𓂝 י ܝ ي 𐩺 Ιι Ii, Jj Іі, Її, Јј
  𐤊 kāp palm (of a hand) k [k] 𓂧 כך ܟ 𐩫 Κκ Kk Кк /ⴉ/Ⴉ
  𐤋 lāmed goad l [l] 𓌅 ל ܠ 𐩡 Λλ Ll Лл /ⴊ/Ⴊ
  𐤌 mēm water m [m] 𓈖 מם ܡ 𐩣 Μμ Mm Мм /ⴋ/Ⴋ
  𐤍 nūn serpent n [n] 𓆓 נן ܢ 𐩬 Νν Nn Нн /ⴌ/Ⴌ
  𐤎 sāmek fish, djed s [s] 𓊽 ס ܣ, ܤ 𐩪 Ξξ, poss. Χχ poss. Xx (Ѯѯ), poss. Хх /ⴑ/Ⴑ
  𐤏 ʿayin eye ʿ [ʕ] 𓁹 ע ܥ ع, غ 𐩲 Οο, Ωω Oo Оо /ⴍ/Ⴍ
  𐤐 mouth p [p] 𓂋 פף ܦ ف 𐩰 Ππ Pp Пп /ⴎ/Ⴎ
  𐤑 ṣādē ? (papyrus?) [] צץ ܨ ص, ض 𐩮 , ጰ, ፀ (Ϻϻ) Цц, Чч, Џџ /ⴚ/Ⴚ
  𐤒 qōp needle eye q [q] 𓃻 ק ܩ 𐩤 (Ϙϙ), poss. Φφ, Ψψ Qq (Ҁҁ) /ⴕ/Ⴕ
  𐤓 rēš head r [r] 𓁶 ר ܪ 𐩧 Ρρ Rr Рр /ⴐ/Ⴐ
  𐤔 šīn tooth š [ʃ] 𓌓 ש ܫ ش, س 𐩦 Σσς Ss Сс, Шш, Щщ /ⴘ/Ⴘ
  𐤕 tāw mark t [t] 𓏴 ת ܬ ت, ث 𐩩 , ፐ (?) Ττ Tt Тт /ⴒ/Ⴗ
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
Plain Emphatic
Nasal m n
Stop Voiceless p t k q ʔ
Voiced b d ɡ
Fricative Voiceless s ʃ ħ h
Voiced z ʕ
Trill r
Approximant l j w

Letter names

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Phoenician used a system of acrophony to name letters. The names of the letters are essentially the same as in its parental scripts, which are in turn derived from the word values of the original hieroglyph for each letter.[16] The original word was translated from Egyptian into its equivalent form in the Semitic language, and then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's value.[17]

According to a 1904 theory by Theodor Nöldeke, some of the letter names were changed in Phoenician from the Proto-Canaanite script.[dubiousdiscuss] This includes:

  • gaml "throwing stick" to gimel "camel"
  • digg "fish" to dalet "door"
  • hll "jubilation" to he "window"
  • ziqq "manacle" to zayin "weapon"
  • naḥš "snake" to nun "fish"
  • piʾt "corner" to pe "mouth"
  • šimš "sun" to šin "tooth"


Yigael Yadin (1963) went to great lengths to prove that they actually were tools of war, similar to the original drawings.[18]

Numerals

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The Phoenician numeral system consisted of separate symbols for 1, 10, 20, and 100. The sign for 1 was a simple vertical stroke (𐤖). Other numbers up to 9 were formed by adding the appropriate number of such strokes, arranged in groups of three. The symbol for 10 was a horizontal line or tack (𐤗‎). The sign for 20 (𐤘) could come in different glyph variants, one of them being a combination of two 10-tacks, approximately Z-shaped. Larger multiples of ten were formed by grouping the appropriate number of 20s and 10s. There existed several glyph variants for 100 (𐤙). The 100 symbol could be combined with a preceding numeral in a multiplicatory way, e.g. the combination of "4" and "100" yielded 400.[19] Their system did not contain a numeral zero.[20]

Unicode

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Phoenician
RangeU+10900..U+1091F
(32 code points)
PlaneSMP
ScriptsPhoenician
Assigned29 code points
Unused3 reserved code points
Unicode version history
5.0 (2006)27 (+27)
5.2 (2009)29 (+2)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [21][22]

The Phoenician alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in July 2006 with the release of version 5.0. An alternative proposal to handle it as a font variation of Hebrew was turned down. (See PDF summary.)

The Unicode block for Phoenician is U+10900–U+1091F. It is intended for the representation of text in Palaeo-Hebrew, Archaic Phoenician, Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyri, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Punic.

The letters are encoded U+10900 𐤀aleph through to U+10915 𐤕taw, U+10916 𐤖‎, U+10917 𐤗‎, U+10918 𐤘‎ and U+10919 𐤙‎ encode the numerals 1, 10, 20 and 100 respectively and U+1091F 𐤟‎ is the word separator.

Block

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Phoenician[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1090x 𐤀 𐤁 𐤂 𐤃 𐤄 𐤅 𐤆 𐤇 𐤈 𐤉 𐤊 𐤋 𐤌 𐤍 𐤎 𐤏
U+1091x 𐤐 𐤑 𐤒 𐤓 𐤔 𐤕 𐤖 𐤗 𐤘 𐤙 𐤚 𐤛 𐤟
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

History

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The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Phoenician block:

Version Final code points[a] Count L2 ID WG2 ID Document
5.0 U+10900..10919, 1091F 27 N1579 Everson, Michael (1997-05-27), Proposal for encoding the Phoenician script
L2/99-013 N1932 Everson, Michael (1998-11-23), Revised proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS
L2/99-224 N2097, N2025-2 Röllig, W. (1999-07-23), Comments on proposals for the Universal Multiple-Octed Coded Character Set
N2133 Response to comments on the question of encoding Old Semitic scripts in the UCS (N2097), 1999-10-04
L2/04-149 Kass, James; Anderson, Deborah W.; Snyder, Dean; Lehmann, Reinhard G.; Cowie, Paul James; Kirk, Peter; Cowan, John; Khalaf, S. George; Richmond, Bob (2004-05-25), Miscellaneous Input on Phoenician Encoding Proposal
L2/04-141R2 N2746R2 Everson, Michael (2004-05-29), Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS
L2/04-177 Anderson, Deborah (2004-05-31), Expert Feedback on Phoenician
L2/04-178 N2772 Anderson, Deborah (2004-06-04), Additional Support for Phoenician
L2/04-181 Keown, Elaine (2004-06-04), REBUTTAL to “Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS”
L2/04-190 N2787 Everson, Michael (2004-06-06), Additional examples of the Phoenician script in use
L2/04-187 McGowan, Rick (2004-06-07), Phoenician Recommendation
L2/04-206 N2793 Kirk, Peter (2004-06-07), Response to the revised "Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script" (L2/04-141R2)
L2/04-213 Rosenne, Jony (2004-06-07), Responses to Several Hebrew Related Items
L2/04-217R Keown, Elaine (2004-06-07), Proposal to add Archaic Mediterranean Script block to ISO 10646
L2/04-226 Durusau, Patrick (2004-06-07), Statement of the Society of Biblical Literature on WG2 N2746R2
L2/04-218 N2792 Snyder, Dean (2004-06-08), Response to the Proposal to Encode Phoenician in Unicode
L2/05-009 N2909 Anderson, Deborah (2005-01-19), Letters in support of Phoenician
5.2 U+1091A..1091B 2 L2/07-206 N3284 Everson, Michael (2007-07-25), Proposal to add two numbers for the Phoenician script
  1. ^ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

Derived alphabets

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Each letter of Phoenician gave way to a new form in its daughter scripts. Left to right: Latin, Greek, Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic

Middle Eastern descendants

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The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, used to write early Hebrew, was a regional offshoot of Phoenician; it is nearly identical to the Phoenician one (in many early writings it is impossible to distinguish between the two).[citation needed] The Samaritan alphabet, used by the Samaritans, is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. The current Hebrew alphabet is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet, itself a descendant of the Phoenician script.

The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic, is another descendant of Phoenician. Aramaic, being the lingua franca of the Middle East, was widely adopted. It later split off (due to power/political borders) into a number of related alphabets, including Hebrew, Syriac, and Nabataean, the latter of which in, its cursive form, became an ancestor of the Arabic alphabet that is currently used in Arabic-speaking countries from North Africa through the Levant to Iraq and the Persian Gulf region, as well as in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries.

The Sogdian alphabet, a descendant of Phoenician via Syriac, is an ancestor of the Old Uyghur, which in turn is an ancestor of the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets, the former of which is still in use and the latter of which survives as the Xibe script.

The Arabic script is a descendant of Phoenician via Aramaic.

The Coptic alphabet, still used in Egypt for writing the Christian liturgical language Coptic (descended from Ancient Egyptian), is mostly based on the Greek alphabet, but with a few additional letters for sounds not in Greek at the time. Those additional letters are based on Demotic script.

Derived European scripts

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According to Herodotus,[23] the Phoenician prince Cadmus was accredited with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet—phoinikeia grammata, "Phoenician letters"—to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their Greek alphabet, which was later introduced to the rest of Europe. Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BC, and claims that the Greeks did not know of the Phoenician alphabet before Cadmus.[24] However, Herodotus's writings are not used as a standard source by contemporary historians. The Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician alphabet.[25] The phonology of Greek being different from that of Phoenician, the Greeks modified the Phoenician script to better suit their language. It was possibly more important in Greek to write out vowel sounds: Phoenician being a Semitic language, words were based on consonantal roots that permitted extensive removal of vowels without loss of meaning, a feature absent in the Indo-European Greek. (Or perhaps, the Phoenicians were simply following the lead of the Egyptians, who never wrote vowels. After all, Akkadian cuneiform, which wrote a related Semitic language, always indicated vowels.) In any case, the Greeks adapted the signs of the Phoenician consonants not present in Greek; each such name was shorn of its leading sound, and the sign took the value of the now leading vowel. For example, ʾāleph, which designated a glottal stop in Phoenician, was re-purposed to represent the vowel /a/; he became /e/, ḥet became /eː/ (a long vowel), ʿayin became /o/ (because the pharyngeality altered the following vowel), while the two semi-consonants wau and yod became the corresponding high vowels, /u/ and /i/. (Some dialects of Greek, which did possess /h/ and /w/, continued to use the Phoenician letters for those consonants as well.)

The Cyrillic script was derived from the Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters (generally for sounds not in Mediaeval Greek) are based on Glagolitic forms, which in turn were influenced by the Hebrew or even Coptic alphabets.[citation needed]

The Latin alphabet was derived from Old Italic (originally a form of the Greek alphabet), used for Etruscan and other languages. The origin of the Runic alphabet is disputed, and the main theories are that it evolved either from the Latin alphabet itself, some early Old Italic alphabet via the Alpine scripts or the Greek alphabet. Despite this debate, the Runic alphabet is clearly derived from one or more scripts that ultimately trace their roots back to the Phoenician alphabet.[25][26]

Brahmic scripts

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Many Western scholars believe that the Brahmi script of India and the subsequent Indic alphabets are also derived from the Aramaic script, which would make Phoenician the ancestor of virtually every alphabetic writing system in use today.[27]

However, due to an indigenous-origin hypothesis of Brahmic scripts, no definitive scholarly consensus exists.

Surviving examples

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See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Earliest attestation in the Bronze Age collapse period, classical form from about 1050 BC; gradually died out during the Hellenistic period as its evolved forms replaced it; obsolete with the destruction of Carthage in 149 BC.
  2. ^ Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. "First Alphabet Found in Egypt", Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.
  3. ^ Fischer, Steven Roger (2004). A history of writing. Reaktion Books. p. 90.
  4. ^ Michael C. Howard (2012). Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies. P. 23.
  5. ^ Reinhard G. Kratz (11 November 2015). Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah. OUP Oxford. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-19-104448-9. [...] scribes wrote in Paleo-Hebrew, a local variant of the Phoenician alphabetic script [...]
  6. ^ Coulmas (1989) p. 141.
  7. ^ Markoe (2000) p. 111
  8. ^ Hock and Joseph (1996) p. 85.
  9. ^ Daniels (1996) p. 94-95.
  10. ^ "Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier Date for Origin of the Alphabet". Retrieved 20 April 2017.
  11. ^ Fischer (2003) p. 68-69.
  12. ^ Jensen (1969) p. 256.
  13. ^ Jensen (1969) p. 256-258.
  14. ^ http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10900.pdf
  15. ^ after Fischer, Steven R. (2001). A History of Writing. London: Reaction Books. p. 126.
  16. ^ Jensen (1969) p. 262.
  17. ^ Jensen (1969) p. 262-263.
  18. ^ Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. McGraw-Hill, 1963. The Samech - a quick war ladder, later to become the '$' dollar sign drawing the three internal lines quickly. The 'Z' shaped Zayin - an ancient boomerang used for hunting. The 'H' shaped Het - mammoth tuffs.
  19. ^ "Phoenician numerals in Unicode], [http://www.dma.ens.fr/culturemath/histoire%20des%20maths/htm/Verdan/Verdan.htm Systèmes numéraux" (PDF). Retrieved 20 April 2017. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  20. ^ "Number Systems". Retrieved 20 April 2017.
  21. ^ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
  22. ^ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
  23. ^ Herodotus, Histories, Book V, 58.
  24. ^ Herodotus. Histories, Book II, 145
  25. ^ a b Humphrey, John William (2006). Ancient technology. Greenwood guides to historic events of the ancient world (illustrated ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 219. ISBN 9780313327636. Retrieved 2009-10-18.
  26. ^ Spurkland, Terje (2005): Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions, translated by Betsy van der Hoek, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, pp. 3-4
  27. ^ Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in The World's Writing Systems

References

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  • Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Je m'appelle Byblos, H & D, Paris, 2005. ISBN 2-914266-04-9
  • Maria Eugenia Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, London, 2001.
  • Daniels, Peter T., et al. eds. The World's Writing Systems Oxford. (1996).
  • Jensen, Hans, Sign, Symbol, and Script, G.P. Putman's Sons, New York, 1969.
  • Coulmas, Florian, Writing Systems of the World, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, 1989.
  • Hock, Hans H. and Joseph, Brian D., Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship, Mouton de Gruyter, New York, 1996.
  • Fischer, Steven R., A History of Writing, Reaktion Books, 1999.
  • Markoe, Glenn E., Phoenicians. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22613-5 (2000) (hardback)
  • Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic on Coins, reading and transliterating Proto-Hebrew, online edition. (Judaea Coin Archive)
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