No abstract

This article considers the origins of alphabetic writing, tracing its probable source to ancient Egypt, southern Levant or the Sinai during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (17th century BCE). It supports the view that the earliest scripts were acrophonic representations of a West-Semitic language, whose use developed under the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt but was arrested there with the expulsion of this foreign dynasty at the end of the 16th century BCE. The development is then traced through the Levant, with particular attention given to the emergence of cuneiform alphabetic scripts in Ugarit (c. 1300 BCE). This form of writing disappeared with the fall of Ugarit, but linear alphabetic scripts were preserved in a variety of Near-Eastern languages, notably Aramaic and Phoenician. These two languages, by becoming linguae francae respectively of the Syria-northern Mesopotamia and the Anatolia-Eastern Mediterranean regions, brought about the spread of alphabetic writing up until the 8th century BCE. The article concludes by examining the influence of the Phoenician script on Greek, Etruscan and ultimately Latin forms of writing.

Together with material archaeology and the literary tradition of the Hebrew Bible, epigraphy is one of the main sources for the history of ancient Israel in the ninth century BCE. Although limited in number, West Semitic inscriptions throw some light on the history of this period. This chapter examines ninth-century West Semitic inscriptions and the historical information they contain regarding the history of ninth-century Israel. It starts with the Hebrew inscriptions, followed by inscriptions in the neighbouring southern Levant countries as well as Aramaic inscriptions from Upper Mesopotamia. The chapter deals first with inscriptions in ‘Canaanite’ dialects before analysing inscriptions written in Aramaic dialects. The Mesha and Tel Dan steles are the main West Semitic inscriptions that help us understand the history of Israel and Judah during the ninth century BCE.

No abstract

No abstract