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A Ugaritic Abecedary and the Origins of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet

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A Ugaritic Abecedary and the Origins of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet 51 A Ugaritic Abecedary and the Origins of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet [1960] FRANK MOORE CROSS AND THOMAS 0. LAMBDIN Advances in the decipherment of Proto-Canaanite pictograph to Phoenician letter in deciphered contexts. 4 texts during the past twelve years, 1 together with the dis­ Five others, whose pictographs remain more or less ob­ covery of the 'El-{Ja<;lr arrowheads in 1953, 2 have fur­ scure, can also be traced from pictograph to conventional nished definitive evidence that the Linear Phoenician sign, making a total of some seventeen of twenty-two alphabet3 evolved directly from the Proto-Canaanite pic­ signs whose historical typology is now clear. 5 With the tographic script. Twelve of the most frequent signs can be establishment of this evolution, there appears to be no es­ traced in detail through their evolution from transparent cape from the conclusion that the Proto-Canaanite alpha­ betic system has its beginnings in an acrophonically 1. See W. F. Albright, "The Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from Si­ devised script under direct or indirect Egyptian influence, nai and their Decipherment," BASOR 110 ( 1948): 6-22; and especially somewhere in Syria-Palestine. Further, it was reasonable, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment (HTS 22; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966). See also F. M. if not necessary, to argue on the basis of these data that the Cross, "The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet," BASOR 134 names of the individual signs, and probably the order of (1954): 15-24 [Paper 50 above]. the signs as well, went back in principle to the time of the 2. J. T. Milik and F. M. Cross, "Inscribed Javelin-heads from the Period of the Judges," BASOR 134 (1954): 5-15 [Paper 49 above]. See origin of the script at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. also W. F. Albright, "Some Observations on the New Material for the The discovery of abecedaries at Ugarit, the first rec­ History of the Alphabet," BASOR 134 (1954): 26. ognized specimen appearing in the excavations of 1949, 6 3. The term "alphabet" will be used for convenience, but without indicated prejudice to the question of the precise character of the Proto-Canaanite that the traditional order of the signs had been writing system. I. J. Gelb uses the term "syllabic" to describe it, as fixed no later than the fourteenth century BCE. The fact opposed to "alphabetic" or "proto-alphabetic" (A Study of Writing [Chi­ that both archaic (non-Ugaritic) elements and local adap­ cago: University of Chicago Press, 19521). Gelb's stress on the continu­ tations are recognizable in the order7 suggest that the or­ ity of Proto-Canaanite with earlier writing systems is not without merit. On the other hand, his theoretical interest in terminology, as well as his dering is considerably older, and was well established by simplistic description of Egyptian, has beguiled him into giving insuf­ ficient attention to the novelty of the Proto-Canaanite system. The sim­ plification involved in devising a script to represent by a single sign a 4. Cf. Cross, "The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet," consonant plus any vowel (and we should contend, a consonant plus BASOR 134 (1954): Figs. 1 (p. 16) and 2 (p. 19); and esp. 24, n. 32 "zero vowel"), was a revolutionary innovation. No close historical [p. 312, n. 29, above]. analogies are available. The Proto-Canaanite system spread steadily 5. Ibid. throughout the ancient world and preempted the need for a second, par­ 6. See now the principal publication (with bibliography) in Le pa­ allel invention. Hence, the mode of the system's development, based on lais royal d'Ugarit II [MRS VII] (Paris: lmprimerie Nationale, 1957): acrophony, went unrecognized by Gelb, who gave more attention to re­ 199-203, Pis. I, II. mote analogies drawn from different types of writing systems than to 7. Cf. the excellent study of E. A. Speiser, ''A Note on Alphabetic concrete epigraphic data. Origins," BASOR 121 (1951): 17-21. 313 314 Old Canaanite and Phoenician Inscriptions that time. 8 The antiquity of the names of the letters can be In 1955, an abecedary of special type appeared at argued on the ground that order and names are necessar­ Ugarit. 15 It lists in parallel vertical columns the Ugaritic ily connected. 9 Directly, the early date of the names of signs and cuneiform syllabic signs which were meant to the letters is supported by the survival of remnants of the transcribe the Ugaritic. Unfortunately, the bottom of the names in scripts which early split away from the Canaan­ tablet is lost so that only the beginning of the text (ob­ ite or Phoenician scripts. 10 The obvious example is the verse, containing ten Ugaritic signs) and the end (reverse, Greek alphabet which was borrowed-letters, names, preserving ten signs) are known at present. The text is and order-sometime in the eleventh century BCE. 11 Re­ transcribed by the editor as follows: 16 markably, little attention has been given to Ethiopic. a [ There can be no doubt that the Ethiopic names were 'a b be [p] [p]u taken over with the alphabet from Old South Arabic, and g ga in tum, that the primitive names preserved through South ~ ~a qu Arabic go back to the time when that script branched b ba q d di r ra apart from the parent Proto-Canaanite. The names in­ h ti sa cluded are 'alp, bet, gaml, dent < *dilt, 12 waw(e), kaf, ! w wa g may, nahas (also na!Jas) < Canaanite naf:ias, 'ayn, ~aday, ba z zi t tu qaf < Canaanite qop, re's, and taw(e), to give only clear ,. 1). ku 1 instances. The name !]arm is almost certainly original, 'u u secondarily lost in Phoenician and derivative scripts. 13 tf zu We have argued elsewhere on the basis of the 'El-Ha<;Ir s material and other palaeographical data, that it is now The scribe who prepared the tablet obviously at­ possible to fix the date of the divergence of the Proto­ tempted to use a single sign from the cuneiform syllabary Arabic script from the Proto-Canaanite in the fourteenth, to indicate a phonetic equivalent of the more familiar or at latest the early thirteenth century BCE. 14 There is Ugaritic sign. The tablet may have served in effect as a evidence, therefore, that names as well as order of the page in an Akkadian grammar. At all events, it is a school signs were already in use in the fourteenth century BCE, text. in the era before the pictographs had been conventional­ The most striking feature of the Babylonian tran­ ized in the Proto-Canaanite script. It is only a short step scription is the variety in the vowels chosen. Some have in time back to the origin of the alphabet. thought that the lack of systematic notation is due merely to the carelessness of the scribe in treating the vowel. But 8. On the abecedary from the Wadi f.lammamat, see now W. K. it must be confessed that one would expect a heavy pre­ Simpson, "Historical and Lexical Notes on the New Series of Ham­ ponderance of a-vowels (just as in Arabic), or conceiv­ mamat Inscriptions," JNES 18 (1959): 35f. ably, i-vowels, or u-vowels. There is no reason integral to 9. Cf. W. F. Albright, "Some Important Recent Discoveries: Al­ the Babylonian system which dictates the apparently phabetic Origins and the Idrimi Statue," BASOR 118 (1950): 13; G. R. Driver, Semitic Writing, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, careless choice. W. W. Hallo has suggested that the cune­ 1954): 156. iform renders the names of the Ugaritic signs, or, more 10. The classical study of the names of the letters is T. Ntildeke, precisely, that originally "the pattern consonant plus "Die semitischen Buchstabennamen," Beitr. z. sem. Sprachwissenschaft 17 (Strassburg, 1904): 124-36; See also G. R. Driver, Semitic Writing: (any) vowel was a sufficient name for any letter." It is 152-79; and W. W. Hallo, "Isaiah 28: 9-13 and the Ugaritic Abecedar­ not impossible that the old names had been simplified lo­ ies," JBL 77 (1958): 324-38. cally to syllables of a single consonant and vowel. 18 A 11. On the date of the Greek borrowing of the Phoenician alpha­ bet, see above, Paper 37 and references, and below, Paper 54. tendency toward simplification can be recognized in 12. Dant also appears; cf. Ntildeke, op. cit. (above, n. 10): 132. most derivatives of the Phoenician script, notably in 13. Cf. Cross, "The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet," North Arabic, and in the daughter alphabets of Greek. BASOR 134 (1954): 24, n. 32 [p. 312, n. 29, above]. The Proto-Canaan­ ite pictograph corresponds with the meaning of the name (loops of cord); the later linear symbols in Old South Arabic and Ethiopic give no 15. Le palais royal d 'Ugarit II, Pl. II; see pp. 201-3. basis for the secondary development of the name. Finally, it cannot de­ 16. We have taken liberties with the editor's transcription only to rive from alternative tendencies creating secondary names, rhyme for­ bring it into line with a more conventional notation. mation, or breakdown of name. 17. Op. cit. (above, n. 10): 335-36. 14. Cross, "The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet," 18. Hallo, under the influence of Gelb's hypothesis, assumes, ac­ BASOR 134, (1954): 22 [p. 312 above]; cf. Albright,BASOR 118 (1950): tually, that the traditional names were introduced secondarily. But such 13, esp. n. 8. Cf. Driver, op.
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