The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms Ebook

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms Ebook THE STORY OF WRITING: ALPHABETS, HIEROGLYPHS AND PICTOGRAMS PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Andrew Robinson | 232 pages | 01 May 2007 | Thames & Hudson Ltd | 9780500286609 | English | London, United Kingdom The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms PDF Book Egyptians have always lived on the land immediately adjacent to the Nile, where irrigation ditches can bring river water to the fields. NARRATOR : Aboriginal culture has been handed down orally, through poetry and song, for tens of thousands of years, without the need to write anything down. These three strokes indicate that the character being written has something to do with water. Issue Date : 10 February If you want to record the language fully, pictograms will never succeed. Two front teeth Shin. Human there. Doug Petrovitch has falsified the theory that Phoenician was the first alphabet but instead that Phoenician was derived directly from Hebrew! Further Details. Add to Wish List. Around BC, the Hebrews replaced the alphabet symbols they invented for the Aramaic alphabet, which ironically was directly descended from Hebrew. And I believe that this is a representation of Egypt. For their numbers had grown and their society had become complex in the alluvial plains of the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an environment which required attentive management in order to sustain a large, agriculture-based civilization. And what you have here is actually the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph of the bull, sleeping forever in the letter A, because this is just the bull turned on his horns. Hebrew is the first alphabet on earth and archetypal grandparent of all other alphabets on earth. It was rich deposits of the gemstone that brought regular mining expeditions to Serabit. There are two orders found, one of which is nearly identical to the order used for Hebrew , Greek and Latin , and a second order very similar to that used for Ethiopian. The original Hebrew sound A is echoed into English but the phonographic connection is broken. Kukai is said to have picked up a brush in each hand, gripped one between the toes of each foot, placed another between his teeth, and immediately written five columns of verse simultaneously! And at the edge of the plateau lie the ruins of an Ancient Egyptian temple. In this sense, then the first true alphabet would be the Greek alphabet , which was adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, but not all scholars and linguists think this is enough to strip away the original meaning of an alphabet to one with both vowels and consonants. The Law of God needed a standardized alphabet to communicate the Law at Mt. Calligraphy is not merely an exercise in good handwriting, but rather the foremost art form of the Orient. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms Writer Paleo-Hebrew script by Samuel in BC 3. The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu today Shanxi when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity. An ideogram or ideograph is a graphical symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages. And the ancient Egyptians realized that; they realized that the written word had so much power and that by writing your name you became immortal, you immortalized yourself. Email address Sign up. They invented writing because they needed a means of accounting for the receipt and distribution of resources. Snake Nahas. This changes everything! April 8, For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. It originally looked a little like a bull, like this. The origin of the alphabet has been a mystery for hundreds of years, until now. Those enemies were completely destroyed. The broken rectangle that was the Egyptian sign for house, was abbreviated by the Greeks and flipped by the Romans to create the Latin B. Paleo-Hebrew: — BC. But how, when and where did writing evolve? Sky, Earth, Water. The letters of the Greek alphabet are the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and both alphabets are arranged in the same order. Man and his Occupations. He also discusses how the digital revolution has not, despite predictions, spelled doom for the printed book. They date from the same period as the stelae at Serabit. Notice the form of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet closely resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphic pictograms. Some modern authors distinguish between consonantal scripts of the Semitic type, called " abjads " since , and "true alphabets" in the narrow sense, [6] [7] the distinguishing criterion being that true alphabets consistently assign letters to both consonants and vowels on an equal basis, while the symbols in a pure abjad stand only for consonants. By the Greco-Roman period, they numbered more than 5, Human footprints. Anthropomorphic Deities. The first letter of each word represented that sound in their alphabet acrophony. Its possible precursors appeared as early as years ago, and a complete writing system in Chinese characters was developed years ago in China, making it perhaps the oldest surviving writing system. Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zi, Chinese characters. In this new edition of the book, the author reveals the latest discoveries to have an impact on the history of writing, including the Tabula Cortonensis showing Etruscan symbols, and a seal from Turkmenistan that could solve the mystery of how Chinese writing evolved. History Phoenician Hebrew Aramaic Syriac. Further Details. The fact that his name is still there made him, in a sense, immortal. The number in brackets F1 is an alpha-numeric code that Gardiner assigned each of the Egyptian pictographs. Four Hebrew Scripts: We see therefore, that the Hebrews have had four different written alphabet scripts: a. So, that straight line through these stages goes all the way back to that bull, even though, at different ends, they look nothing alike. A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration. When Israel entered Egypt, they had no written script. These wall paintings decorate a tomb above the Nile in Upper Egypt. BCE Arabic 4 c. The Rosetta Stone contains parallel texts in hieroglyphic and demotic writing. They were not scribes or scholars, but when they adapted the rebus principle, which was the basis of all ancient scripts, to make the first letters, they created a form of communication which would eventually sweep the globe. BCE Cherokee syllabary; letter forms only c. Hieroglyphs were employed in three ways in Ancient Egyptian texts: as logograms ideograms that represent a word denoting an object pictorially depicted by the hieroglyph; more commonly as phonograms writing a sound or sequence of sounds; and as determinatives which provide clues to meaning without directly writing sounds. Camel Gimel. IRVING FINKEL : If you know a bit about cuneiform and Mayan script and Egyptian script and Chinese script, for example, the main four, you have an inescapable feeling that even though they look completely unrelated, nevertheless they have many things in common, and this forces you to consider the whole question of origin and spread. It is not known how many letters the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet had nor what their alphabetic order was. The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms Reviews But they could be used to represent either the things of which they were pictures, or the sounds of the words for those things. In both places, people had learnt how to irrigate the land to increase food production. On the one hand, the Egyptians, and on the other side we have this small troupe of people who come from the other side of the Sinai, the Asiatics, who live with the Egyptians for a prolonged period. Download as PDF Printable version. Doug Petrovich. Date of S cript changes and the person who made the changes : a. Human footprints. Hieroglyphic frescoes. Each of the 22 letters of the modern Hebrew alphabet can be traced directly back to one of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Lundberg, P. By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. Doug Petrovitch has falsified the theory that Phoenician was the first alphabet but instead that Phoenician was derived directly from Hebrew! The Aramaic alphabet, which evolved from the Phoenician in the 7th century BCE, to become the official script of the Persian Empire , appears to be the ancestor of nearly all the modern alphabets of Asia:. It also proves Hebrew is the first alphabet on earth. What was, at first, only used in accounting, is now being used to clarify pictures, to help viewers read them. Rope, Fiber, Baskets, Bags, etc. Petrovich was able to translate, for the first time, 16 ancient inscriptions that sat collecting dust in museum storehouses for over years. So, for example, if you see this letter here looks like a line with a small tail. Those enemies were completely destroyed. Echograms: English echoes the sounds of the Hebrew but the phonographic connection is broken. Many Greek letters are similar to Phoenician, except the letter direction is reversed or changed, which can be the result of historical changes from right-to-left writing to boustrophedon to left- to-right writing. As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic priestly and demotic popular scripts, which eventually formed the basis on which the Phoenicians structured the modern alphabetic system.
Recommended publications
  • The Ogham-Runes and El-Mushajjar
    c L ite atu e Vo l x a t n t r n o . o R So . u P R e i t ed m he T a s . 1 1 87 " p r f ro y f r r , , r , THE OGHAM - RUNES AND EL - MUSHAJJAR A D STU Y . BY RICH A R D B URTO N F . , e ad J an uar 22 (R y , PART I . The O ham-Run es g . e n u IN tr ating this first portio of my s bj ect, the - I of i Ogham Runes , have made free use the mater als r John collected by Dr . Cha les Graves , Prof. Rhys , and other students, ending it with my own work in the Orkney Islands . i The Ogham character, the fair wr ting of ' Babel - loth ancient Irish literature , is called the , ’ Bethluis Bethlm snion e or , from its initial lett rs, like “ ” Gree co- oe Al hab e t a an d the Ph nician p , the Arabo “ ” Ab ad fl d H ebrew j . It may brie y be describe as f b ormed y straight or curved strokes , of various lengths , disposed either perpendicularly or obliquely to an angle of the substa nce upon which the letters n . were i cised , punched, or rubbed In monuments supposed to be more modern , the letters were traced , b T - N E E - A HE OGHAM RU S AND L M USH JJ A R . n not on the edge , but upon the face of the recipie t f n l o t sur ace ; the latter was origi al y wo d , s aves and tablets ; then stone, rude or worked ; and , lastly, metal , Th .
    [Show full text]
  • Early-Alphabets-3.Pdf
    Early Alphabets Alphabetic characteristics 1 Cretan Pictographs 11 Hieroglyphics 16 The Phoenician Alphabet 24 The Greek Alphabet 31 The Latin Alphabet 39 Summary 53 GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS 1 / 53 Alphabetic characteristics 3,000 BCE Basic building blocks of written language GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 2 / 53 Early visual language systems were disparate and decentralized 3,000 BCE Protowriting, Cuneiform, Heiroglyphs and far Eastern writing all functioned differently Rebuses, ideographs, logograms, and syllabaries · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 3 / 53 HIEROGLYPHICS REPRESENTING THE REBUS PRINCIPAL · BEE & LEAF · SEA & SUN · BELIEF AND SEASON GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 4 / 53 PETROGLYPHIC PICTOGRAMS AND IDEOGRAPHS · CIRCA 200 BCE · UTAH, UNITED STATES GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 5 / 53 LUWIAN LOGOGRAMS · CIRCA 1400 AND 1200 BCE · TURKEY GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 6 / 53 OLD PERSIAN SYLLABARY · 600 BCE GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 7 / 53 Alphabetic structure marked an enormous societal leap 3,000 BCE Power was reserved for those who could read and write · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 8 / 53 What is an alphabet? Definition An alphabet is a set of visual symbols or characters used to represent the elementary sounds of a spoken language. –PM · GDT-101 / HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN / EARLY ALPHABETS / Alphabetic Characteristics 9 / 53 What is an alphabet? Definition They can be connected and combined to make visual configurations signifying sounds, syllables, and words uttered by the human mouth.
    [Show full text]
  • The Personal Name Here Is Again Obscure. At
    342 THE FIRST ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION FROM INDIA 1. 10 : " his conduct " ? 1. 11 : " and also his sons." 1. 12 : the personal name here is again obscure. At the end of the line are traces of the right-hand side of a letter, which might be samekh or beth; if we accept the former, it is possible to vocalize as Pavira-ram, i.e. Pavira-rdja, corresponding to the Sanskrit Pravira- rdja. The name Pravira is well known in epos, and might well be borne by a real man ; and the change of a sonant to a surd consonant, such as that of j to «, is quite common in the North-West dialects. L. D. BARNETT. THE FIRST ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION FROM INDIA I must thank Mr. F. W. Thomas for his great kindness in sending me the photograph taken by Sir J. H. Marshall, and also Dr. Barnett for letting me see his tracing and transliteration. The facsimile is made from the photo- graph, which is as good as it can be. Unfortunately, on the original, the letters are as white as the rest of the marble, and it was necessary to darken them in order to obtain a photograph. This process inti'oduces an element of uncertainty, since in some cases part of a line may have escaped, and in others an accidental scratch may appear as part of a letter. Hence the following passages are more or less doubtful: line 4, 3PI; 1. 6, Tpfl; 1. 8, "123 and y\; 1. 9, the seventh and ninth letters; 1. 10, ID; 1.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Origin of Alphabetic Writing
    Aren M. Wilson-Wright Radboud University, Nijmegen November 2019 On the Origin of Alphabetic Writing Over the past few years, several scholars have advanced new theories regarding the origin of the alphabetic writing. Douglas Petrovich (2016) and Paul LeBlanc (2017), for example, both argue that the ancient Israelites invented the alphabet during their sojourn in Egypt.1 And in a 2019 article for Bible and Interpretation, Robert Holmstedt suggests that the inhabitants of Byblos developed the alphabet from the earlier Byblos Script, an undeciphered writing system found at the Phoenician city of Byblos. As part of this article, he articulates several important questions about the invention of the alphabetic writing that should guide all future inquiries into the topic: Who invented the alphabet? Where did they come from? Were they familiar with any of the other writing systems used in the ancient Near East? In this article, I will review the inscriptional and historical data that can help us answer these questions, evaluate Holmstedt’s arguments, and present my own theory of alphabetic origins. I. Review of the Evidence The earliest alphabetic inscriptions furnish the primary evidence regarding the invention of the alphabet. These inscriptions come from the Egyptian sites of Serabit el-Khadem and Wadi el-Ḥôl (see map). In 1905, Sir Flinders Petrie (1906: 129–30) discovered ten early alphabetic inscriptions while excavating the Egyptian temple and turquoise mining facility at Serabit el-Khadem. Subsequent excavations at Serabit el-Khadem—from 1920s to the 2000s—have uncovered an additional 37 early alphabetic inscriptions (Lindblom 1931; Butin 1932; Starr and Butin 1936; Gerster 1961: pl.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origin of the Alphabet: an Examination of the Goldwasser Hypothesis
    Colless, Brian E. The origin of the alphabet: an examination of the Goldwasser hypothesis Antiguo Oriente: Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente Vol. 12, 2014 Este documento está disponible en la Biblioteca Digital de la Universidad Católica Argentina, repositorio institucional desarrollado por la Biblioteca Central “San Benito Abad”. Su objetivo es difundir y preservar la producción intelectual de la Institución. La Biblioteca posee la autorización del autor para su divulgación en línea. Cómo citar el documento: Colless, Brian E. “The origin of the alphabet : an examination of the Goldwasser hypothesis” [en línea], Antiguo Oriente : Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente 12 (2014). Disponible en: http://bibliotecadigital.uca.edu.ar/repositorio/revistas/origin-alphabet-goldwasser-hypothesis.pdf [Fecha de consulta:..........] . 03 Colless - Alphabet_Antiguo Oriente 09/06/2015 10:22 a.m. Página 71 THE ORIGIN OF THE ALPHABET: AN EXAMINATION OF THE GOLDWASSER HYPOTHESIS BRIAN E. COLLESS [email protected] Massey University Palmerston North, New Zealand Summary: The Origin of the Alphabet Since 2006 the discussion of the origin of the Semitic alphabet has been given an impetus through a hypothesis propagated by Orly Goldwasser: the alphabet was allegedly invented in the 19th century BCE by illiterate Semitic workers in the Egyptian turquoise mines of Sinai; they saw the picturesque Egyptian inscriptions on the site and borrowed a number of the hieroglyphs to write their own language, using a supposedly new method which is now known by the technical term acrophony. The main weakness of the theory is that it ignores the West Semitic acrophonic syllabary, which already existed, and contained most of the letters of the alphabet.
    [Show full text]
  • Greek Alphabet ( ) Ελληνικ¿ Γρ¿Μματα
    Greek alphabet and pronunciation 9/27/05 12:01 AM Writing systems: abjads | alphabets | syllabic alphabets | syllabaries | complex scripts undeciphered scripts | alternative scripts | your con-scripts | A-Z index Greek alphabet (ελληνικ¿ γρ¿μματα) Origin The Greek alphabet has been in continuous use for the past 2,750 years or so since about 750 BC. It was developed from the Canaanite/Phoenician alphabet and the order and names of the letters are derived from Phoenician. The original Canaanite meanings of the letter names was lost when the alphabet was adapted for Greek. For example, alpha comes for the Canaanite aleph (ox) and beta from beth (house). At first, there were a number of different versions of the alphabet used in various different Greek cities. These local alphabets, known as epichoric, can be divided into three groups: green, blue and red. The blue group developed into the modern Greek alphabet, while the red group developed into the Etruscan alphabet, other alphabets of ancient Italy and eventually the Latin alphabet. By the early 4th century BC, the epichoric alphabets were replaced by the eastern Ionic alphabet. The capital letters of the modern Greek alphabet are almost identical to those of the Ionic alphabet. The minuscule or lower case letters first appeared sometime after 800 AD and developed from the Byzantine minuscule script, which developed from cursive writing. Notable features Originally written horizontal lines either from right to left or alternating from right to left and left to right (boustophedon). Around 500 BC the direction of writing changed to horizontal lines running from left to right.
    [Show full text]
  • History of Writing
    History of Writing On present archaeological evidence, full writing appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt around the same time, in the century or so before 3000 BC. It is probable that it started slightly earlier in Mesopotamia, given the date of the earliest proto-writing on clay tablets from Uruk, circa 3300 BC, and the much longer history of urban development in Mesopotamia compared to the Nile Valley of Egypt. However we cannot be sure about the date of the earliest known Egyptian historical inscription, a monumental slate palette of King Narmer, on which his name is written in two hieroglyphs showing a fish and a chisel. Narmer’s date is insecure, but probably falls in the period 3150 to 3050 BC. In China, full writing first appears on the so-called ‘oracle bones’ of the Shang civilization, found about a century ago at Anyang in north China, dated to 1200 BC. Many of their signs bear an undoubted resemblance to modern Chinese characters, and it is a fairly straightforward task for scholars to read them. However, there are much older signs on the pottery of the Yangshao culture, dating from 5000 to 4000 BC, which may conceivably be precursors of an older form of full Chinese writing, still to be discovered; many areas of China have yet to be archaeologically excavated. In Europe, the oldest full writing is the Linear A script found in Crete in 1900. Linear A dates from about 1750 BC. Although it is undeciphered, its signs closely resemble the somewhat younger, deciphered Linear B script, which is known to be full writing; Linear B was used to write an archaic form of the Greek language.
    [Show full text]
  • A STUDY of WRITING Oi.Uchicago.Edu Oi.Uchicago.Edu /MAAM^MA
    oi.uchicago.edu A STUDY OF WRITING oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu /MAAM^MA. A STUDY OF "*?• ,fii WRITING REVISED EDITION I. J. GELB Phoenix Books THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS oi.uchicago.edu This book is also available in a clothbound edition from THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS TO THE MOKSTADS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO & LONDON The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada Copyright 1952 in the International Copyright Union. All rights reserved. Published 1952. Second Edition 1963. First Phoenix Impression 1963. Printed in the United States of America oi.uchicago.edu PREFACE HE book contains twelve chapters, but it can be broken up structurally into five parts. First, the place of writing among the various systems of human inter­ communication is discussed. This is followed by four Tchapters devoted to the descriptive and comparative treatment of the various types of writing in the world. The sixth chapter deals with the evolution of writing from the earliest stages of picture writing to a full alphabet. The next four chapters deal with general problems, such as the future of writing and the relationship of writing to speech, art, and religion. Of the two final chapters, one contains the first attempt to establish a full terminology of writing, the other an extensive bibliography. The aim of this study is to lay a foundation for a new science of writing which might be called grammatology. While the general histories of writing treat individual writings mainly from a descriptive-historical point of view, the new science attempts to establish general principles governing the use and evolution of writing on a comparative-typological basis.
    [Show full text]
  • History of the Alphabet
    History of the Western European Alphabet We’re going to take a look at the evolution of symbols and systems of writing that have become the the letterforms we use today. This survey includes pictographs, cunieforms, hieroglyphics, and Roman Monumental Capitals. My hope in sharing this information with you is that we gain an appreciation for the history and the design of the alphabet, In the book Alphabet: The History, Evolution, and Design and that we do not take these of the Letters We Use Today, Allan Haley writes: letterforms for granted. “Writing is words made visible. The evolution of letterforms In the broadest sense, it is and a system of writing has everything—pictured, drawn, been propelled by our need to represent things, to represent or arranged—that can be turned ideas, to record and preserve into a spoken account. The information, and to express ourselves. For thousands of fundamental purpose of writing years a variety of imaging, is to convey ideas. Our ancestors, tools, and techniques have however, were designers long been used. Marks were made on cave walls, scraped and before they were writers, and stamped into clay, carved in in their pictures, drawings, and stone, and inked on papyrus. arrangements, design played a prominent role in communication from the very beginning”. Cave Painting from Lascaux, 15,000-10,000 BC One of the earliest forms of visual communication is found in cave paintings. The cave paintings found in Lascaux, France are dated from 10,000 to 8000 BC. These images are referred to as pictographs. Pictographs are a concrete representation of an object in the physical world.
    [Show full text]
  • Learn-The-Aramaic-Alphabet-Ashuri
    Learn The ARAMAIC Alphabet 'Hebrew' Ashuri Script By Ewan MacLeod, B.Sc. Hons, M.Sc. 2 LEARN THE ARAMAIC ALPHABET – 'HEBREW' ASHURI SCRIPT Ewan MacLeod is the creator of the following websites: JesusSpokeAramaic.com JesusSpokeAramaicBook.com BibleManuscriptSociety.com Copyright © Ewan MacLeod, JesusSpokeAramaic.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into, a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, scanning, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission from the copyright holder. The right of Ewan MacLeod to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the copyright holder's prior consent, in any form, or binding, or cover, other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Jesus Spoke AramaicTM is a Trademark. 3 Table of Contents Introduction To These Lessons.............................................................5 How Difficult Is Aramaic To Learn?........................................................7 Introduction To The Aramaic Alphabet And Scripts.............................11 How To Write The Aramaic Letters....................................................... 19
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Syriac: an Elementary Grammar with Readings From
    INTRODUCTION TO SYRIAC An Elementary Grammar with Readings from Syriac Literature Wheeler M. Thackston IBEX Publishers Bethesda, Maryland Introduction to Syriac An Elementary Grammar with Readings from Syriac Literature by Wheeler M. Thackston Copyright © 1999 Ibex Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any manner whatsoever, except in the form of a review, without written permission from the publisher. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Services—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 IBEX Publishers Post Office Box 30087 Bethesda, Maryland 20824 U.S.A. Telephone: 301-718-8188 Facsimile: 301-907-8707 www.ibexpub.com LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Thackston, W.M. (Wheeler Mcintosh), 1944- Introduction to Syriac : an elementary grammar with readings from Syriac literature / by W. M. Thackston. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-936347-98-8 1. Syriac language —Grammar. I. Title. PJ5423T53 1999 492'.382421~dc21 99-39576 CIP Contents PREFACE vii PRELIMINARY MATTERS I. The Sounds of Syriac: Consonants and Vowels x II. Begadkepat and the Schwa xii III. Syllabification xiv IV. Stress xv V. Vocalic Reduction and Prosthesis xv VI. The Syriac Alphabet xvii VII. Other Orthographic Devices xxi VIII. Alphabetic Numerals xxiii IX. Comparative Chart of Semitic Consonants xxiv X. Preliminary Exercise xxvi
    [Show full text]
  • 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.
    [Show full text]