Development and diffusion of alphabets
- Key People:
- Walter Abish
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At the end of the 2nd millennium bce, with the political decay of the great nations of the Bronze Age—the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Cretans—a new historical world began. In Syria and Palestine, the geographical centre of the Fertile Crescent, three nations—Israel, Phoenicia, and Aram—played an increasingly important political role. To the south of the Fertile Crescent, the Sabaeans, a South Arabian people (also Semites, though South Semites), attained a position of wealth and importance as commercial intermediaries between the East and the Mediterranean. To the west, seeds were sown among the peoples who later constituted the nation of Hellas—the Greeks. As a result, an alphabet developed with four main branches: (1) the so-called Canaanite, or main branch, subdivided into Early Hebrew and Phoenician varieties; (2) the Aramaic branch; (3) the South Semitic, or Sabaean, branch; and (4) the Greek alphabet, which became the progenitor of the Western alphabets, including the Etruscan and the Latin. The Canaanite and Aramaic branches constitute the North Semitic main branch.
The Canaanite alphabet
The two Canaanite branches may be subdivided into several secondary branches. First, Early Hebrew had three secondary branches—Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite—and two offshoots—the script of Jewish coins and the Samaritan script, still in use today for liturgical purposes only. Second, Phoenician can be divided into Phoenician proper and “colonial” Phoenician. Out of the latter developed the Punic and neo-Punic scripts and probably also the Libyan and Iberian scripts.
The term Early Hebrew is used to distinguish this branch from the later so-called Square Hebrew. The Early Hebrew alphabet had already begun to acquire its distinctive character by the 11th century bce. It was used officially until the 6th century bce and lingered on for several centuries more. In a stylized form it was used on Jewish coins from 135 bce to 132–135 ce. The most ancient example of Early Hebrew writing is that of the Gezer Calendar of the period of Saul or David (i.e., c. 1000 bce). The oldest extant example of the Early Hebrew ABCs is the 8th–7th-century-bce schoolboy graffito mentioned above. A cursive style reached its climax in the inscriptions at Tel Lakhish, dating from the beginning of the 6th century bce. The Leviticus and other small Early Hebrew fragments found in the Dead Sea caves, which are probably from the 3rd century bce, are the only remains of what is considered to be the Early Hebrew book, or literary, hand. (See also Dead Sea Scrolls.)
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Phoenician alphabet in the history of writing. The earliest definitely readable inscription in the North Semitic alphabet is the so-called Ahiram inscription found at Byblos in Phoenicia (now Lebanon), which probably dates from the 11th century bce. There is, however, no doubt that the Phoenician use of the North Semitic alphabet went farther back. By being adopted and then adapted by the Greeks, the North Semitic, or Phoenician, alphabet became the direct ancestor of all Western alphabets. Only very few inscriptions have been found in Phoenicia proper. This rarity of indigenous documents is in contrast to the numbers of Phoenician inscriptions found elsewhere—on Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia, and in Greece, North Africa, Marseille, Spain, and other places.
The Aramaic alphabet
The adaptation of the North Semitic alphabet to the Aramaic language took place at some time in the 10th century bce, when Aramaic was spoken in several petty kingdoms in northern Mesopotamia and Syria, the most important of them being Dammeshek (Damascus). The process of the reestablishment of the Assyrian empire and its hegemony over a good part of the Middle East began in the 9th century. One after another, the Aramaean states gave way under Assyrian onslaught. Dammeshek, the last survivor, fell in 732 bce. The end of Aramaean political independence marked the beginning of Aramaean cultural and economic supremacy in western Asia. The transplantation of masses of Aramaeans by the Assyrians, a political measure designed to break up military alliances, bore remarkable fruit. By the end of the 8th century bce, the use of the Aramaic language and alphabet had become very widespread in Assyria itself; by the end of the following century all of Syria and a large part of Mesopotamia had become thoroughly Aramaized.
On the whole, the few early Aramaic inscriptions that have been found belong to the 9th, 8th, and 7th centuries bce. Inscriptions from the 6th and later centuries are more numerous; the increase reflects the rapid spread of the Aramaic alphabet throughout the Middle East. Numerous Aramaic papyri and ostraca (inscribed pottery fragments) have been found in Egypt; the earliest of these can be dated to c. 515 bce, while the most famous are the Elephantine papyri, containing information of a religious and economic nature about a 5th-century Hebrew military colony in Egypt. Aramaic inscriptions have been found in northern Arabia, Palestine, Lycia, Cappadocia, Lydia, Cilicia, Assyria, and as far afield as Greece, Afghanistan, and India.
Almost as if by prearrangement, all of the alphabetic scripts west of Syria seem to have been derived, directly or indirectly, from the Canaanite alphabet, whereas the hundreds of alphabetic writings of the East apparently have sprung from the offshoots of the Aramaic alphabet. On the whole, the direct and indirect descendants of the Aramaic alphabet can be divided into two main groups: the scripts employed for Semitic languages and those adapted to non-Semitic tongues. With regard to the Semitic offshoots, six separate alphabets may be discerned: the Hebrew, the Nabataean-Sinaitic-Arabic, the Palmyrene, the Syriac-Nestorian, the Mandaean, and the Manichaean. Some of these alphabets became links between the Aramaic alphabet and the numerous scripts used for the non-Semitic languages of Central, South, and Southeast Asia.
Among these scripts, which were directly or mainly indirectly adapted to non-Semitic languages from the Aramaic alphabet, are: (1) the Persian (Iranian) scripts known as Pahlavi, which were used for such writings as sacred (pre-Islamic) Persian literature; (2) Sogdian, a script and language that constituted the lingua franca of Central Asia in the second half of the 1st millennium ce; (3) Kök Turki, a script used from the 6th to the 8th century ce by Turkish tribes living in the southern part of central Siberia, in northwestern Mongolia, and in northeastern Turkistan (this alphabet was the prototype of the early Hungarian alphabet); (4) the alphabet of the Uighur, a Turkic-speaking people who lived in Mongolia and eastern Turkistan in the early 13th century; this script was adapted, with Tibetan influence, and adopted as the writing of the Mongol empire (the so-called Kalika script); (5) the early scripts of the Mongols, including Kalmyk, Buryat, Mongolian proper, and the allied Manchu alphabet.
The Aramaic alphabet was probably also the prototype of the Brahmi script of India, a script that became the parent of nearly all Indian writings. Derived from the Aramaic alphabet, it came into being in northwest India. The Armenian alphabet, created by St. Mesrop Mashtots in the early 5th century ce, was also based on the Aramaic alphabet.
The South Semitic alphabet
The South Semitic, or Sabaean, branch remained within the confines of the Arabian Peninsula for most of its history. It was in use at the beginning of the 1st millennium bce. The most that can be said about its origins is that it neither developed from nor directly depended upon the North Semitic alphabet. It may have been derived, ultimately, from the proto-Sinaitic script, with some influence from the North Semitic. Offshoots from the South Semitic branch include the Minaean, Himyaritic, Qatabanic, and Hadhramautic alphabets in southern Arabia, and Thamudene, Dedanite, and Safaitic alphabets in the northern part of the peninsula. Numerous inscriptions in these alphabets are the principal source for the study of those once-flourishing kingdoms, including Sabaʾ (the biblical Sheba), relegated by the rise of Islam to the backwaters of history.
The Sabaean offshoot, a graceful and elegant script consisting of 29 letters, spread into Africa, where it became the progenitor of the Ethiopic alphabet; this in turn gave birth to the modern Amharic, Tigré, Tigrinya, and other alphabets of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. These are the only South Semitic scripts still in use today.
The Greek alphabet
As in so many other things, the importance of the ancient Greeks in the history of the alphabet is paramount. All of the alphabets in use in European languages today are directly or indirectly related to the Greek. The Greek achievement was to provide representations for vowel sounds. Consonants plus vowels made a writing system that was both economical and unambiguous. The true alphabetic system has remained for 3,000 years, with only slight modifications, an unparalleled vehicle of expression and communication in and among the most diverse nationalities and languages. The Greek alphabet, created early in the 1st millennium bce, spread in various directions in Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and other places, but far and away its most important descendants (in terms of widespread use) were the Latin (through Etruscan) and Cyrillic alphabets.
Theories explaining diffusion
There is no complete agreement among scholars as to how or why certain alphabets have come to dominate much of the world. Some believe that diffusion is explained by the efficiency of the orthography; the Greek alphabet, capable of representing unambiguously a full range of meanings, was adopted throughout western Europe. Others hold that the alphabet follows the flag; that is, that the diffusion of an alphabet results from political and military conquests by the people who use it. Still others hold that the alphabet follows trade or religion. A few examples may illustrate the point: (1) The Latin language and script were carried by Roman legionaries and imperial officers to all parts of the vast Roman Empire, particularly to the regions that were not Hellenized. In later centuries, however, churchmen and missionaries carried the Latin language and script still farther afield. The ascendancy of Latin led to the adoption of the Latin (Roman) alphabet by a large majority of nations; it became used for tongues of the most diverse linguistic groups, not only in Europe but in all other parts of the world as well. (2) Two alphabets, the Cyrillic and the Latin, are used for writing Slavic languages. Cyrillic is used by those Slavic peoples who accepted their religion from Byzantium, whereas Roman Christianity brought the use of the Latin alphabet to the Poles, Lusatians, Wends, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croats. (3) The Arabic alphabet is, after Latin, the most generally used in Asia and Africa. The rise of Islam in the 7th century ce and the tremendous Islamic expansion and conquest carried the Islamic holy book, the Qurʾān, written in the Arabic alphabet, over a vast area: the Middle East, North and Central Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and even southern Europe. The Arabic alphabet was, therefore, adapted to Semitic and Indo-European forms of speech, to Tatar-Turkish, Iranian, and Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) tongues, and to several African languages. (4) The movement eastward from India of the Indian Brahmi-Buddhist alphabets was much more peaceful than that of the Arabic alphabet. These offshoots, which took root in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, were again the result of the spreading of a religion—Buddhism—in this case by missionaries.
