Did the Early Semites of Asia Minor Use the Alphabet?

Abstract

MORE than a thousand cuneiform tablets have now been published containing the records of the business transactions of a community of Semitic merchants, who lived and traded in the region afterwards called Cappadocia, in the latter half of the third millennium B. C.1 There is indirect evidence in these tablets that even at this early date these merchants also used another system of writing, which may have been a primitive North Semitic alphabet. It may be supposed that this primitive alphabet was written upon parchment or other perishable material, and it would be the rarest of good fortune if any actual remains of it should ever come to light. As evidence that another system of writing was in use the following facts are submitted. A very unusual feature of the Cappadocian tablets is what has been called a word-divider. An upright wedge, sometimes only about half the length of the other upright wedges on the tablet, and having its head on a level with the top of the other signs, is frequently used with the obvious purpose of showing where one word ends and another begins. The scribes varied a great deal in their use of this device. There are texts in which it is missing entirely,2 others in which it occurs only occasionally,3 and others in which it is found at the end of almost every word.4 The practice of using this quasi-punctuation is entirely unparalleled in other