The Origin of the Semitic Alphabet

Abstract

In the Journal of Egyptian Archœology for January, 1916, a conjoint article was published by Dr. Gardiner, Dr. Cowley, and myself on the origin of the Semitic alphabet, starting from Dr. Gardiner's decipherment of the name of the Semitic goddess, Ba‘alath, in certain non-Egyptian inscriptions or “ scribings ” discovered by Professor Petrie in Sinai. The characters are Egyptian, but are not used with Egyptian values; they are usually written in vertical columns, and like the Meroitic hieroglyphs are read from the back and not from the front. Unfortunately the inscriptions are not numerous; they are badly written and in many cases effaced. However, we succeeded in determining the phonetic values of the majority of the letters—for letters they are—and in adding one or two more words (םענ לע, בר, תנת) to Dr. Gardiner's תלעב. One of the inscriptions which is on the base of a sphinx is “ bilingual ”, that is to say, there is an Egyptian text as well as what I will call a Semitic text.