It has been suggested that this article should be split into articles titled Proto Sinaitic script and Proto Canaanite script discuss February 2024 The Proto Sinaitic script is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about 30 40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula as well as two inscriptions from Wadi el Hol in Middle Egypt Together with about 20 known Proto Canaanite inscriptions it is also known as Early Alphabetic i e the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet According to common theory Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Canaanite language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script Proto Sinaitic scriptProto Sinaitic inscription 346 the first published photograph of the script The line running from the upper left to lower right may read mt l bʿlt to the Lady Script typeAbjadTime periodc 19th 16th century BCDirectionMixedLanguagesCanaanite languagesRelated scriptsParent systemsEgyptian hieroglyphsProto Sinaitic scriptChild systemsPhoenician South SemiticISO 15924ISO 15924Psin 103 Proto Sinaitic The earliest Proto Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid 19th early date and the mid 16th late date century BC The principal debate is between an early date around 1850 BC and a late date around 1550 BC The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto Sinaitic or proto Canaanite and by extension locates the invention of the alphabet in Egypt or Canaan respectively However the discovery of the two Wadi el Hol inscriptions near the Nile River suggests that the script originated in Egypt The evolution of Proto Sinaitic and the small number of Proto Canaanite inscriptions from the Bronze Age is based on rather scant epigraphic evidence it is only with the Bronze Age collapse and the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the Levant that Proto Canaanite is clearly attested Byblos inscriptions 10th 8th century BC Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription c 10th century BC The first published group of Proto Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904 1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie These ten inscriptions plus an eleventh published by Raymond Weill in 1904 from the 1868 notes of Edward Henry Palmer were reviewed in detail and numbered as 345 355 by Alan Gardiner in 1916 To this were added a number of short Proto Canaanite inscriptions found in Canaan and dated to between the 17th and 15th centuries BC and more recently the discovery in 1999 of the two Wadi el Hol inscriptions found in Middle Egypt by John and Deborah Darnell The Wadi el Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of Proto Sinaitic writing from the mid 19th to 18th centuries BC Discovery I am disposed to see in this one of the many alphabets which were in use in the Mediterranean lands long before the fixed alphabet selected by the Phoenicians A mass of signs was used continuously from 6 000 or 7 000 B C until out of it was crystallized the alphabets of the Mediterranean the Karians and Celtiberians preserving the greatest number of signs the Semites and Phoenicans keeping fewer The two systems of writing pictorial and linear which Dr Evans has found to have been used in Crete long before the Phoenician age show how several systems were in use Some of the workmen employed by the Egyptians probably the Aamu or Retennu Syrians who are often named had this system of linear signs which we have found they naturally mixed many hieroglyphs with it borrowed from their masters And here we have the result at a date some five centuries before the oldest Phoenician writing that is known Such seems to be the conclusion that we must reach from the external evidence that we can trace The ulterior conclusion is very important namely that common Syrian workmen who could not command the skill of an Egyptian sculptor were familiar with writing at 1500 B C and this a writing independent of hieroglyphics and cuneiform It finally disproves the hypothesis that the Israelites who came through this region into Egypt and passed back again could not have used writing Here we have common Syrian labourers possessing a script which other Semitic peoples of this region must be credited with knowing Flinders Petrie 1906 Researches in Sinai O my god rescue me from the interior of the mine l ḫlṣ n b t k nqb Text 350 Steliform rock panel column ii left column gives a picture of the situation of the miners According to William Albright in his book The Proto Sinaitic Inscriptions And Their Decipherment the first inscriptions in the category now known as Proto Sinaitic were discovered and copied by E H Palmer in Wadi Magharah during the winter of 1868 1869 His text was not published until 1904 However E H Palmer notes that he was not the first others had done work before him and as such his work was more of a Re discovery In the winter of 1905 Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda were conducting a series of archaeological excavations in the Sinai Peninsula During a dig at Serabit el Khadim an extremely lucrative turquoise mine used between the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasty and again between the Eighteenth and mid Twentieth Dynasty Petrie discovered a series of inscriptions at the site s massive invocative temple to Hathor as well as some fragmentary inscriptions in the mines themselves Petrie immediately recognized hieroglyphic characters in the inscriptions but upon closer inspection realized the script was wholly alphabetic and not the combination of logograms and syllabics as in Egyptian script proper He thus assumed that the inscriptions showed a script that the turquoise miners had devised themselves using linear signs that they had borrowed from hieroglyphics He published his findings in London the following year Ten years later in 1916 Alan Gardiner one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid 20th century published his own interpretation of Petrie s findings arguing that the glyphs appeared to be early versions of the signs used for later Semitic languages such as Phoenician and was able to assign sound values and reconstructed names to some of the letters by assuming they represented what would later become the common Semitic abjad One example was the character to which Gardiner assigned the b sound on the grounds that it derived from the Egyptian glyph for house and was very similar to the Phoenician letter bet whose name derives from the Semitic word for house bayt Using his hypothesis Gardiner was able to affirm Petrie s hypothesis that the mystery inscriptions were of a religious nature as his model allowed an often recurring word to be reconstructed as lbʿlt meaning to Ba alat or more accurately to the Lady that is the lady Hathor Likewise this allowed another recurring word mʿhbʿlt to be translated as Beloved of the Lady a reading which became very acceptable after the lemma was found carved underneath a hieroglyphic inscription which read Beloved of Hathor Lady of Turquoise Gardiner s hypothesis allowed researchers to connect the letters of the inscriptions to modern Semitic alphabets and resulted in the inscriptions becoming much more readable leading to the immediate acceptance of his hypothesis citation needed DevelopmentThe letters of the earliest script used for Semitic languages were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs In the 19th century the theory of Egyptian origin competed alongside other theories that the Phoenician script developed from Akkadian cuneiform Cretan hieroglyphs the Cypriot syllabary and Anatolian hieroglyphs Then the Proto Sinaitic inscriptions were studied by Alan Gardiner who identified the word bʿlt Lady occurring several times in inscriptions and also attempted to decipher other words In the 1950s and 1960s William Albright published interpretations of Proto Sinaitic as the key to show the derivation of the Canaanite alphabet from hieratic According to the alphabet theory the early Semitic proto alphabet reflected in the Proto Sinaitic inscriptions would have given rise to both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Proto Canaanite alphabet by the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse 1200 1150 BC For example the hieroglyph for pr house a rectangle partially open along one side O1 in Gardiner s sign list was adopted to write Semitic b after the first consonant of baytu the Semitic word for house A transitional stage between Proto Canaanite and Old Phoenician 1000 800 BC has been proposed by authors such as Werner Pichler as the origin of the Libyco Berber script used among Ancient Libyans i e Proto Berbers citing common similarities to both Proto Canaanite proper and its early North Arabian descendants InscriptionsSerabit inscriptions The Sinai inscriptions are best known from the Serabit el Khadim proto Sinaitic inscriptions carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor ḥwt ḥr The mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years Many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta and included large numbers of Canaanites i e speakers of an early form of Northwest Semitic ancestral to the Canaanite languages of the Late Bronze Age who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta Most of the forty or so inscriptions have been found among much more numerous hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions scratched on rocks near and in the turquoise mines and along the roads leading to the temple The date of the inscriptions is mostly placed in the 17th or 16th century BC An alternative view dates most of the inscriptions to the reign of Amenemhat III or his successor circa 1800 BC It has been suggested that the dating period includes the reign of pharaoh Senwosret III Four inscriptions have been found in the temple on two small human statues and on either side of a small stone sphinx They are crudely done suggesting that the workers who made them were illiterate apart from this script Wadi el Hol inscriptions Traces of the 16 and 12 characters of the two Wadi el Hol inscriptions The two Wadi el Hol inscriptions Arabic وادي الهول Wadi al Hawl Ravine of Terror were carved on the stone sides of an ancient high desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos in the heart of literate Egypt They have been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 BC They are in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile at approx 25 57 N 32 25 E 25 950 N 32 417 E 25 950 32 417 among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions Rock inscriptions in the valley appear to show the oldest examples of phonetic alphabetic writing discovered to date The inscriptions are graphically very similar to the Serabit inscriptions but show a greater hieroglyphic influence such as a glyph for a man that was apparently not read alphabetically The first of these h1 is a figure of celebration Gardiner A28 whereas the second h2 is either that of a child Gardiner A17 or of dancing Gardiner A32 If the latter h1 and h2 may be graphic variants such as two hieroglyphs both used to write the Canaanite word hillul jubilation rather than different consonants Hieroglyphs representing reading left to right celebration a child and dancing The first appears to be the prototype for h1 while the latter two have been suggested as the prototype for h2 citation needed Brian Colless has published a translation of the text in which some of the signs are treated as logograms representing a whole word not just a single consonant or rebuses Vertical mst r h ʿnt ygs ʾl Vertical Excellent banquet mst r ʾs of the celebration h illul of ʿAnat ʿnt It will provide ygs ʾEl ʾl Horizontal rb wn mn h ngṯ h ʾ p mẖ r Horizontal plenty rb of wine wn and victuals mn for the celebration h illul We will sacrifice ngṯ to her h an ox ʾ lp and p a prime fatling mẖ r ʾs Here aleph whose glyph depicts the head of an ox is a logogram used to represent the word ox ʾalp he whose glyph depicts a man in celebration is a logogram for the words celebration hillul and she her hiʾ and resh whose glyph depicts a man s head is a logogram for the word utmost greatest raʾs This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions with celebrations for the goddess Hathor involving inebriation Other possible inscriptions Archaeological excavations at the site of Umm el Marra have uncovered four inscribed clay cylinders dating to ca 2300 BC and whose incisions have been hypothesized to be Early Alphabetic Semitic writing which would make them the oldest such examples In 2009 Stephanie Dalley published a number of tablets from the Schoyen Collection dating to the times of the First Sealand dynasty four of which have been identified as examples of Early Alphabetic inscriptions Other probable examples of Early Alphabetic inscriptions include an ostracon from a tomb in western Thebes and a inscribed sherd from Lachish both dating to the 15th century BC In 2010 Stefan Wimmer published an inscription discovered at Timna Valley which he also identified as written in the proto Sinaitic writing although he also noted that its authenticity is not certain Table of SymbolsBelow is a table synoptically showing selected Proto Sinaitic signs and the proposed correspondences with Phoenician letters and Egyptian hieroglyphs A full repertoire of the currently known letterforms can be found on pages 8 and 9 here https www unicode org L2 L2019 19299 revisiting proto sinaitic pdf Also shown are the reconstructed sound values and names Hieroglyph Serabit El Khadim Wadi El Hol Timna IPA value Reconstructed name Phoenician𓃾 ʔ ʾalp ox 𐤀𓉐 b bayt house 𐤁 𓉔 𐤁𓌙 g gaml throw stick 𐤂𓉿 d dalt door 𐤃𓆟 or𓆡 digg fish 𐤃 𓀠 h haw man calling hll jubilate 𐤄𓌉 w waw hook mace 𐤅𓐅 or 𓂃 z d zayn weapon or ḏayp eyebrow 𐤆𓉗 or 𓉿 ħ ḥaṣir mansion 𐤇𓎛 x ḫayt thread wick 𐤇 𓄤 tˤ ṭab good 𐤈 𓂝 j yad hand 𐤉𓂧 k kap p palm 𐤊𓍢 or𓋿 l lamd goad 𐤋𓈖 m maym water 𐤌𓆓 n naḥs snake 𐤍𓊽 s samk support 𐤎𓁹 ʕ ʿayn eye 𐤏𓇭 ɣ or ʁ ġinab grape 𐤏 𓂋 p pay mouth 𐤐 𓂏 𓇳 p or ʃ pay mouth or sams sun 𓊋 p pint corner 𐤐𓇑 or 𓇉 t sˤ or t 8ˤ ṣad ṣimaḥ plant 𐤑𓅭 t 8ˤ ṣibbatum reed clump 𐤑 𓃻 kˤ or q qup monkey 𐤒 𓎗 qaw cord line 𐤒𓁶 or𓂉 r raʾs head 𐤓𓇴 ʃ sams sun with uraeus 𐤔 sams sun with uraeus sams sun 𐤔 𓌔 or𓐮 t 8 ɬ ṯad breast 𐤔𓏴 t taw mark 𐤕𓆛 s name may be reconstructed as dagg Ugaritic Hebrew nun Aramaic Akkadian Phoenician or samk Arabic Old South Arabian However the development of Proto Sinaitic in Sinai and Egypt makes it part of the Northwest Semitic Languages where dagg and nun were used When both 𓉿 and 𓆛 are found within the same inscription they are either thought to be the same allophone or they are thought to be misinterpreted as 𓉗 or Samekh respectively citation needed There is no hieroglyph for Waw hook and there are no strong graphical matches for hieroglyphs Ziqq fetter 𓍿 Taw mark 𓏴 and Ṯad breasts 𓂑𓂑 Colless suggests these letters may have derived independently outside Egypt Others have interpreted Ziqq Waw and Ṯad as coming from reinterpreted hieroglyphs a copper ingot 𓈔 a mace 𓌉 and Aa32 𓐮 respectively Several sound mergers may have occurred by the time of the Phoenician language including the merger of d into z the merger of x into ħ the merger of ɣ into ʕ and the merger of 8 into ʃ citation needed The Canaanites seem to have replaced the 𓄤 glyph with one resembling a spinning wheel ṭayt 𓊖 It has also been described as sinn tooth citation needed See alsoTell es Safi inscription Proto Canaanite Paleo Hebrew alphabetReferencesPetrie amp Currelly 1906 p 130 Simons 2011 p 16 The proto Sinaitic corpus consists of approximately forty inscriptions and fragments the vast majority of which were found at Serabit el Khadim LeBlanc Paul D 2017 Deciphering the Proto Sinaitic Script Making Sense of the Wadi el Hol and Serabit el Khadim Early Alphabetic Inscriptions Subclass Press p 11 ISBN 978 0 9952844 0 1 Its importance lies in the fact that proto Sinaitic represents our alphabet s earliest developmental period So far only two major discoveries of these inscriptions have been made The first batch came to light in 1904 1905 in the Sinai when Hilda and Flinders Petrie discovered what are now referred to as the Serabit el Khadim inscriptions The second group was discovered by John and Deborah Darnell in as recently as the 1990s in Middle Egypt and is known as the pair of Wadi el Hol inscriptions Woodard Roger D 2008 The Ancient Languages of Syria Palestine and Arabia Cambridge University Press pp 104 105 ISBN 978 1 139 46934 0 The problem of the Proto Canaanite inscriptions is directly linked with that of the Proto Sinaitic inscriptions The latter are a group of inscriptions numbering about thirty discovered near Egyptian turquoise mines in the Sinai dated variously to the eighteenth or fifteenth centuries BC which have been only partially deciphered but which seem to represent a form of early West Semitic for a recent overview with bibliography see Pardee 1997b Golden Jonathan M 2009 Ancient Canaan and Israel An Introduction OUP USA pp 243 244 ISBN 978 0 19 537985 3 By the beginning of the second millennium BCE the late Middle Bronze Age in Canaan the scribes of Ugarit began to use a new script based on twenty seven cuneiform characters The southern Canaanites also developed new scripts of their own two variations in fact Proto Sinaitic and Proto Canaanite both of which were also based upon the use of acronyms Albright 1966 Cross 1967 Naveh 1982 Unfortunately only a few examples of each have been recovered to date and the ones that do exist are mostly incomplete and therefore difficult to decipher As a result some fundamental questions regarding the time of the first Proto Canaanite scripts and the origins of the alphabet remain unanswered Proto Sinaitic Today archaeologists know of some thirty to forty Proto Sinaitic inscriptions that have been found on statuettes and stelae and carved into the rock faces around Serabit el Khadim Garfinkel Yosef Golub Mitka R Misgav Haggai Ganor Saar May 2015 The ʾIsbaʿal Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 373 373 217 233 doi 10 5615 bullamerschoorie 373 0217 JSTOR 10 5615 bullamerschoorie 373 0217 S2CID 164971133 Rollston C 2020 The Emergence of Alphabetic Scripts In R Hasselbach Andee Ed A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages 1st ed pp 65 81 Wiley doi 10 1002 9781119193814 ch4 Sinaitic inscriptions ancient writing Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved 2019 08 21 The Development of the Greek Alphabet within the Chronology of the ANE 2009 Quote Naveh gives four major reasons why it is universally agreed that the Greek alphabet was developed from an early Phoenician alphabet According to Herodutous the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus brought into Hellas the alphabet which had hitherto been unknown as I think to the Greeks The Greek Letters alpha beta gimmel have no meaning in Greek but the meaning of most of their Semitic equivalents is known For example aleph means ox bet means house and gimmel means throw stick Early Greek letters are very similar and sometimes identical to the West Semitic letters The letter sequence between the Semitic and Greek alphabets is identical Naveh 1982 John F Healey The Early Alphabet University of California Press 1990 ISBN 978 0 520 07309 8 p 18 Albright 1966 Simons 2011 p 24 Coulmas 1989 p 141 Earliest Known Hebrew Text in Proto Canaanite Script Discovered in Area Where David Slew Goliath Science Daily November 3 2008 University of Haifa January 10 2010 Archived from the original on October 5 2011 Retrieved November 5 2011 Naveh Joseph 1987 Proto Canaanite Archaic Greek and the Script of the Aramaic Text on the Tell Fakhariyah Statue in Miller et al eds Ancient Israelite Religion Weill R 1904 Recueil des inscriptions egyptiennes du Sinai bibliographie texte traduction et commentaire precede de la geographie des etablissements egyptiens de la peninsule in French Societe nouvelle de librairie et d edition p 154 Retrieved 2023 08 08 Gardiner 1916 p 1 16 Simons 2011 p 24 quote The two latest discoveries those found in the Wadi el Hol north of Luxor in Egypt s western desert can be dated with rather more certainty than the others and offer compelling evidence that the early date 1850 BC is the more likely of the two Goldwasser Orly Mar Apr 2010 Biblical Archaeology Review 36 1 Washington DC Biblical Archaeology Society ISSN 0098 9444 Archived from the original on 30 June 2016 Retrieved 6 Nov 2011 Petrie amp Currelly 1906 p 131 132 Albright 1969 p 19 sfn error no target CITEREFAlbright1969 help Petrie amp Currelly 1906 Joseph Naveh Solomon Asher Birnbaum David Diringer Zvi Hermann Federbush Jonathan Shunary Jacob Maimon 2007 ALPHABET HEBREW Encyclopaedia Judaica vol 1 2nd ed Gale pp 689 728 ISBN 978 0 02 865929 9 This is in marked contrast to the history of adoption of the Phoenician alphabet in the Iron Age where ʾalep gave rise to the Greek letter aleph i e the Semitic term for ox was left untranslated and adopted as simply the name of the letter Picker Werner 2007 Origin and development of the Libyco Berber Koln Rudiger Koppel Verlag ISBN 978 3 89645 394 5 Retrieved 2022 04 16 The proto Sinaitic corpus consists of approximately forty inscriptions and fragments the vast majority of which were found at Serabit el Khadim Simons 2011 16 Wilson Wright Aren Max Sinai 357 A Northwest Semitic Votive Inscription to Tessob Journal of the American Oriental Society vol 136 no 2 2016 pp 247 63 Goldwasser 2010 The alphabet was invented in this way by Canaanites at Serabit in the Middle Bronze Age in the middle of the 19th century B C E probably during the reign of Amenemhet III of the XIIth Dynasty Parker Hope The Proto Sinaitic inscriptions at Serabit El Khadim in their archaeological context date and function Agypten und Levante Egypt and the Levant 32 pp 269 311 2022 Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions Indicates an Earlier Date for Origin of the Alphabet archive nytimes com Baker Dorie 13 December 1999 Finding sheds new light on the alphabet s origins Yale Bulletin and Calendar Colless 2010 p 91 Note The y appears in the Colless article p 95 but not in the Wikimedia Commons trace image inscr1 jpg Schwartz Glenn M 2021 Non cuneiform writing at third millennium Umm El Marra Syria evidence of an Early Alphabetic tradition Pasiphae XV Fabrizio Serra 255 266 doi 10 19272 202133301018 Richey Madadh 2023 Syria Mesopotamia and the Origins of the Alphabet Maarav 27 1 2 1 38 doi 10 1086 727576 ISSN 0149 5712 Dalley Stephanie 2009 Babylonian Tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty in the Schoyen Collection CDL Press p 15 ISBN 978 1 934309 08 7 Haring Ben 2015 Halaḥam on an Ostracon of the Early New Kingdom Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74 2 189 196 doi 10 1086 682330 ISSN 0022 2968 Fischer Elfert Hans W Krebernik Manfred 2016 Zu den Buchstabennamen auf dem Halaḥam Ostrakon aus TT 99 Grab des Sennefri Zeitschrift fur Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde in German 143 2 169 176 doi 10 1515 zaes 2016 0011 ISSN 2196 713X Hoflmayer Felix Misgav Haggai Webster Lyndelle Streit Katharina 2021 Early alphabetic writing in the ancient Near East the missing link from Tel Lachish Antiquity 95 381 705 719 doi 10 15184 aqy 2020 157 ISSN 0003 598X Wimmer Stefan Jakob 2010 01 01 A Proto Sinaitic Inscription in Timna Israel New Evidence on the Emergence of the Alphabet Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections ISSN 1944 2815 See also Simons 2011 Figure Three Chart of all early proto Canaanite letters with comparison to proto Sinaitic signs p 39 Figure Four Representative selection of later proto Canaanite letters with comparison to early proto Canaanite and proto Sinaitic signs p 40 See Also A comparison of glyphs from western Proto Canaanite Byblos and southern scripts along with the reconstructed Linear Ugaritic Lundin 1987 is found in Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz Die Keilalphabete die phonizisch kanaanaischen und altarabischen Alphabete in Ugarit Ugarit Verlag 1988 p 102 reprinted in Wilfred G E Watson Nicolas Wyatt eds Handbook of Ugaritic Studies 1999 p 86 Cross F M 1980 Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 238 1 20 https doi org 10 2307 1356511 Simons 2011 p 38 fig 2 Colless 2010 p 96 fig 5 Colless 2010 Albright 1966 fig 1 Darnell John Coleman Lundberg Marilyn J Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el Hol New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt C Dobbs Allsopp P K McCarter M J Lundberg and B Zuckerman co authors with the assistance of C Manassa Darnell in Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59 2005 63 124 Colless 2014 p 85 86 Albright 1966 p 21 fig 5 Colless 2010 p 92 Wilson Wright Aren Max 2016 Sinai 357 A Northwest Semitic Votive Inscription to Tessob Journal of the American Oriental Society 136 2 247 263 doi 10 7817 jameroriesoci 136 2 247 ISSN 0003 0279 Pandey Anshuman 30 July 2019 Revisiting the Encoding of Proto Sinaitic in Unicode PDF Unicode org Colless 2010 p 94 fig 2 Colless 2010 p 90 BibliographyPrimary sources Petrie Flinders Currelly Charles Trick 1906 Researches in Sinai ATLA monograph preservation program John Murray ISBN 978 0 7905 2421 4 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Gardiner Alan H 1916 The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 1 Egypt Exploration Society 1 16 doi 10 2307 3853586 ISSN 0307 5133 JSTOR 3853586 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Gardiner A H Peet T E 1917 The Inscriptions of Sinai Part 1 Introduction and Plates Memoirs Egypt Exploration Society Egyptian Exploration Fund Lake Kirsopp Blake Robert P 1928 The Serabit Inscriptions I The Rediscovery of the Inscriptions The Harvard Theological Review 21 1 Cambridge University Press 1 8 doi 10 1017 S0017816000021155 ISSN 0017 8160 JSTOR 1507905 S2CID 161474162 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Butin Romain F 1928 The Serabit Inscriptions II The Decipherment and Significance of the Inscriptions The Harvard Theological Review 21 1 Cambridge University Press 9 67 doi 10 1017 S0017816000021167 ISSN 0017 8160 JSTOR 1507906 S2CID 163011970 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Butin Romain F 1932 The Protosinaitic Inscriptions The Harvard Theological Review 25 2 Cambridge University Press 130 203 doi 10 1017 S0017816000001231 ISSN 0017 8160 JSTOR 1507943 S2CID 161237361 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Butin Romain F Starr Richard Francis Strong 1936 The New ProtoSinaitic Inscriptions Excavations and Protosinaitic Inscriptions at Serabit El Khadem Report of the Expedition of 1935 Studies and documents Christophers Retrieved 2023 08 13 Leibovitch Joseph 1961 Deux nouvelles inscriptions proto sinaitiques Le Museon in French 74 L Association sans but lucratif Le Museon 461 ff ISSN 0771 6494 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Rainey A F 1975 Notes on Some Proto Sinaitic Inscriptions Israel Exploration Journal 25 2 3 Israel Exploration Society 106 116 ISSN 0021 2059 JSTOR 27925505 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Beit Arieh Itzhak 1982 New Discoveries at Serabit el Khadim The Biblical Archaeologist 45 1 The American Schools of Oriental Research 13 18 doi 10 2307 3209843 ISSN 0006 0895 JSTOR 3209843 S2CID 189473632 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Arieh Itzhaq Beit Giveon Raphael Saas Benjamin 1978 Two previously unknown Proto Sinaitic inscriptions in Explorations at Serabit El Khadim 1977 Tel Aviv 5 3 4 Maney Publishing 183 187 doi 10 1179 033443578788497659 ISSN 0334 4355 Sass B 1988 The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millenium B C Agypten und Altes Testament In Kommission bei O Harrassowitz ISBN 978 3 447 02860 8 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Secondary sources Albright W F 1966 The Proto Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment Harvard theological studies Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 89130 221 6 I Biggs M Dijkstra Corpus of Proto sinaitic Inscriptions Alter Orient und Altes Testament Neukirchener Verlag 1990 Colless Brian E 1990 The proto alphabetic inscriptions of Sinai Abr Nahrain Ancient Near Eastern Studies 28 1 52 doi 10 2143 anes 28 0 525711 Colless Brian E 1991 The proto alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan Abr Nahrain Ancient Near Eastern Studies 29 18 66 doi 10 2143 anes 29 0 525718 Colless Brian E The Byblos Syllabary and the Proto alphabet Abr Nahrain Ancient Near Eastern Studies 30 1992 15 62 Colless Brian E 2010 Proto alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah PDF Antiguo Oriente 8 75 96 Colless Brian E 2014 The Origin of the Alphabet An Examination of the Goldwasser Hypothesis PDF Antiguo Oriente 12 71 104 Darnell John Coleman Dobbs Allsopp F W Lundberg Marilyn J McCarter P Kyle Zuckerman Bruce 2005 Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el Hol The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59 63 65 67 71 73 113 115 124 JSTOR 3768583 Cowley A E 1916 The Origin of the Semitic Alphabet The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 3 1 Egypt Exploration Society 17 21 doi 10 2307 3853587 ISSN 0307 5133 JSTOR 3853587 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Cowley A E 1929 The Sinaitic Inscriptions The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 15 3 4 Egypt Exploration Society 200 218 doi 10 2307 3854116 ISSN 0307 5133 JSTOR 3854116 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Daniels P T Bright W 1996 The World s Writing Systems Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 507993 7 Retrieved 2023 08 13 Hamilton Gordon J The origins of the West Semitic alphabet in Egyptian scripts 2006 Fellman Bruce 2000 The Birthplace of the ABCs Yale Alumni Magazine December 2000 Sacks David 2004 Letter Perfect The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z Broadway Books ISBN 0 7679 1173 3 Goldwasser Orly How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs 2016 06 30 at the Wayback Machine Biblical Archaeology Review 36 02 Mar Apr 2010 Millard A R 1986 The Infancy of the Alphabet World Archaeology pp 390 398 Ray John D 1986 The Emergence of Writing in Egypt Early Writing Systems 17 3 pp 307 316 Simons Frank 2011 Proto Sinaitic Progenitor of the Alphabet PDF Rosetta 9 16 40 Stefan Jakob Wimmer Samaher Wimmer Dweikat The Alphabet from Wadi el Hol A First Try in Gottinger Miszellen Beitrage zur agyptologischen Diskussion Heft 180 Gottingen 2001 p 107 111External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to Proto Sinaitic script Proto Sinaitic inscriptions byu edu Proto Sinaitic 18th 14th cent B C Mnamon Ancient writing systems in the Mediterranean Escritura Proto sinaitica in Spanish Promotora Espanola de Linguistica Proel Wadi el HolArcheology article on Wadi el Hol from 2000 Jan New York Times article on Wadi el Hol from 1999 Nov BBC article on Wadi el Hol from 1999 Nov, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library, article, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games, mobile, phone, android, ios, apple, mobile phone, samsung, iphone, xiomi, xiaomi, redmi, honor, oppo, nokia, sonya, mi, pc, web, computer