The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium: West Semitic Alphabet CA 1150-850 BCE

by Benjamin Sass

The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium addresses the epigraphical and archaeological aspects of the West Semitic, Arabian, Phrygian and Greek alphabets ca. 1150–750 BCE, and explores the processes and background that brought about the transition from the Proto-Canaanite to the Phoenician-Aramaic and Hebrew scripts in the first half of the ninth century, to the genesis of the Arabian alphabet at about the same time, and to the transmission of the alphabet to the Phrygians and Greeks ca. one hundred years later.

196 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ava]

Incredibly dense but also justifiably so--there's no way to talk about the early history of alphabets without being incredibly dense. Sass helpfully balances the density with concise chapter-end synopses. This is outside my area of expertise and while I definitely struggled through chapters 1 and 2 I was still able to learn everything relevant. For that I'd say this is a well-constructed book!

[David Olmsted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our modern alphabet originally developed as a Semitic language shorthand memory aid among commercial and military professions during the late Bronze Age. As such it did not have vowels. The alphabet was adopted to various national languages as an official writing scheme by the new Semitic iron age kingdoms emerging from 1100 to 900 BC. The alphabetic approach replaced the more phonetically detailed (and complex) scripts of the Bronze Age empires which could only be read by a limited number of scribes. The earliest examples of the alphabet are called Proto-Siniatic (after their initial discovery at some ancient mines in the Sinai desert) or Proto-Canaanite. This fine book does not cover that beginning stage but instead covers the second stage of alphabet development which occurred during the emergence of these iron age kingdoms.