Alphabetic Writing

Persian poets since Rūdakī have drawn on the letter symbolism of the Perso-Arabic alphabet. Visually, its characters have attracted poets who find the likeness of the beloved in their shapes. Spiritually, it enjoys a special status as the language of the Koran and therefore, in the eyes of some, God. Classical Persian lyric poetry combined these aesthetic and religious connotations, and as one of the foremost voices in that tradition, Ḥāfiẓ was no exception. But a review of the extant literature shows that, as a trope, letter symbolism has been largely overlooked when compared with wine, the moth, or the candle. Through a comprehensive study of the let-ters' use in Ḥāfiẓ's dīvān, this article argues that, by playing with particular letters' connotations, or punning on their physical shapes and homographs, Ḥāfiẓ invokes disparate meanings, only to then reveal their underlying unity, in the process affirming the affinity between love and language, the beloved and the divine.

Robin Fuller Rick Griffin was a leading figure of the psychedelic design movement in late 1960s San Francisco. This paper argues that although not an overt theorist, in his lettering for posters and comic books, Griffin reveals aspects of the visual semiotics of writing that provide insights for the semiotic study of graphically-embodied language. Griffin was preoccupied with the visual substance of writing. Not only was Griffin a student of myriad styles of letter (including, cholo graffiti, comic book lettering, Jugendstil and Victorian typography), but he was also preoccupied with how writing functions and how letterforms attain meanings. Through an analysis of Griffin's comic book and poster lettering, this paper will discuss aspects of the visual semiotics of alphabetic writing including: the relationship of embodied tokens to alphabetical symbols, the socio-semiotic function of styles of letter, and lettering as aesthetic signification.

An enormous amount of research and the synthesization of historical events and archaeological artifacts has led the author to verify Israelite residence in Egypt from 1876–1446 BC. This research is connected to the unexpected discovery of interconnecting archaeological, epigraphical, and iconographical evidence that attests to the presence of Israelites in Egypt over virtually the entire 430 years. By the sheer volume of verifiable evidence of complementary historical data—when comparing the biblical text and the artifactual and epigraphical record—the author attempts to demonstrate convincingly to objective readers that the biblical story of the Egyptian origins of the Israelite ‘nation’ is reliable as a factual account. Never again will students of the Bible have to listen to uniformed university professors denounce the story of Israelites in Egypt without a ready defense for its validity.

For about 150 years, scholars have attempted to identify the language of the world’s first alphabetic script, and to translate some of the inscriptions that use it. Until now, their attempts have accomplished little more than identifying most of the pictographic letters and translating a few of the Semitic words. With the publication of The World’s Oldest Alphabet, a new day has dawned. All of the disputed letters have been resolved, while the language has been identified conclusively as Hebrew, allowing for the translation of 16 inscriptions that date from 1842–1446 BC. These inscriptions expressly name 3 biblical figures and greatly illuminate the earliest Israelite history in a way that no other book has achieved, apart from the Bible.

The recent surge in ancient scripts has resulted in huge image libraries of ancient texts. Data mining of the collected images enables the study of the evolution of these ancient scripts. In particular, the origin of the Indus Valley script is highly debated. We use convolu-tional neural networks to test which Phoenician alphabet letters and Brahmi symbols are closest to the Indus Valley script symbols. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that overall the Phoenician alphabet is much closer than the Brahmi script to the Indus Valley script symbols.

Queste riflessioni sui fenomeni involutivi che stanno investendo la capacità di scrivere di bambini e ragazzi, e che a seguire riducono il repertorio simbolico a disposizione degli adulti, è stato pubblicato in "Vita dell'infanzia", LXIV, 9-10, 2015.

Juntamente com as armas de fogo, os animais domésticos, os micróbios e o aparato estatal, o alfabeto integrou o dispositivo biotécnico que os europeus renascentistas usaram para conquistar, espoliar e governar os povos ameríndios da Mata Atlântica, a partir do século XVI. Como em outras partes do Novo Mundo, a escrita foi fundamental para a apropriação retalhada dos ecossistemas nativos, incluindo suas populações humanas (privatização fundiária, escravização etc.). Não obstante, o alfabetismo acabou se adaptando aos territórios americanos. Uma das expressões mais poderosas dessa adaptação foi o processo por meio do qual o alfabeto, a princípio uma técnica de subjugação, acabou se tornando um instrumento de resistência ameríndia ao controle colonial. Alfabetizados nas missões jesuíticas, os nativos adquiriam a competência linguística necessária ao questionamento dos processos que simbolicamente viabilizavam a apropriação e transformação de seu território. Até agora, o exemplo mais bem estudado desse tipo de resistência " de dentro para fora " do sistema é a rebelião Guarani que lutou contra a implementação do Tratado de Madrid, na década de 1750.

A guide to children, parents and student of Syriac, with twenty-two illustrations. Each pair of facing pages introduces a single letter of the alphabet with a word that begins with the letter in question on one side, and an illustration of that word on the other side. The letters are hollow and can be filled and colored by children. Notes on each page give the name of the letter on that page, how the letter sounds, a phonological transcription of the sample word, and the meaning of the word. Paperback Version.

ENGLISH
By tradition, the critical exercise has always had targeted the emancipation of the subject, its liberation from the constraints of power. But, from Foucault, the political-theoretical reflection has profoundly reshaped the relationship between subject, power and critical outlining a problematic framework that is one of the central themes of philosophical debate.
What is a apparatus? In which way historicity produces subjectivity? The "parrhesia" and "techniques of the self" escape to the networks of knowledge-power or are also marked? What makes possible the "universalizing" and "individualizing" of governmentality?
These and other theoretical issues are being investigated in this book, which alternates pages dedicated to a close comparison with Foucault, putting to good use ambiguities and aporias, to pages that outlined a genealogy of power and of critical thinking in their relations with the writing practices, from the Mesopotamian civilization to ancient Greece. Just in the objectification and subjectifications produced by the device of writing are in fact traced, by the author, so the conditions of disciplinary power and biopolitics, as the genesis of the critical thinking. Thus emerge the features of a "semiotics of power" in which genealogical method is problematically involved.

- - - ITALIANO
Per tradizione, l’esercizio critico ha sempre avuto di mira l’emancipazione del soggetto, la sua liberazione dai vincoli del potere. Ma, a partire da Foucault, la riflessione teoretico-politica ha profondamente ridisegnato i rapporti tra soggetto, potere e critica delineando un quadro problematico che costituisce oggi uno dei temi al centro del dibattito filosofico.
Che cos’è un dispositivo? In che modo la storicità produce soggettivazione? La pratica «parresiastica» e le «tecniche del sé» si sottraggono alle reti di sapere-potere o ne sono anch’esse segnate? Cosa rende possibile il carattere «universalizzante» e «individualizzante» della governamentalità?
Questi e altri nodi teorici sono oggetto d’indagine del presente libro, che alterna pagine dedicate a un serrato confronto con Foucault, mettendone a frutto ambiguità e aporie, a pagine in cui viene delineata una genealogia del potere e della critica nei loro rapporti con le pratiche di scrittura, dalla civiltà mesopotamica all’antica Grecia. Proprio nelle oggettivazioni e nelle soggettivazioni prodotte dal dispositivo della scrittura vengono infatti rintracciate, dall’autore, tanto le condizioni di possibilità del potere disciplinare e biopolitico, quanto la genesi dell’atteggiamento critico. Emergono così i lineamenti di una «semiotica del potere» in cui lo stesso sguardo genealogico è problematicamente coinvolto.

En 1998, con motivo de la construcción de un nuevo centro comercial en el nº 27 de la calle Marquesa de Pinares de Mérida, se iniciaron distintos trabajos arqueológicos que sacaron a la luz una placa de mármol con alfabeto latino completo. Una de sus peculiaridades es la presencia por primera vez de dos íes, I normal e Ì longa.

This paper is based on a master's dissertation (titled “Origin and Evolution of Italic: from calligraphy to typography”) about the italic, both the writing style and the typographic font. It seeks to understand and define it, while analyzing and interpreting its history, origin and evolution. We have noted that little information regarding the history and definition of italic is available in important history of graphic design publications, and therefore felt the need to study this topic in more depth. For this research we have reviewed relevant literature and observed multiple manuscripts and typefaces. Authors such as Andrew Robinson, Michelle P. Brown, Berthold L. Ullman, James Wardrop and Stanley Morison were essential for a good theoretical foundation. The analysis of manuscripts and typefaces allowed us to verify and exemplify the information that was studied in books and identify with more clarity the characteristics of the italic. This investigation contributes to a better understanding of the italic style.

The Phaistos Disk is a hybrid phonic and alphabetic text written in the empire language of Akkadian dating to about 1800 BCE. It is a philosophical debate about the cause of a recent drought and it represents the first use of alphabetic letters. It has many letter sign similarities with the pure Alphabetic Akkadian texts found at Serabit el Khadim (1450-1250 BCE) and these similarities are what provided the extra knowledge needed for making the translation. Alphabetic letters are wildcard phonic signs meaning they are consonants with arbitrary following vowel sounds. As such they were a writing simplification scheme developed by traders, mercenaries and working priests. Akkadian provides the source words for the alphabetic letter names in both Greek and Semitic. The Phaistos Disk mentions magic, the gods Hu (sun form of Atu and the source of Greek Helios), Su (full moon), Yahu (Mesopotamian Ea and original form of Israelite Yahweh), the goddesses Ayu (sun “setter” and crescent moon, source of Greek Athena and Artemis, equivalent to Mesopotamian Ishtar and Inanna), and Utu (Minoan snake goddess). Finally, it mentions the divine birds which are the eagle-vultures and the Aku-owls (Athenian owls).

This paper is a short review of some of the arguments regarding the relationship between the Proto Semitic / Sinaitic/ Canaanite inscriptions and Paleo Hebrew. It looks at the film of Timothy Mahoney with a disputation between such scholars as Orly Goldwasser and Christopher Rollston and David Rohl and Petrovitch around the studies of Joseph Naveh. Naveh notes that in the tenth century BC Paleo Hebrew, Aramaic and Phoenician were indistinguishable, leaving the door open for a bridge between Proto sinaitic and Paleo Hebrew.  The genius of the alphabet was needed in oder for the Torah to be written. Spome scholars argue that the Proto Sinaitic inscriptions are in fact the earliest form of Hebrew. Rohl sughgest it was designed by Joseph whilst he was in Egypt because of the coincidence between the first inscriptions and Josephs's period in Egypt.

The paper traces the so-called "Illyrian Slavic Alphabet" through the centuries and shows that it can be called an artistic fiction although it seems that it was originally based on the Glagolitic alphabet. An extensive appendix reproduces all sources in very high quality.

Primitive forms of ogham are another evidence that it is the primary, the most primitive form of alphabetic writings. another to those given in this parcel of a bigger work, which you can see at aeiou.ru
Archaeology is challenged, but explained why.
Also alphabetic structure shining through futhark canons allowed me to retransliterate some runes differently than they usually are.
If it will help to read some texts, this hypothesis will be proven, orwise dis-.

Partant de l’histoire de l’alphabet latin, qui est la base de tant d’alphabets aujourd’hui, nous allons décrire les enjeux des normalisations par l’écriture. 1 : Du grec au latin. 2 : Les variétés d’alphabet grec et leur origine. 3 : Le G, une lettre typiquement latine. 4 : Modifications de l’alphabet après l’époque latine. 5 : Qu’est-ce qu’une lettre. 6 : L’alphabet est-il un code ? 7 : Ecrit et oral. 8 : Ecriture, lecture et tradition orthographique. 9 : Pédagogie de l’écrit et de l’oral. 10 : Les écritures qui ne sont pas des alphabets. 11 : Conclusion : l’écriture comme « progrès », et le débat avec la mémoire orale.
Note éditoriale à la fin, avant la bibliographie

Based on phonological research of 37 Northwest and Northeast Caucasian languages, the author proposes for them an original and phonetically complete generalized featural alphabet shaped via peculiar usage of the morphological principles of construction of millennial South Caucasian alphabets. Unlike the phonetically inconsistent Cyrillic alphabets currently in use, it has exceptional properties for precise and alphabetically unequivocal rendition of all phonetic peculiarities of the North Caucasian languages which possess the largest consonant inventory among all languages of the world.

ТҮРКІ ТІЛДЕРІНІҢ ҚАЗІРГІ АХУАЛЫ, КЕЛЕШЕК
ДАМУ ЖАҒДАЙЫ, ӘЛЕУМЕТТІК ЛИНГВИСТИКАЛЫҚ МӘСЕЛЕЛЕРІ

Süer Eker
Başkent Üniversitesi, Ankara, Türkiye


Аннотация. Әлемдегі ғылым мен техникасы дамыған елдердің көбі латын графикасын қолданады. Ғылыми өнімдердің басым көпшілігі латын әліпбиін қолданатын елдердің ғылыми мекемелері мен университеттерінде өндіріледі. Дүние жүзіндегі рфографиялық үрдістер мен алфавиттік реформалар толығымен дерлік латын әліпбиін қабылдауға бағытталған. Түркі тілдес елдердегі жалпы тенденция мен басымдылық латын әліпбиінде. Қырғызстанды қоспағанда, барлық түркітілдес елдер латын әліпбиін қабылдады (немесе қабылдау үстінде). Цифрлық және интернеттің даму жағдайы

латын әліпбиін қабылдауды қажет етеді. Бұл мақалада 92 жылдық тарихы бар «түрікәліпбиін реформалау» бойынша кейбір  тәжірибелер мен ұсыныстар көрсетілген.Түйін сөздер: әліпби, алфавит реформасы, түрік, түрік әліпби реформасы, фонема,
графема.

Abstract. The majority of the world’s most developed countries in science and technology use the Latin script. The vast majority of scientific production in the world is produced in the scientific institutions and universities of countries using the Latin alphabet. Orthographic
trends and alphabetic reforms around the world almost entirely focused on adoption of the Latin script. The general trend and preference in the Turkic speaking countries is also towards adopting of the Latin alphabet. Except for Kyrgyzstan, all the Turkic-speaking countries adopted (or would adopt) the Latin script. Developments in the digital world
and the Internet require the adoption of the Latin based alphabets. In this paper, within the framework of the 92-year-old «Turkish Alphabet Reform» some experiences andrecommendations will be discussed.

Key words: Alphabet, alphabet reform, Turkish, Turkish Alphabet Reform, phoneme,
grapheme.

Writing!  Few human inventions are as pervasive and central to the modern world.  Each and every day, we read thousands of words—whether in traditional formats like books, magazines, or newspapers, or on the increasingly common computers, smartphones, ebooks, and tablets.  But even though writing seems thoroughly modern, it can be traced back more than 5,000 years to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

This lecture series and illustrated guidebook begins with a thorough consideration of what writing actually is, and precisely how it differs from other kinds of graphic communication systems, like pictography, rebus, and numerical notation.  Writing always records language, and it does so in surprisingly similar ways in all writing systems, whether ancient or modern.  In this sense, the way humans wrote millennia ago is not radically different from how we write today.  The lectures then turn to an exploration of the origins and development of writing, tracing the birth of our own alphabet, and its connections to the early Germanic Runes.  They also explore the independent invention of writing in China, and its adoption and elaboration in Japan.  In order to more deeply examine the subject of writing, the theory and practice of decipherment is explored.  Not all writing systems can be deciphered, so what are the limitations?  And how can they be overcome?  Several case studies put decipherment to the test, including Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (Champollion), Old Persian cuneiform (Grotefend), Mycenaean Linear B (Ventris), Mayan hieroglyphs (Knorosov) and Aztec hieroglyphs (Aubin and Lacadena).  Topics explored along the way include: the reasons behind the difficult and still incomplete decipherments of Etruscan and Meroïtic; the urge that numerous invididuals have had to reform writing, or to invent a more ‘perfect’ writing system; and an assessment of Darius the Great's claim that he himself invented the Old Persian (Achaemenid) syllabary.

In comparing the world's writing systems we slip the shackles of parochialism, recognizing that our alphabet is but one of many similar writing systems, all of which capably serve the needs of their users.  Writing is deeply conservative and resistant to change.  It is frequently adapted and altered during borrowing, but a culture rarely abandons or radically modifies its own extant writing system except in the most dire instances of cultural transformation.  An equally important topic is the deeply interdependent relationship of writing and civilization, including the social, political, and economic forces that led to the adoption of new media and technology for writing.  These forces not only shaped the form, function, and distribution of writing, but through it they have transformed civilization itself.  In the concluding lecture, all that has been discussed about the interplay between writing and civilization is used to predict one possible future of writing.

Modern students of Biblical Hebrew are seldom exposed to scribal texts of the Torah. Until the advent of print, the Torah was studied and transmitted for thousands of years using scribal texts. Through exposure to these texts, students can view Otiot Meshunot (extraordinary letters) that add a layer of deeper meaning to the Hebrew Bible. These letters inspire several methods of interpretation and their exploration can build critical skills in the study of the Hebrew Bible. One cannot fully understand the biblical text without understanding the symbols and symbolism of these extraordinary letters.

"This article has two main purposes. The first one is to prove that the alleged superiority of the alphabet to other writing systems (syllabic and logosyllabic ones) is an ethnocentric prejudice and that the optimality of a writing system has to be measured following a series of criteria which cannot be reduced to the faithful mapping of sounds. The second one is to incorporate into the graphemic theory external data and new approaches to develop new methods of investigation and to emancipate graphemics from phonology. The structure of the article is composed of seven parts. First of all, we discuss some definition problems; then, in the introduction, the main points of view about the alphabetic principle are exposed and in chapter 2 the relationships between writing systems and language perception
are investigated. In chapter 3 we attempt to define some criteria to judge the degree of optimality of the different writing systems. In chapter 4 we try to find some patterns of predictability of the degree of opacity and transparency of some of the main European writing systems (the opaque English, French and Danish orthographies and the shallow Finnish and
Italian orthographies). In chapter 5 we shortly examine the natural evolution of writing in recent times: Internet, SMS and new writing systems. Finally, in chapter 6 we try to draw some temporary conclusions."

Advances in research  into the origins of monetisation in the Mediterranean have shown that even with state-controlled currency circulating, (coinage-less) credit economies existed in parallel, using written documents for transactions well into the Roman period. The current paper documents that a credit economy facilitated the Phoenician commercial expansion in the Mediterranean (9th-7th c. BCE), becoming the vehicle by which the Phoenician 'alphabet', a West Semitic abjad, was rapidly adopted and adapted into various phonetic and syllabic scripts in the Mediterranean. This led to the rapid spread of literacy in societies that had reverted to full illiteracy by then, such as the Greek one, or that had never developed literacy. In contrast with previous explanations that saw the spread of literacy in the Mediterranean as a corollary to international trade, the present study postulates that literacy played a functional role within the credit economies that grew with international commerce, thereby providing the impetus for the spread of literacy, given that it offers documentation that substantiates this hypothesis. In essence, the study links the rapid spread of literacy to the institutional role of the script within the context of monetised commercial transactions, utilising archaeological evidence from both ends of the Mediterranean, and interpreting it within its historical context.

This Phoenician style text dating to 1170 BCE was written in the empire language of Alphabetic Akkadian/Aramaic. Phoenician like all other alphabetic writing derives from the Minoan writing tradition but is a separate lineage from the similar letter tradition of the Philistine/Israelites further south and the Etruscan/Carthaginians of the western Mediterranean. This text provides an almost complete summary of the Ancient Pagan Paradigm. It is blaming the astrological powers for the drought which ended the Bronze Age. Deities referenced are Yahu, Utu, Atu (and his sun form Hu), crescent moon goddess Ayu, and full moon god Su. Also mentioned are owls and eagle-vultures and network editors. This text distinguishes between the "enclosed region" as the night sky under the earth plane where ancestral souls reside from the night sky as the source of astrological motion powers due to its moving planets.

The discovery of the necropolis of Khalet al-Jam'a, around 2.2 Km southeast of Bethlehem (Nigro et al. in this volume), provides new data on the Bronze and Iron Age town which controlled the main route connecting Jerusalem to Hebron, and the access to the wadiat crossing the southern Judean desert and leading to the coastal plain. Intermediate Bronze Age/Early Bronze IV, Middle Bronze shaft tombs, and at least two major Iron II burial caves (Tomb A7 and the Barmil's Tomb) excavated by the Palestinian MOTA-DACH in an Iron Age cemetery allow to draw up a renewed picture of Bethlehem and its environs and give the opportunity to re-appraise its long history.

In G. Garbati, T. Pedrazzi (eds), Transformations and Crisis in the Mediterranean. "Identity" and Interculturality in the Levant and Phoenician West during the 12th-8th Centuries BCE (Proceedings of the International Conference held in Rome, CNR, May 8-9 2013, Supplemento alla Rivista di Studi Fenici XLII (2014), Pisa, Roma 2015, 159-170.

"""Изобретение армянского алфавита Месропом Маштоцем в начале V века описано рядом историков (Корюном, Мов
сесом Хоренаци, Лазаром Парбеци и др.). Они сообщают нам об обстоятельствах, в которых Месроп создал алфавит
после неудачной попытки использовать для армянского
языка другие письмена, известные как «данииловы».
Споры современных ученых о природе этих письмен, об
использовании Маштоцем их или иных современных ему
письменностей (греческой, арамейской, сирийской, персид-
ской...) не прекращаются и по сей день. Автор считает, что ему удалось обнаружить реликты данииловых письмен в самих начертаниях письмен еркатагира, имеющих греческие фонетические эквиваленты и занимающие положения греческих букв в армянском алфавитном порядке. Похоже, что все эти знаки подчинялись еди-
ной искусственной матричной системе перекрестной рекурренции двух наборов графических элементов, которые до сих пор присутствуют в армянских заглавных буквах. Реконструировав эту (полуразрушенную) протосистему и используя самые древние засвидетель-
ствованные формы армянских букв надписей V-VI вв., автор интерполирует процесс графического преобразования, пользуясь коим Месроп создал вторые из первых. Далее, на основании этих «греческих» букв для неспецифических армянских фонем, он экстраполирует процесс создания букв для графем, обозначающих специфические (относительно греческой фонологической системы) армянские фонемы, и показывает, что последние — лишь
графические модификаты первых. Так, напрмер, специфическая губно-губная фрикативная согласная В [v] есть результат преобразования специфической губно-губной смычной Б [b], (каковая, к слову будь сказано, сохранила до наших дней свое первоначальное «даниилово» начертание). Наивысшим достижением Маштоца является, по мнению автора, система созданных им букв для шести аффрикат, которые все — модификаты неспецифической буквы З [z] (соответствующей
греч. «двойной» [dz]) и совместно образуют графическую модель дифференциальной структуры соответствующих фонем (свистящие / шипящие, глухие / звонкие / придыхательные), хотя позднее Месроп изменил (упростил) начертание одной из них. Автору таким образом удется восстановить историю создания каждой отдельной буквы 36-значного месроповского алфавита."""

Children would be lucky if the parent chooses to let them learn Qur-aan at an early age, but there are many cases where adult Muslims have not had the privilege of learning to read the Qur-aan. It has been seen that many adults feel shy to seek help to read Qur-aan. For such people, online classes to learn the Qur-aan is the ideal choice. They can either choose to learn with a class or with a private tutor, on to one basis. Females that are conscious of their seclusion or hijab, can also choose to have a class with a female teacher.

However, despite the wish of every believer to be able to read Qur-aan and earn the reward, many are still unable to. This book, Al-Mu’allim, may be a solution in shaa Allaah. It has worked for many seekers of knowledge over the years. Don’t be discouraged by the falters therein at the beginning of learning, we all start in the same way and we are still learning.

Do not just wish, act and develop a passion for it, nay, start now. The book is self-explanatory, try it, it is not what you’re going to do but what you’re doing now counts. The Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “The one who is skilled in reciting Qur-aan will be with the noble, obedient scribes and the one who recites Qur-aan and falters therein, and finds it difficult, will have a double reward.” Muslim (798)

Al Mu’allim is an Arabic word for teacher and it is traditionally used for a teacher of Islamic studies. This book is named Al Mu’allim to appreciate my father, Alhaji Mu’allim, and other Mu’allims around the world. May Allaah forgive and crown the efforts of all Mu’allims who are believers.

Presentation to the 2nd IAPTI CONFERENCE
Saturday 21st September 2014, Athens.
An attempt to to share with you a story, some hi-story of my mother tongue, GREEK and stress how important was the contribution of this language to science, the arts, drama, philosophy and to the shaping of our modern civilization.To be able to do this I used the two disciplines I studied: Semiology and Archaeology. This is a tribute to my Master, the late Michel Cusin from the University of Lyon 2

The first alphabet in the world was invented at the dawn of the second millennium BCE by Canaanite miners in the Sinai Desert. This alphabet is the origin of all the scripts we still use today in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, and most modern languages of the western world. The alphabetical system was invented only once, and all the alphabetical scripts we know today developed from this first system. From the end of the fourth millennium BCE up to the invention of the alphabet, Ancient Near Eastern scribes used scripts that comprised hundreds of signs: cuneiform script was used in Mesopotamia, and hieroglyphic script-a pictorial script-in Egypt. A script is a set system of signs that is capable of transmitting linguistic messages. No clear evidence of the use of scripts dating prior to the second millennium BCE has been found outside the Ancient Near East. In order to read and write the pre-alphabetic scripts of the Ancient Near East one had to memorize hundreds of characters. Furthermore, the manner in which these characters guided their readers from sign to word was often tortuous. Some Egyptian words were represented by hieroglyphs that depicted the word's meaning. For instance, the symbol for the word "ox" was , and the word for dais, or platform, was depicted thus:. But when a word's meaning could not be accurately conveyed by a single picture, as is the case for most words in any language, a series of symbols was enlisted for the task. However, these pictures no longer served their original function, as they now represented only a sound or a combination of sounds. To illustrate, if "exodus" were an Egyptian word, it might have been depicted as "ox-dais" − − with the hieroglyphic characters functioning as a chain of consonants, since vowels were not represented in Egyptian script. To these two signs, the Egyptian scribe would have appended at least one more sign, which in our fictional example might have been. This is an unpronounced sign, which was not part of the phonetic chain comprising the word. Instead, it functioned as a classifier that indicated the semantic category of the word, in this case signifying "movement." Our word would thus have been written , but today we would write it with an asterisk to denote that this is a modern construct and not an authentic Egyptian word (*). Unlike many modern languages, Egyptian did not have a set writing direction. The word * (from left to right) could just as well have been written * (from right to left). The only rule was that texts were read "into" the symbols, meaning each hieroglyph faced the beginning of the line. This seems somewhat counterintuitive to modern readers (as it likely seemed to many ancient readers, as well). Further complicating the Egyptian script, the hieroglyph depicting an ox () could function in an additional way: as an unpronounced semantic classifier denoting the category "cattle" following nouns such as cow or calf. A single symbol could thus have three distinct roles in the Egyptian writing system: as an ideogram of the depicted object; as a phonogram representing the sound or sounds of the word it depicted; and as an unpronounced classifier. The new writing system invented by Canaanite workers in the Sinai Desert was a remarkable stroke of genius. Instead of using hundreds of signs, there were now fewer than thirty to memorize, and these served to indicate single sounds, and sounds only. This small number of characters sufficed to represent each and every word in the language. Furthermore, instead of applying a complex set of reading rules, the alphabet offered one, fixed method of reading.