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< Back to Who Really Invented the Alphabet Who Really Invented the Alphabet—Illiterate Miners or Educated Sophisticates? Talkback Add Your Comment
 Goldwasser’s First Rebuttal:I am grateful to Professor Rainey for his letter, as it allows me to elucidate further how the historical record lends support to my hypothesis.
Rainey writes: “She seems not to have digested the main theme, namely that the alphabet was invented by highly sophisticated Northwest Semites who knew not only hieroglyphics but probably also hieratic, the cursive script generally used by Egyptians at that time.”
(1) Rather than not digesting the “main theme” that Prof. Rainey alludes to, I simply do not see how its tenets are supported by the factual historical record. We must be careful not to be blinded by the genius of the invention of the alphabet, and assume, therefore, that such a breakthrough could be born only in the circles of highly educated scribes. These supposed scribes are presumed to be Canaanites, yet masters of all variations of Egyptian scripts—hieroglyphs and hieratic.
My thesis differs sharply from those of former scholars, in suggesting that the inventors of the alphabet could not read Egyptian—neither hieroglyphs nor hieratic. I believe that the inventors related to the image alone, to the pictorial part of the Egyptian hieroglyph. They saw hieroglyphs as little pictures of items in their world. They chose those pictures that were relevant to their lives and made a completely new use of them, a use that disregarded entirely their function in the “mother script,” the original Egyptian hieroglyphic system.
Moreover, they sometimes used signs that look alike in hieroglyphs, but are actually two different signs with very different readings in the Egyptian system (see the two different snake examples on page 45 of my article.) There are also others. For a detailed list of parallels for all alphabetic letters in Sinai in local Middle Kingdom Sinai hieroglyphs, see the table in Orly Goldwasser, “Canaanites Reading Hieroglyphs: Horus is Hathor?—The Invention of the Alphabet in Sinai,“ Egypt & Levant 16 (2006), pp. 121–160.
(2) It was the inventors’ superficial and naïve familiarity with the previous script system, along with their need to write, that forced the inventors to start anew and to reach a new solution. Their minds were not chained by previous answers to the problem: How to represent language in pictures or signs?
Complicated and fascinating solutions to this problem were presented by the two existing high-prestige institutional systems, the Egyptian hieroglyphic script and the cuneiform script. These two systems solved the problem by creating very rich and highly informative script systems. But they each contained hundreds of signs, and were very far from being “user friendly.”
(3) The Semitic inventors of the alphabet found a new way of representing spoken language in script: Rather than capture whole words, they represented individual phonemes with icons. They were thus able to find a new solution for the picture-sound relationship. This leap in thought lead to a great innovation: a new, single, fixed relationship between picture and sound. The new system may not have been highly elaborate, but it was very “user friendly.”
 For example: The Egyptian hieroglyph depicting a house (at right) can be read in Egyptian texts in three ways:
1. As a logogram (word): p-r, house. Here picture, sound and meaning meet. 2. As a phonogram. In this case the same sign stands only for the sound p-r. But the meaning of the picture is not relevant and put aside, as in the word p-r-i “to go out.” 3. As a classifier (determinative). In this case, only the pictorial meaning of the house heiroglyph (at right) is kept, and the phonetic sounds p-r are discarded completely. In this use, the sign appears as an addition at the end of words of all sorts of “habitats”—palace, temple, store-house, prison, tomb (the eternal habitat), den (lion’s house) and nest. In all these cases, the sounds p-r are not pronounced. The hieroglyph is mute. It adds extra information to the words it follows, through its pictorial value alone.  On the other hand, the alphabetic house, bet (pictured at right), should be read always in one way—acrophonically. Only the first sound is taken from the picture. The pictorial meaning “house” is always discarded. This sound can now be a building block in many words.
Rainey writes: “It is obvious that the original pictorial form of the alphabet must have been written on dozens, hundreds, of papyrus sheets that have not survived.” Here, again, we should ground ourselves in fact. It is an indisputable fact that not a single example of the so-called cursive versions of this alphabet has been found to date. And while future finds could cast new light on the issue, Professor Rainey’s determination that “It is obvious that the original form had been written on hundred sheets of papyri” is not supported by the historical record. If such a cursive writing indeed existed, I would call on Prof. Rainey to demonstrate where it was practiced and by whom. More specifically:
1. Rulers in Tell el Daba? As far as we know, the Canaanite elite who ruled in Tell el Daba in the Eastern Delta (Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos) used Egyptian hieroglyphs for prestige lapidary writing. They may have used hieratic also, even though no such texts were found. Some Egyptian literary and scientific works were put in writing in the days of the last Hyksos king, so we may conclude that at least some of the Hyksos rulers had scribes who practiced hieratic in their service.
From two recent finds in the Hyksos palace in Tell el Daba, it is now clear that the Hyksos kings used cuneiform for international correspondence (Manfred Bietak et al., “The Hyksos Palace in Tell el-Daba. Second and Third Excavation Seasons (Spring 2008 and Spring 2009),” Egypt and the Levant 19 [2009], pp. 91–119, Fig. 21; see also, Manfred Bietak, “A Palace of the Hyksos Khayan at Avaris,” in Proceedings of the 6th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 2–11 May 2008, Rome, [Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 2010], pp. 79ff., fig. 11 [English]). This custom of the Hyksos rulers was adopted by the later Egyptian kings of the 18th Dynasty (e.g. the Amarna letters).
2. Rulers and institutions in Late Bronze towns in Canaan? For diplomatic correspondence with Egypt (and among themselves), the Canaanite rulers used cuneiform writing, continuing the Hyksos tradition of Tell el Daba. At the same time, Egyptian scribes residing in Canaan wrote good quality Egyptian hieratic for matters relating to the Egyptian administration in Canaan (e.g., hieratic ostraca in Lachish and Tell Sera). Hieroglyphic inscriptions in stone were set in the Egyptian centers in Canaan (e.g., Megiddo, Jaffa, Gaza and Lachish) by the local Egyptian authorities. In Ugarit and in some urban centers in Canaan, the cuneiform alphabet created in Ugarit (see Sidebar, “A Cuneiform Alphabet at Ugarit,” BAR, March/April 2010, p. 50) was also practiced.
So who and where were the rulers who ordered the alphabetic texts on papyri that Professor Rainey thinks existed? What were the purposes and topics of these alleged texts? Which state or institute provided the schools and the precious papyri? What regime would be interested in advancing the “other” additional script system?
My theory is that the alphabet was invented on the periphery of society, in Sinai, by people of Levantine origin, probably from somewhere on the Phoenician coast. They were part of the first waves of settlers who arrived to Tell el Daba.
The first wave of Canaanites who came down to the Delta were specialized foreign workers: sailors, soldiers, caravaneers, and perhaps also builders. They were not slaves, nor were they people from the lowest level of society. (See Manfred Bietak, “Where Did the Hyksos Come From and Where Did They Go?” in M. Marée, ed., The Second Intermediate Period OLA 192 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), pp. 139-181.)
Some people from this community may have joined the Sinai expeditions by the end of the 12th dynasty. Gardiner, Černy and Peet, the publishers of the Inscriptions of Sinai (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1952–1955), have already suggested that the working force in Sinai set out from the Delta. They arrived at Serabit as part of the official Egyptian expedition. They were trained soldiers, sailors and donkey drivers.
It is in these circles, that the alphabet was invented, and not for any administrative purpose. No alphabetic text in Sinai mentions any administrative matter, and no numbers are discernable. We find only gods names, personal names and very short sentences including titles and the word “gift.” Not much more. The gods mentioned repeatedly are Baalat and El, the Canaanite father god who is also known from the texts from Ugarit and the Bible.
We must therefore surmise that the impetus for the invention of the alphabet was spiritual. The Canaanites wished to communicate with their gods, to talk to their gods in their own language and their own way.
Rainey writes: “The cultural objects (hieroglyphic signs) selected for the consonants of the alphabet were all from sophisticated life; none was from the life of pastoral nomads or mining laborers.”
Contrary to Rainey’s assertion, here are the signs that can be identified with some degree of certainty in the emerging alphabet:
 This list of signs alludes to both the everyday and the spiritual, but is nonetheless pedestrian and bears no apparent relation to Rainey’s “sophisticated life.” It shows many components of the human body and natural resources. One example is the most important natural resource in the desert—water. From the animal world, we have the bull’s head—surely an animal with many connotations for the Canaanites for whom Baal was represented as a bull (as in the “golden calf” in the Biblical story). The snake is an ever-present reptile in the wilderness and has also an important role in Canaanite mythology. The fish has strong presence in Baal’s iconography (see the seal pictured at right and the scarab from Tell el Daba); and dried fish were surely part of the daily diet of the workers in Sinai. The “corner,” pe, if indeed it represents a builder’s tool, as I have suggested, has a direct connection to the building and mining activities in Serabit. The Asiatic bow has a very clear relation to the soldiers’ daily life. If the lamed is indeed an “ox-goad” or a “throw stick” it relates naturally to the caravaneers’ daily life. The wick of twisted flax was a necessary tool for workers in the dark tunnels of the mines.
 If Hamilton is correct that the şade is a simplistic representation of the hieroglyph of the clump of papyrus picured at right (the emblem of Lower Egypt), it strongly relates our Canaanites to the Delta area. Such a sign would be meaningless for Canaanites residing outside Egypt. This fact was acknowledged by Hamilton, who indeed suggests that the inventors came from the region of Tell el Daba (G.J. Hamilton, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 40, [Washington DC, 2006], p. 317).
It is easy to speculate that there were papyri that have been lost, but which would provide evidence for a very different invention of the alphabet. However, the evidence we do have suggests that the invention of the early alphabet ideally fits the Canaanite community in the mines of Sinai.
Addendum:
Clayton Christensen, Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, is one of the world’s leading thinkers on innovation and the world’s foremost authority on “disruptive innovation.” Professor Christensen has written:
Looking at the invention of the alphabet through the prism of this analytical framework, we could easily swap “companies” for “institutions” (and their scribes). The institutions of the old world produced the highly sophisticated, elite script systems for the benefit of the upper class of the Ancient Near East. These systems were “too good” and “too expensive.” The alphabet began by targeting a very small market with a much simpler, less attractive product.
By sustaining and perpetuating what historically helped them to rule (hieroglyphics or cuneiform), the institutions of the Ancient Near East left the door open to “disruptive innovation”—the alphabet!
The alphabet spent hundreds of years on the “bottom” of the cultural market, but eventually completely displaced all its old, well-established competitors.
MidrashDr de Loa, that's one smokin' midrash. I'm a gonna steal it, and give Dr Rainey the credit, just to keep things confused! • • • • • • • Alphabet"Given the right timing and the right triggering situation, a genius" A genius would not be 'illiterate'. I cannot buy into Miss Goldwasser's opinion because it doesn't make sense and depends upon random chance, along with a sole participant. Why couldn't a committee sit down and discuss how symbols are to be used to represent their language? The ancients were far more intelligent than modern scholars give them credit. • • • • • • • The accidental inventor of the alphabet & his father #5I do mine rescue medical exams, and most of the miners I see are burly guys with no shortage of testosterone. Men think like men, now, 4000 year ago, 4000 years in the future. So, the non-hieroglyph based curled character is not a "recurve bow", but is likely anatomic as are the head, foot, eye, forearm, & mouth glyphs. This glyph which appears as a miniscula omega represent "shadayim." That wasn't politically correct, and so the character became known later as "sheen" or teeth. • • • • • • • The accidental inventor of the alphabet & his father #4Laughing the scribe said, "Shml, Shml, Shml, you need a wife!" What did he draw Avi, the boy said? "Well, um, ah, open your mouth," he said. Then he touched the boys first two adult teeth, his incisors, and said "he drew teeth Beni, teeth." And laughed again. In Caananite, "sheen." The boy finished spelling "Shml" for his uncl, who said "I've got to show this to the guys at the mine tomorrow." And the rest is, .... • • • • • • • The accidental inventor of the alphabet & his father #3The scribe said to his son "What is this?" as he read out the Egyptian words of the glyphs, then read them in Egyptian phonetics. His son said "No, not Egyptian. My tongue." Then pointed at each character, then to each glyph & read "Avi, Emi, Aniy, Ben" His uncle saw it, and said can you draw my name, "Shml"? I don't know a picture for "S". As his sister-in-law began to nurse the baby, he said "I know" and drew two half circles, like two bowls touching. The scribe laughed, saying, .... • • • • • • • The accidental inventor of the alphabet & his father #2The problem was in remembering the Egyptian names for the hieroglyphs he was learning to draw, since his mother and everyone at home only spoke Caananite. Only his Avi could speak Egyptian. Even seeing his own name drawn out with hieroglyphs didn't help him remember the names of the glyphs. He got the concept though. One day his Avi came home to see a drawing of a big man, a woman, a little man and a babe, with glyphs grouped at each. They made no sense as Egyptian words or sounds .... more • • • • • • • The accidental inventor of the alphabet & his fatherI suspect that both Orly Goldwasser & the late Anson Rainey are both right about who the inventor of the aleph-bet was. The inventor of the alef-bet was a literate Caananite translator & scribe working in Serabit. he might have been lucky enough to have his family with him, and they helped. A scribe's son learns to be a scribe. He was surely taught that a string of heiroglyphs could hold the sounds of an Egyptian name. There was a problem though .... (cont) • • • • • • • Invention of AlphabetMy questions would be why would a culture invent paper before it needed record keeping and how could it have record keeping without first inventing an alphabet? Wouldn't that alphabet be first recorded on the same substrate already in use for pictogram idols and stories? So if these artifacts haven't been found, to date, do they exist? If not then which came first the paper or the alphabet? • • • • • • • The Invention of the AlphabetIt is obvious, as Rainey states, that most alphabetic inscriptions, were written on perishable materials such as papyrus. That is why so little has survived of ancient writings of the Palestine area aside from the Hebrew Bible and other texts that happily survived to be known as the "Dead Sea Scrolls." • • • • • • • VereNote both Goldwasser and Rainey may be correct if the managers of the mine who introduce the alphabet are 'educated sophisticates' but the miners who adapt it are 'illiterates'. In any case, with regard to the smell test, I find Goldwasser persuasive. Some of the best evolutions in language happen because illiterates cant keep track of the rarified arcane nonsense. Look at the history of the English language and how illiterates streamlined/mangled English. Thanks for the efficiency. • • • • • • • Who Really Invented the Alphabet -- Rainey's poor engagementWhile I will not comment upon the data at hand to either support or undermine Ms. Goldwasser's thesis I will comment upon the character of Mr. Rainey's response. Mr. Rainey's response was, in my opinion, disengaged and disrespectful of Ms. Goldwasser's article and follow-up. He did not engage her assertions directly but merely reiterated the standard theory. I was expecting better from Mr. Rainey. His response smacked entirely of dogmatic orthodoxy, not open-minded engagement. • • • • • • • Origins of AlphabetIf the alphabet was invented in the Sinai by a semitic people about 1300 BC, I wonder who those people could have been? Hmm... who could have there writing there at that time? Didn't something else happen there around that same time? And what is the oldest alphabetic literature anyway? Hint: it is the world's all-time best selling book which was faithrully copied on parchment for thousands of years. BTW: Phoenecians = Canaanites • • • • • • • Ugaritic AlphabetI am a complete novice. From my layman's point of view, though, I have to ask - what purpose did an alphabet serve for the scribes of Ugarit? What new "users" were they targeting with their version of the "Miner's Invention", apparently borrowed from far away in time and distance. • • • • • • • origin of alphabetI must agree with Goldwasser. Rainey seems to be one trapped in elitism. Evolution explains the changes from Goldwasser's symbols to the present day. Look at the various European countries' letters. • • • • • • • talkback - origin of alphabetIn some of the postings and Prof. Rainey's response, there appears to be a prejudice that only 'educated people' can invent anything of value. Intelligence has nothing to do with one's station in life. The discussion of the invention of the barcode that came from the work of miners in the USA illustrates my point. We need to be open to all posibilities, even unlikely ones. • • • • • • • Origins of an AlphabetIt seems Professor Goldwasser relies on facts while Professor Rainey relies on assumptions. Goldwasser's thesis is most appealing. • • • • • • • Who Really Invented the Alphabet?Professeur Orly Goldwasser, Je vous félicite par votre recherche et co-partage de votre conviction. Je fais une recherche dans ce sujet depuis 1996 et je suis arrivée à la même conclusion que vous, au travers de l’historie du peuple de la Mesopothamie, et aussi, pour la comparasion des alphabets là. Cette recherche est très important par reveler un passé encore incertain. Merci beaucoup par votre attention. • • • • • • • Illiterate Contributions to Western CivilizationProf Goldwasser's thesis that illiterates (Mine workers) made the single most impt contribution to the development of Western Civilization, reminds me of the caution given to our Urban Econ class at the New School. Cornell distinguished visiting Prof Tom Vietorez cautioned that an economist noticed that census reports showed population increases corresponding to increased production of pig iron. Conclusion: increase pig iron to increase population. Innovation Disruption is equally misapplied. • • • • • • • Name in this articleThe author of The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts is Gordon J. Hamilton, not Gordon H. Hamilton. • • • • • • • Scholarly EtiquetteI wonder why Prof. Rainey referred Prof. Goldwasser as "Orly." I trust this breach of scholarly etiquette was inadvertant, and not related to Prof. Goldwasser's being a woman. • • • • • • • More problems with Proto-Sinatic being the first alphabetAs Goldwasser's comparison table plainly shows, the Proto-Sinaitic characters don't look like letters in later alphabets. Moreover, her sound values require some pretty inspired guesswork: She has the square "b" character take on the first sound of a similar glyph meaning "house" ("bet"), rather than an identical phonetic symbol for the "p" sound. Imagine if a script developed from English had a character B with the "ay" sound--just because it looks like an 8, which starts with an "ay" sound! • • • • • • • BellEach Proto-Sinaitic inscription is so short that the content is almost certainly names and titles. Names were (basically) spelled alphabetically in hieroglyphs. The crucial innovation was not spelling names alphabetically; it was spelling full sentences alphabetically. There's no evidence that that happened with Proto-Sinaitic. Goldwasser's claim that Proto-Sinaitic evolved into the modern alphabet rests on her comparison table between Proto-Sinaitic and later alphabets. See Below. • • • • • • • BellRainey is almost certainly right when he says that the record of the development of the alphabet is probably lost because all of it was written on perishable materials. Engraving in stone is hard, and doing it well enough that it lasts for three millennia is even harder. If you were experimenting with a new form of writing, you'd almost certainly do it on the easiest material. But he makes one flaw--he still believes that Proto-Sinaitic represents the first alphabet. It doesn't. See below. • • • • • • • LyonsHow wonderful for Rainey's critique to prompt more marvelous insights in Goldwasser's rebuttal. Since the epiphany of the first article I have been boring people silly with the history of the alphabet, or more appropriately the "ox-house script". Thanks and eager for more. Signing off with the 4000 year old greeting, Maahab Baalat! • • • • • • • Who made the AlphabetI had always thought that all Mediterranean cultures shared a common source for the alphabet since all seem to be similar. I had also suspected the possibility of it being a gift from the Hebrew Israelites since they date back to Moses 1500 BC, which precedes nearly any alphabetic script. The problem is the lack of evidence going back that far. Goldwasser makes an excellent case for (apparent) Canaanites/Hebrews. • • • • • • • Who authored the first alphabet?I think it makes perfect sense that illiterate Canaanite miners invented the alphabet! Did you know that miners in Minnesota, USA were responsible for inventing the bar-codes that are used so widely today? One of the miners got tired of counting the number of ore cars (trains) that came out of the mines daily, so he began marking them with slashes. Those slashes evolved into the barcodes we use today. Yes, I do believe it was illiterate miners who were responsible for inventing the alphapbet! • • • • • • • alphabetprof Anson Rainey, emeritus professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Languages at Tel Aviv University, offers no substance or proof of his statements or acknowledge any information that doesn't derive from his sphere of influence, most things that exist were not brought about by so called sophisticated minds,History has proven most inventions in the history of man i.e. light bulb, auto, aircraft lst goes for ever, have been idea's of working class • • • • • • • Who Invented the AlphabetI find Professor Goldwasser's argument convincing. In the absence of any direct evidence to the contrary any other assumptions a very speculative. Disruptive innovation is so pervasive in our technology driven lives I wonder why any other possiblity is contemplated. • • • • • • • scholars-study/alphabetIt seems to me that by the definition of illiterate that we in the western world use, any of the ancient peoples who created their alphabet were not scribes. The scribes were the ones who gathered the various symbols from various people and sources and created a way of communication first. Then the organization of symbols and marks could be made into some coherent thought... Then the alphabet could be created over time. It may have a similar process in China, Egypt, Near East, the Americas etc. • • • • • • • How about Phaenius FarsaidhIn the study of my Irish ancestry, I discovered that the current Irish link their beginnings to a Scythian prince over the land of Canaan who developed the Aleph-beth for the language of Canaan, as a means to preserve the language and to preserve the languages learned by seventy scholars he sent abroad to document the languages confounded by God at Babel. While that Aleph-beth continued into a Phoenician kingdom, it was also taken into Egypt by Niul, the second son of Phaenius Farsaidh. • • • • • • • |
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