Who Really Invented the Alphabet—Illiterate Miners or Educated Sophisticates?Introduction Talkback Add Your Comment
 In a landmark article in the March/April 2010 issue of BAR, Orly Goldwasser, professor of Egyptology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explained how the very first alphabet, from which all other alphabets developed, was invented by illiterate Canaanite miners in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem in the Sinai peninsula. Inspired by Egyptian pictorial hieroglyphs and a desire to articulate their own thoughts in writing, these Canaanites created 22 alphabetic acrophonetic signs scratched into the rock that could express their entire language.
But Goldwasser did not convince everyone. Anson Rainey, emeritus professor of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and Semitic Languages at Tel Aviv University, promptly responded to the article with his doubts that this watershed moment in human culture had been brought about by illiterate miners. In his letter Rainey argues that the alphabet was surely created by “highly sophisticated Northwest Semites” who inscribed countless papyrus sheets that have not survived.
Join us below to read Rainey’s critique and Goldwasser’s thorough rebuttal about who really invented the alphabet.
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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