DATING PROTO-ALPHABETIC INSCRIPTIONS
Brian E. Colless
PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY
Proto-alphabetic inscriptions are West Semitic (Canaanite or “Canaanian”) documents that date from the Bronze Age (before 1200 BCE); their letters are pictorial, or pictophonic, we may say, since the pictures represent sounds; they are found in Syria-Palestine (that is, ancient Canaan), and also in Egypt and Sinai.
{Two convenient handbooks on the subject are Sass 1988 and Hamilton 2006; both provide depiction and discussion, and a table of signs with proposed phonetic values, but neither offers a “linguistic decipherment” of the texts; my attempts at deciphering and interpreting the inscriptions are published in Colless 1988, 1990, 1991, 2010.}
They are sparsely attested, but a large collection has been discovered in and around the ancient Egyptian turquoise mines of the Sinai Peninsula. The term Proto-Canaanite is commonly applied to this writing system and also to the language of the inscriptions.
{The adjective “Proto-Sinaitic” is a subset of Proto-Canaanite, referring to the inscriptions found in Sinai, and yet it is frequently misused to cover the whole field; and so I avoid using it, now that we know that Proto-Canaanite is the overarching term that applies to proto-alphabetic inscriptions whatever their provenance. An extreme sceptical view is held by the classicist Barry Powell (2009: 260-261): “protoCanaanite” refers to “the many undeciphered experiments in writing that appear in Palestine in the Late Bronze Age” but “their relation to the later West Semitic family of writing is unknown”; “protoSinaitic” relates to “undeciphered inscriptions found in the Sinai Desert at Serabit el-Khadim, consisting of 20-30 signs resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs, dated c.1500 BC; though claimed as an early stage of West Semitic writing, this cannot be proven”. The names Colless, Sass, and Hamilton do not appear in his bibliography, though Gelb (1963) is his constant guide.}
This Proto-Canaanite script was the prototype of the alphabet, hence the name proto-alphabet, which I have given it.
{My coining of this technical term was first mentioned not in Colless 1988 (where I spoke of “the Proto-Canaanite pictographic alphabet”) but in Colless 1990:6, where I said: “because it is the prototype of all later alphabets, it can be called the proto-alphabet”; that was in a context considering whether it was actually a “syllabary”, rather than a “consonantal script”, given the view that the term “alphabet” should only be applied to the derived Hellenic script (and its derivative successors), which included vowel-signs. Gordon Hamilton acknowledges my use of “proto-alphabetic” in the course of an admirably concise survey of the usage of “alphabet”, “Proto-Canaanite”, and “Proto-Sinaitic” (Hamilton 2006: 2-4). More recently, Barry Powell (2009) in an unflinching attempt to get to the bottom of writing, has reverted to the view that all phonetic writing systems (except the Greco-Roman alphabet and its imitators) are syllabaries; “syllabography” is where the signs “represent syllables, the smallest apprehensible elements of speech” (Powell 2009: 261); in “alphabetic writing” the signs “represent elements of speech smaller than syllables, although such sounds do not exist in nature as separates elements of speech” (Powell 2009: 256); to prove this point, he presents (Figure 13.4) a spectograph of “row, boat, row”, showing that speech is a continuous wave, and that the phoneme is a projection of Greek alphabetic writing (Powell 2009: 168-172); in the course of this reasonable argument, he mars his case with a blunder: he offers a transliteration of “a Ugaritic ‘alphabetic’ text” in “Roman characters”, allegedly taken from a tablet from Ugarit, published by Claude Schaeffer, which is actually Albright’s faulty transcription of Sinai 357, inscribed on an interior wall of Mine L, together with Albright’s unlikely translation of it; and elsewhere Powell has Albright’s drawing of this same inscription as Figure 14.2, wrongly described as a “Proto-Sinaitic inscription on a boulder” (2009: 179); and yet these Sinai inscriptions are supposed to be undeciphered (and Albright correctly identified most of the letters). }
The proto-alphabet was a consonantary, and did not include vowel-signs in its inventory of letters; it was the immediate forerunner of the Phoenician alphabet (also a consonantal alphabet), which in turn was the source of characters for the Grecian alphabet, which introduced vowel signs and thus became a vocalic alphabet.
{Refer to my table of signs for details.}
This became the model for the alphabets of Europe, whereas in West Asia the derivatives of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (notably Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic) continued as consonantal scripts, only noting vowels by means of additional marks when ambiguity had to be avoided, as in sacred scriptures.
The proto-alphabet differed from its successors in having more functions in its repertoire, but these extras were discarded in the Iron Age (after the Bronze Age); in its beginnings the Proto-Canaanite alphabet was not a simple consonantal script but a logo-consonantary; its characters could represent entire words and clusters of consonants as well as single consonants; it was a new species but it retained the functional features that had arisen in its evolution; these evolutionary traits were logography, rebus writing, and acrophony.
{The idea that the letters of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet were multi-functionary is not generally recognized, but my theory was adumbrated in Colless 1988: 65, outlined in Colless 1996, and tested in Colless 2010: 88-89, and 91; also in Colless 2008 and 2009.}
Firstly, regarding logography: the beginnings of writing had pictures representing the names of things, acting as word-signs, so-called logographs or logograms; and it appears that the pictorial characters of the proto-alphabet could represent the whole word they depicted, so that the head of an ox (the origin of Hebrew Aleph, Hellenic Alpha, and Roman A) could be read as ’alp (ox).
{In my reading of the Wadi el-Hol inscription (Colless 2009, and 2010: 91) the bull’s head (on the horizontal text) is understood as a logogram for ’alp (ox); the human head says “head” (ra’ish) twice; and the jubilating person twice stands for “celebration” (hillul). More instances of the various functions can be found in the four-line text on the Izbet Sartah ostracon (Colless 2007), even though this belongs not in the Bronze Age but in the early Iron Age, and the letters are losing their pictorial nature; in line 2 the letter ‘Ayin stands for what it depicts, an eye (a circle with a dot inside) and it says ‘ayin (“the eye”).}
The second developmental step in writing was from the logogram to the rebogram, whereby the rebus principle was applied to the sign: the sounds of the word could be used in the formation of other words, particularly homophones (’lp from the ox-sign could be used for the homophonic word for ‘thousand’).
{A possible illustration of this is found in my interpretation of ’aleph as a rebogram for “1000” in line 4 of the text on the Izbet Sartah ostracon, Colless 2007. Similarly in the Sinai inscriptions there are three apparent cases of the letter ‘Ayin standing for the word ‘ayin, in the meaning of “well-spring”: Colless 1990: 13 (02=377), 39 (32=357), 45 (42=386, though this may be the word ‘iy ‘rubbish-heap’, as possibly in Sinai 383; see Colless 2008).}
Further, the cluster of consonants in the represented word (with the vowels disregarded) could perform in rebus fashion as a part of a longer word; thus, conceivably, the ’lp of the ox-head could be used as the root ’lp (‘learn’) with verbal prefixes and suffixes.
{At the end of the first line of the Izbet Sartah inscription (Colless 2007), the strange sequence ’ ‘ (’aleph ‘ayin) occurs; this could be saying “I see”, with the 1st person singular prefix attached to the root ‘yn; or the eye-sign might be an ideogram for the idea of seeing; in the fourth line there is another case of this clash of signs, and I have suggested it is passive voice there, “I shall be seen”, and this would support the ‘yn as a rebogram rather than an ideogram.}
The third inherited characteristic of the proto-alphabet is acrophony; this can be seen as an extension (or reduction, perhaps) of the rebus principle: instead of reading all the sounds of the depicted word, only the initial sound is expressed. The acrophonic principle is the “top-sound” system (Greek akron “summit”). This was first employed for constructing the West Semitic syllabary, or logo-syllabary.
{See Colless 1992 for a comparison between the acrophonic syllabograms of the West Semitic syllabary and the acrophonic consonantograms of the West Semitic consonantary (the proto-alphabet).}
The acrophonograms took the first syllable of the depicted word in each case: thus the ox-head represented the syllable ’a from the word ’alp; the house-sign was ba from bayt (house); the door sign was da from dalt (door). When it came to inventing the Proto-Canaanite consonantary, the acrophonograms merely expressed the initial consonant (not the whole syllable) of the underlying word and its picture; they were simple consonantograms.
{In the Wadi el-Hol inscription (Colless 2009, and 2010: 91) the ox-head is not only a logogram for ox, but also a consonantogram for ’ in the divine name ’l (’Il or El); the human head is a logogram twice, but a consonantogram (r) in the word rb (plenty). In the Izbet Sartah text, as indicated in the preceding notes, ‘Ayin (eye) functions as a logogram, and a rebogram; and also as a plain consonantogram in line 2, in ‘l (on). }
The Greek names Alpha, Beta, Delta, as well as Hebrew Aleph, Beth, Daleth, show the origins of the letters in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet and in the Canaanian language. This is a clear enough indicator that acrophony was practised in the formation of the proto-alphabet.
{Barry Powell (2009:177 -186) rejects the acrophonic principle, following I. J. Gelb, and seeks an influence from Crete (instead of a more likely impulse from Canaan to Crete in the matter of forming a logo-syllabary by employing acrophony, since the West Semitic syllabary dates from the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, and is thus older than the Cretan syllabary). He speculates on the manner of the invention of the alphabet: “Taking the values of the preexisting [Egyptian hieroglyphic] phonetic repertory of unilaterals [meaning monoconsonantal signs], this great genius, a second Thoth, created abstract linear signs for each sound, then assigned Semitic names to the signs as a mnemonic device” (Powell 2009: 184). His argument is specious, and to construct this scenario he has to focus on the Phoenician linear alphabet (strictly a syllabary in his scheme) and cut it off from its obvious roots in the acrophonic pictophonic proto-alphabet, which he dismisses by mere assertion that there is no proven connection with the earlier manifestations of West Semitic alphabetic writing (in the deserts of Egypt and Sinai and in the cities of Canaan) nor with the seminal Byblian syllabary (ostracised on p. 186 as “a writing that had no clear forbears and no successors”, and yet it was the direct forerunner of the proto-alphabet, and the model for other logo-syllabaries; and he presumes that it was invented under Aegean influence, again stating the reverse of the true process). This puts him in a position to assert blithely that the acrophonic principle or acrophony (“sound from the top”) “refers to a discredited theory of the origin of West Semitic signs by keeping the first sound of a word applied to an Egyptian ‘pictogram’ and discarding the rest of the word” (p. 255). The cutting tool he wields is not Occam’s razor, as he is multiplying entities: the numerous specimens of the West Semitic syllabary and consonantary that have come to light are not placed in their respective boxes but classified as separate species of “mushrooms” (“many attempts to create systems”) that sprang up in the Bronze Age (Powell 2009: 186, following Gelb 1963: 127).}
Syllabary
18/22
Of the twenty-two letters in the Phoenician consonantal alphabet, at least sixteen (probably even seventeen or eighteen) have a direct predecessor in the syllabary as well as in the proto-alphabet.
{First noted by George Mendenhall (1985: 23-31, “From syllabary to Alphabet”); subsequently elaborated by myself (Colless 1992: 94-100).}
The doubtful cases are Tet (it is not certain but feasible that the encircled cross simply developed from the cross joined to a circle) and Yod (the forearm-sign in the syllabary represents yi). Refer to the table of signs, and notice the characters in the column marked BS (Byblos syllabary) under the heading Phoenicia; compare the proto-alphabetic signs in the two boxes to the left of each syllabogram, and observe the connections between the two systems (syllabary and consonantary). Consider the B, the house (Bayt, Bet, Beta): the form of the dwelling depicted by a triangle and a vertical stroke is the origin of the version shown on either side of it, which are late forms from Phoenicia (northern) and Canaan (southern), with an identical counterpart from the point where the Bronze Age was giving way to the Iron Age (around 1200 BCE). The simple square (sometimes with a gap for the door) is one of the most ancient of the proto-alphabetic characters. Observe that G (boomerang, throw-stick) can have an acute-angle shape, though obtuse or rectangular forms are more usual; but an acute angle serves for g in Sinai 346 {Colless 1990: 15-16; I think I am alone in affirming this, though I have good grounds for doing so. All the letters of the proto-alphabet and their relation to the syllabary and their Egyptian counterparts will be studied below.}
{We cannot read the West Semitic syllabic and consonantal inscriptions? Yes we can! We are certainly now in a position to recognize them, even if interpretation of them is controversial.}
***It needs to be emphasized that this is the most important point in this article. Most of the signs in the proto-alphabet already had an evolutionary history, in the preceding (and continuing) West Semitic syllabary, from the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom onwards. Research on the origins of the alphabet is inseparable from study of the development of the syllabary. Thus, the labours of Sass (1988), Hamilton (2006), and Goldwasser (2006) in this field are flawed, in that they only examine Egyptian prototypes for the alphabetic letters; but the syllabic forms and their history must be taken into account at all stages of the development of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet in the Bronze Age. (References for syllabary: Mendenhall, Colless, Hoch.)
{Thus Hamilton (294) supposes that one likely reason for the success of the new writing system (the proto-alphabet) was that West Semites who knew something about the Egyptian hieroglyphs simply had to give “a limited number of Egyptian signs … new values as consonants in their own language”; they were able “to reutilize a subset of a script system that they already knew”; more probably, the script they already knew was their own syllabary, and “the subset” of it was the letters of the consonantary, though this would not exclude acquaintance with hieroglyphs, and it involved learning the new letters that had no predecessors in the syllabary.
It is uncertain when the Phoenician alphabet completely replaced the syllabary.
It is possible that at Gubla/Byblos they always used the 22-letter scheme, the short alphabet that is documented in cuneiform alphabetic texts outside of Ugarit. Remember, the inventory of sounds in the syllabary has a total of twenty-two.
The pictorial and multi-functionary features of the original signs differentiate Bronze Age Proto-Canaanite inscriptions from Canaanite texts of the Iron Age. However, we need other criteria for dating the proto-alphabetic documents in their own particular period or century.
CHRONOLOGY
There are four main periods in the era of the West Semitic syllabary (Byblos script) and consonantary (proto-alphabet).
(1) The Old Kingdom (OK, the Pyramid Age, 3rd to 6th Dynasties, c. 2700-2200), with a less glorious intermediate stage (7th to 10th Dynasties, c. 2200-2040).
(2) The Middle Kingdom (MK, 11th and 12th Dynasties, 2134-1991 and 1991-1786)
(3) The Asiatic (Canaanian) or Hyksos period of rule (HK) from the Nile Delta (16th Dynasty, during the 17th and 16th centuries).
(4) The New Kingdom (NK, 18th and 19th Dynasties, 1550-1295 and 1295-1187).
The relevant archaeological periods are:
Early Bronze (EB) III (2650-2350)
Early Bronze (EB) IV (2350-2200)
Middle Bronze (MB) I (2200-2000)
Middle Bronze (MB) IIA (2000-1750)
Middle Bronze (MB) IIB (1750-1550)
Late Bronze (LB) I (1550-1400)
Late Bronze (LB) II (1400-1200)
Approximately but not exactly: OK = EB, MK = MB, NK = LB.
12D MK Cooperation: Asiatics/Semites are welcome in Egypt:
General Bibi in the Western Desert (Wadi el-Hol)
Khebded (under Amt III) brother of the Prince of Retyenu (in Sinai)
Shagub in K/Lahun
15D HK Hegemony: Asiatics dominate Egypt
Y`qb-Hr
18D NK Subordination: Asiatics are slaves in Egypt
Hamilton 2006: 289-311 Chronological concerns offers numerous arguments based on wrong identifications (ax for Z, monkey for Q ) with lack of reference to forms in the older syllabary (except when he mistakenly reads syllabic texts as proto-alphabetic documents):
[1] 1940-1850 Invention in 12D (terminus ante quem)
[2] 1850-1700 Earliest inscriptions (Egypt, Sinai)
[3] 1725-1700 Earliest inscription (Palestine) Lakish Dagger (possibly1750, n. 37, p.303-304; or 1600? With Hyksos scarabs? (p.303f)
[4] 1700-1500 Developed forms (Sinai) [and Egypt]
[5] 1650-1350 Developed forms (Syria-Palestine)
[6] 1250 Latest inscription (Sinai) [and Egypt]
[1] Square forms of hieratic O1 (B)
Hieroglyphic variant T7A ax (Z rare!) (p. 93) y on 345 cp 365b BEC
Hieratic Z11 (crossed planks) (p.248) L dagger S not Z! Sinai 376 2x ?
+ form of T ?
Water-sign N35B rather rare vertical stance (Gardiner), first in early MK (Darnell 203:168) (p.140) on Hol H 2x (but Th P N also vertical) but already MI in Syllabary (=N4 simplified ‘rain’ form not attested in Egn) WWW =MU
ARCHAEOLOGY
Petrie [1906: 131, Sass 1988: 137] a pottery sherd of the New Kingdom was discovered in Mine L, where the majority of the inscriptions were found, and this would suggest that the inscriptions are also from that period. Beit-Arieh {1985: 116, Sass 1988: 139, n. 94)
Metalworking also assists in the interpretation of the inscriptions, particularly at Mines L and G, where the equipment was found; but Mines K and N each have an inscription relating to a metal-melting furnace (14=360, 13=361).
ICONOGRAPHY
Corniced stelas
Some of the Egyptian stelas from Sinai have tops that are corniced, rather than rounded (which is the typical shape, producing a lunette, in which the ruler’s name can be inscribed). Additional indentation is found on the cornicing of these three stone monuments of Middle Kingdom date: 53 (Amenemhet III year 44, Mine B), 54 (Amenemhet III year 45, Mine C), 119 (Amenemhet IV, year 6, Shrine of the Kings, outside the temple). The remaining two stelas have no decoration of the cornice: 56 (Amenemhet III, no date, Mine D), 58 (Thutmose IV, year 4, in the vicinity of Mine G, which has two Semitic inscriptions).
At Rod el-Air, on the supply route between Serabit and the well in Wadi Nasb, there is a proto-alphabetic inscription, numbered 527: it is inscribed on a piece of rock in front of a rock-wall; it is facing upwards; and it is given the shape of a corniced stela with decoration.
{For documentation and discussion see Colless 1990: 46-47, and Hamilton 2006: 387-389; for depictions see Sass 1988: fig. 289 (drawing), 290 (photograph), though Sass, 105, does not accept it as Semitic.}
It can be readily understood as saying l ‘nt, “for ‘Anat”, and the stone may have functioned as an altar for the goddess ‘Anat. The three dots beneath the name could correspond to the Egyptian mineral determinative, as found in the hieroglyphic text on the Sinai sphinx (345), “Hathor Lady of turquoise”, and on 53 (line 2). Note that inscription 53, for example, records the opening of a turquoise mine (B), but there are no mines at Rod el-Air. However, stela 53 mentions an altar for Hathor and the offerings on it (lines 13-15), and this might be compared to 527 and its possible function as an offering table.
The name ‘Anat only occurs elsewhere in proto-alphabetic inscriptions at Wadi el-Hol in Egypt (but her counterpart Tanit is documented on Sinai 347). {Colless 1990: 16-17; Sass 1988: 15-16, and fig. 21; Hamilton 2006: 338.} There ‘Anat is connected with a celebration banquet involving animal sacrifices (in my reading of the text). {Colless 2010: 91.}
It could well be that in both cases the site of the inscription was where worship of ‘Anat took place; both provided shade and ample space to congregate on holy days. ***{The Egyptian background to the Hol inscription, which serves as a partial verification of my reading of the text, is one of having a holiday and celebrating the goddess Hathor, with drinking… [but such a connection is not considered in the edition of the inscription by Darnell and his fellow writers {Darnell et al 2005: 74}, but the idea features in Darnell’s publications about the Egyptian inscriptions on the site] {Darnell 2002, 129-138, dealing with inscriptions 17-20.}
mSt as “drinking place” {cp. Darnell 2002: 134-135]
With regard to dating Sinai 527, the decorated cornice invites a relation to the three Sinai stelas from the 12th Dynasty (53, 54, 119) and therefore a date for its creation in the Middle Kingdom. {Hamilton 2006: 387 puts it at ca. 1700-1500 BCE, beyond the MK and into the NK.}
Block statuette
Sinai 346 is a stylized crouching figure, in the form of a block statue (30 cm high). {Hamilton 2006: 335-337 for a description and drawings; for photograph, Sass 1988: fig. 12-17.} It bears two lines of writing running down the top face onto the front face; the line on the left (from the viewer’s position) finally changes to a horizontal stance, and ends up beneath a bar separating it from the line on the right; on one side of the block, a vertical line of eleven signs has the last four letters in a group (apparently it is the last word of the statement). Presumably the inscription was contemporary with the object itself, marking it as a votive offering (it was located at the entrance of the Hall of Sopdu in the Temple of Hathor at Serabit). The horizontal set of letters on the front side clearly says lb`lt, “for Baalat”, and seems to be a separate declaration. Block statues were an invention of the 12th Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom. {Sass 1988: 138; Hamilton 2006: 336, and he assigns Sinai 346 to the period 1850-1700.}
Hamilton 2006:335-337
Sass 1988:14-15, 137-138, 142 figs. 12-17
Ca 1850-1700
Sinai 369 NK
Bust statuettes
Sphinx statuette
At least six sphinxes of queens and princesses are known from the 12th Dynasty [including Wildung 1984: 86] {Sass 1988: 136}
Body of a lion, male not female? Represents the face of the sensitive artist Asa? Not the goddess?
Serekh between the paws {Sass 1988: 137, 139} not Snofru and not the Horus name of Amenemhat II, but bn kr (“son of the furnace”)
All inscriptions mentioning Asa would be contemporaneous
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http://jaei.library.arizona.edu