Archaeological finds
In 1922, archaeologists found the tomb stone sarcophagus of the king of Byblos Ahirama, on top of which cut Phoenician inscription. Pierre Monte, found the sarcophagus, and some others attributed the inscription to the XIII century. BC. e. but in the 1980's Gibson dated inscription in the XI. BC. e. Modern researchers, based at the age of pottery found in the crypt Ahirama, making the hypothesis that Ahira had lived in the VII century. BC. e. and, thus, the inscription on the sarcophagus could not count the beginning of Phoenician writing. Nevertheless archaeologist Pritchard in 1972 during excavations in the village Sarepta (between Sidon and Tire) found an earthen pitcher with protsarapannoy inscription, which probably is the earliest of the Phoenician letter executed. The inscription dates from the beginning on a cruse in the XIII. BC. e., that is done in the time of the Trojan War, when the Greeks had already forgotten its linear script and borrow Phoenician alphabet only a few centuries.
Elements of phonetic writing, prior to the alphabet, appear in writing between the (Akkadian syllabic cuneiform), and especially Egypt. Thus, in the Egyptian ieroglifike already in the times of the Middle Kingdom has received a set of one-, two-and trehsoglasnyh tracks, with Egyptian hieroglyphs letter from this period is a combination of ideographic and phonetic symbols, with a predominance of the latter. Even in this writing indicates a phonetic record of words, for which the ideographic form unsuitable - Foreign personal names and place names.
The first traces of the use of alphabetical linear (neklinopisnyh) systems belong to the XIX century BC. e. - It protohaaneyskie and protosinayskie inscriptions. Letters protohaaneyskogo characters remain stylized pictorial style, but used phonetically. Communications pictography and phonetics in the alphabet akrofonicheskaya, ie to record a sound using a simplified picture of the subject whose name begins with that letter. For example, the letter «b» is nothing like the picture stilizirovannoe homes, beit. When this character more than ever no longer refers to «house», only the «B». Conversely, for the record «b» is only used it.
The origin of the letters, pictograms, it is not clear that it is feasible to borrow Egyptian odnosoglasnyh tracks, but with the change of their phonetic values to adapt protohanaaneyskoy akrofonii. Further simplification of the alphabet chart protohanaaneyskogo and resulted in a Phoenician script: a simple system containing only 22 consonant letters.
Similar processes occur and adapt to the cuneiform in the XIII century BC. e .. Excavations Ugarita (northern Syrian coast of the Mediterranean Sea) have been found thousands of clay tablets with cuneiform. Some records was Akkadian, and was a diplomatic correspondence, but most of the tablets contained the texts of mythological character, a letter written zapadnosemitskim adapted to clay and containing 30 cuneiform characters - ie, Ugaritic alphabet is probably the first neakrofonicheskim alphabet.