Linguistics and the Ancient World

Since you guys are more talkative than the language groups, I thought I'd post this here. A little history of the development of the word labyrinth. http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2012/03/labyrinth/

Thanks, a most interesting site!

Yeah thanks for that!

Recommend 'EMPIRES OF THE WORD: A Language History of the World' (2006) which will enlighten you as to why Jesus of Nazareth spoke Aramaic rather than Hebrew. This is a very interesting work. It covers so many areas and periods of time that I would recommend using 'THE "TIMES" COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE WORLD' as a close reference volume. This work is geographic representation of world history, and is now in it's seventh edition.

The article on Labyrinths provides archeological support for this claim by Hany N. Takia which may be found online:

"It is important to note here that the Greeks learned their writing system from the Egyptians through the frequent travelers of the ancient world, the Phoenicians. In the course of their commercial dealings with the Egyptians, the Phoenicians imported the Egyptian script and molded it into an alphabet with a far smaller number of characters, all pronounceable and all consonants. As they traveled the Mediterranean and traded with the inhabitants of the Greek Isles, they gave their version of the Egyptian writing system to the Greeks. They in turn revised its orthography and added a number of written vowels. A system that eventually became the basis for the new Egyptian script, i.e. the Coptic.
History of Coptic Language-- Online-4/20/12
Prepared by Hany N. Takla 3/18/96

Really? Don't get me wrong, most of it is well established fact. Greek, Etruscan and Latin alphabets are certainly derived from Phoenician script. Either directly or ultimately. And so, by the way, are Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and Cyrillic.

But, to the best of my knowledge, that first step - Egyptian > Phoenician - isn't. And I admit I see very little in common between Phoenician and Egyptian script. Of course that doesn't mean much - I'm terrible with Demotic Egyptian script, so there might be a link there I'm just missing.

The usual story (or at least the one I've heard in a number of popular sources) is that Phoenician is derived from the Sinaitic script, used by Semitic subjects of the Egyptians, which in turn would derive from hieratic.

The WP page on the Proto-Sinaitic script (as they call it) however expresses some doubt about this interpretation of the (very short) Sinaitic inscriptions.

>5 quicksiva:-7: Quicksiva strikes again! Matt and Andreas: don't be fooled by qs's frequent attempts to trace everything important that ever happened in the world back to Egypt / Africa. The vast majority of his comments in LT expound outlandish theories of that sort.

That may be so, but the idea that Phoenician script (via some intermediaries) is derived from Egyptian writing is AFAIK not outlandish. As said, it's found various popular sources. The WP article cites mainstream scholars, starting with Alan Gardiner, in favour.

Long live Quicksiva and his daring imagination!

That the Phoenician script derives from the Siniatic script and that the Siniatic script seems to be in imitation of Egyptian (and was developed within the Egyptian cultural area) is, I think, uncontroversial. But there are some six hundred years or more of development between the invention of the alphabet (adaptation of Egyptian script if you prefer) and its inheritance by the the people we call the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians' ancestors had used alphabetic systems for centuries, but I believe we conventionally only call them Phoenicians with the start of the Iron Age. Not that the Phoenicians mightn't have adopted a more conciously Egyptian system had they not adopted the alphabet - they were quite happy to paint faux hieroglyphics on Egyptian-style pottery just as English porcelain on the eighteenth century in a Chinese of Japanese style might have faux Chinese characters on it.

As Magnus Magnusson states in Archaeology of the Bible:

"....ultimately the most significant contribution that Phoenicia made to Israel, and indeed the world as a whole, was the invention, or at least the development and diffusion, of our modern alphabetic script. The earliest known example of it is in the inscription carved along the lid of the decorated stone sarcophagus of King Ahiram of Byblos, around 1000 BC. It was a linear script of twenty-two letters, which the Phoenicians passed on to the Greeks and the Hebrews alike, and through them to us. It was an easy alphabet to master, as is shown by the celebrated Calendar found at Gezer, dating from the tenth century BC, a chip of soft limestone incised with a brief listing in Hebrew of the months of the year by the agricultural tasks associated with them. From that, it has been assumed that literacy became widespread in Palestine in the tenth century, particularly in court circles, and that it is to this period that we should look for the earliest palace archives and historical writings that underlie the Bible in the form we have it today.

Unfortunately, not a scrap of all this presumed official literature has survived; indeed, the Gezer Calendar is the only example of Hebrew writing from the time of Solomon that has yet been found. This possible objection to the theory is countered by the argument that all the court archives must have been written on papyrus, which is perishable, rather than clay tablets, and that the only writing likely to have survived are on fragments of pottery (ostraca) which were used only for messages and memoranda and the like.

Even more disconcerting is the fact that there is not a single contemporary reference to David or Solomon in the many neighbouring countries which certainly were keeping written records during the tenth century. At a time when the Bible tells us that Solomon created a major empire in the Middle East, none of his contemporaries, not even the Phoenicians, apparently noticed the fact.

Without the Biblical accounts, history would be totally unaware of the very existence of the twin founders of the tenth-century expansion of Israel/Judah into a major power, and archaeology would have been able to do little to indicate that it had ever taken place. As far as archaeology is concerned, it was a paper (or papyrus) empire only.

Many radical scholars believe, on literary grounds, that the picture of the greatness of the period of the United Monarchy under David and Solomon was a late populist creation from the time of the Exile in the sixth century, transmuting whatever traditions or court annals may have existed into an image of cosmopolitan royal splendour (including a huge royal harem) modelled on the history of other major powers, like Egypt or Babylon."

Archaeology of the Bible MAGNUS MAGNUSSON p,155

Why on earth are you assuming documents were made on papyrus? Not claiming they weren't, but there simply isn't any real evidence either way.

David or Solomon? Probably - if they ever existed at all - just petty local chiefs, glorified into the absurd by much later scribes.

Israel/Judah ... a major power??? Say what? There is no real evidence for that at all. Probably never happened. The Bible is probably just an ancient piece of propaganda.

Many radical scholars believe, on literary grounds, that the picture of the greatness of the period of the United Monarchy under David and Solomon was a late populist creation

Yes, but also no. It isn't just about literary evidence. There have been many excavations and so far there is absolutely zero proof of some - even slightly - advanced pre-exilic civilization. Zilch, nothing, nada... Just some other mediocre Levantine kingdom(s) - sometimes under Egyptian influence, sometimes under Mesopotamian influence, and - perhaps - sometimes semi-independent. All the finds are nice, but there's nothing really special.

By the way: yes the Gezer Calendar is in Paleo-Hebrew, but that still leaves a window of several centuries and so in no way does it indicate that it's from the time of Solomon. Probably pre-exilic - that's as far as you'll get.

13 > I believe quicksiva is quoting Magnusson rather than (directly) expressing his own opinion.

Anyway, rightly or wrongly I took the passage to contain a degree of irony - it's practically begging us to assume those "radical scholars" are right. (I don't know anything about Magnusson, so no idea if this is likely to be the correct interpretation or not.)

>16 AndreasJ:
Agreed.

IIRC Phoenicians by Glenn Markoe discusses what must have been papyrus archives found at various Phoenician sites - strings with little tags attached. The tags had a brief description of the scroll; the string was presumably to tie the scroll into a roll. Alas, that's all that's left - the papyrus is long gone.

I don't know anything about Magnusson, so no idea if this is likely to be the correct interpretation or not.
=========
Magnus Magnusson tells us that:
Archaeology of the Bible “is dedicated to Dr James B. Pritchard, Director of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and through him to the host of scholars, both named and unnamed, whose work is reflected in this book. The book is the outcome of many months of research and travel which I undertook on behalf of the BBC for the television documentary series of the same name that was first transmitted on BBC 2 in the late winter and spring of 1977."

Dr James B. Pritchard then tells us in the foreword that:
"The remarkable recovery of the past through recent archaeology has revolutionised the writing of ancient history which once was totally dependent upon what Biblical and classical writers had said. The new increment to the knowledge of the past has demanded a reassessment of the older sources and evoked widely differing opinions.

The scene of scholarly debate has long been curtained off from the general public, with the excuse that the layman cannot understand. One may believe, as I do, that the specialist has underestimated his wider public, or has found himself incapable of presenting involved arguments to a general audience. In this book these conflicting views have been brought into the open. The reader is allowed to see and hear the doubters as well as the believers, to learn of ingenious theories and their rebuttal - in fact, to face candidly some of the hard questions that have for so long perplexed scholars as they have tried to reconcile what has been handed down in the Bible with the artefacts which have come up from archaeological excavations in the lands of the Bible. At long last the intelligent onlooker has been given a chance to participate, to make up his mind about possible alternatives.

Unlike the Bible, which is an avowedly partisan book committed to one faith and concerned primarily with the fortunes of one ancient people, archaeological discoveries from the Near and Middle East provide a more objective picture of ancient peoples and their traditions. Such important and often maligned peoples as the Sumerians, Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians and Babylonians emerge from oblivion and appear as they were or considered themselves to have been.

In this new book (1977) the interviews with archaeologists who are today making discoveries and propounding new theories are up to date. The dust has hardly settled. When it does, some enthusiasms may wane; but at least the reader is in a position to share the excitement of new discoveries and know how they are to be related - for the moment at least - to the Bible saga. He is as close as he can get to the future. The view is from front row centre."

James B. Pritchard

>8 nathanielcampbell: Quicksiva strikes again! Matt and Andreas: don't be fooled by qs's frequent attempts to trace everything important that ever happened in the world back to Egypt / Africa. The vast majority of his comments in LT expound outlandish theories of that sort.
======
“IF THE WORD ‘labyrinth’ does not lead us eventually back to the very earliest human communities, it has a good try. The Greek labyrinthos appears to be a linguistic echo from Egypt and Asia Minor.”
By Alan Wall.

These are the first two lines from varielle's article. Why do you find this statement so outlandish? Alan Wall went to Oxford, so he must be smart, too.

"What are the earliest known labyrinths? The first structure known to be entitled labyrinth was a vast building in Northern Egypt, constructed some time around 2000 BCE Herodotus was astounded by it. It had been built at a vast expense of human labour, just above Lake Moeris, opposite Crocodipolis. There were fifteen hundred rooms on the top floor, according to Herodotus, and fifteen hundred below. The lower ones he was not permitted to visit, since they contained the tombs of kings and sacred crocodiles.

A later traveller, Strabo, appears to confirm much of what the frequently unreliable Herodotus says, and describes the Egyptian labyrinth as a work equal in scope to the pyramids. There was a sacred crocodile in the lake, which was tame and came whenever called. It was fed flesh, honey and wine.Pliny too confirms that Egyptian labyrinths were the ‘most stupendous’ works ever constructed.

The Romans built a village over the site, using the labyrinth itself as a quarry for the purpose. Others, including Louis XIV’s Antiquary, came much later and noted the sad state of the ruins that remained. Flinders Petrie identified the actual site with accuracy in 1888.

It appeared that it might well have been intended, like so many other grand buildings in Egypt, as a sepulchral monument, probably for King Amenemhat III, whose mummified remains, together with those of his daughter Sebekneferu, were entombed in a nearby pyramid."
Alan Wall

"Ariadne’s bobbined thread, permitted Theseus to find his way out of the maze after he had executed his monster. Such a thread was a clew, or ball of yarn, providing us with our modern word ‘clue’."

For the alchemists, the labyrinth represents the dangerous journey that the adept must make through the opus alchymicum. Such a labyrinth is not negotiable without a clue or clew."
Alan Wall

I understand that when asked why she had helped Theseus kill her brother, Ariadne replied,” I just got tired of all his bull- shit.”

Quicksiva -- as best as I can tell, the theory that Phoenician script was derived from Egyptian was a 19th century construct, largely discredited today, although all guesses are on until we find more compelling evidence to link it to something concrete. You tend to find Egyptian influence almost everywhere, and I tend to find it almost nowhere, so I suspect the truth lies somewhere between these extremes.

Matt -- I don't doubt that David and Soloman exist since there seems to be some kind of historical foundation for most of the iron age and later references in the Old Testament, and I suspect they were more than the "petty chiefs" you demote them to, but I also think we have to look at the "stories" relatively. The civilization of the Hebrews was always a very minor one if compared to others of consequence in the Near East. Perhaps Soloman's reign was the pinnacle of that civilization, but given the extent of the Hebrew "nation" that was comprised by it we can't expent to see the kind of monomental architecture evidenced by other more significant civilizations of the relevant era.

Finally, I love the Ariadne joke. (Ariadne replied,” I just got tired of all his bull- shit.”)
Haw-haw

Their very existence has often been doubted, but I agree probably somewhat beyond reason. After all: there were people there, and as far as we can tell they did have rulers. Sure: there is currently no positive evidence for any of them having carried those exact names. But that's hardly conclusive.

Well, "petty chiefs" - I meant that relative to Egyptian pharaohs (for example).

#23 Yeah I get you.

Yeah I was gonna say, it's all relative really. It goes the other way too, for instance with Caesar referring to "kings" in Gaul and Germany; I'm pretty sure he referred to Ariovistus as "Rex Germanorum". He no doubt held a good deal of power in his own right, but I'd wager a guess that most contemporary patricians down in Rome would've had more "spending power," if you know what I mean.

LT should add a "Like" button

22: I suspect they were more than the "petty chiefs" you demote them to

Actually David and Solomon : in search of the Bible's sacred kings and the roots of the Western tradition doesn't present much evidence of their "kingdom" extending very far at all.

#27 -- again we are speaking "relative" to the kingdoms they represent. While I am by no means a believer in Judeo-Christianity, I have always been struck by the "relative" accuracy of the bible in at least its outline of history. Dedicated archaeologists have long excavated the region seeking to substantiate the scriptures. While I know of nothing magical or supernatural turning up to underscore the religious nature of the bible, quite a few historical markers have been validated. Perhaps David & Soloman have been exaggerated from their historic persons, but I would not be surprised if more is one day uncovered to demonstrate the scriptural emphasis was deserved to some degree.

Ditto.

I see no reason to assume these kings never existed, and held real power in their own limited domains. It just (very very probably) wasn't the glorious empire the bible would have us believe.

28, 29: Well, okay. I used to hold that opinion myself before reading Finklestein. Maybe his book is biased, and I didn't know enough to see it.

Well, again, there is no hard evidence they existed either. So Finkelstein might be right - he's just threading on thin ice.

#31 threading or treading? LOL

Oops. Never trust auto-correct.

Matt, even with such errors trust me you have far more intelligent things to say than my gun nut friends have posted on FaceBook this week ... happy chrismahannakwanzika

Merry Mithrasmas to you too my friend.

Finklestein's "David and Solomon doesn't present much evidence of their kingdom extending very far. . ." (27)

The ancient Hebrews were not overly concerned with how large was the area of the territory ruled by their monarchy (which later split into two monarchies). Just as not all of the early Muslims
were concerned with how
big was the "Dar-es-Salaam" (Zone of Peace) (occupied by Muslims) in contrast to the "Dar es Harb" (Zone of War -- i.e. occupied by Non-Muslims).
But many of the leaders were, --hence a millitant era of Islam, heading for conquests. In ancient Palestine/Israel, non-Jews
were called "Goyim", still the word for non-Jews in Yiddish.
Its original meaning was "nations", and in the New Testament it is translated
"ethnea", from which we get the word "ethnic". (Non-Jews were also sometimes called
"Hellenes" (Greeks), regardless of their ethnicity.
In Judah--Israel relations, we hear in Kings of Israel's king Ahab persuading Judah's king to be his ally in claiming Syrian-ruled territory that had traditionally been Hebrew. And he was hoping that, along the way, Judah's ruler would be killed in combat.
Instead it was Ahab who
was killed by a chance arrowshot. Israel must have had a much bigger population
with 10 tribes to Judah's 2, but Israel was the first to fall lunder foreign rule. The Bible, generally, treats the 2 monarchies as about equally important. The above mentioned episode, however, must be from a Judah-based source

"Mithrasmas"... now there's a new one. I'll have to use that! :-D

Felix Dies Natalis Sol Invictus!

"The characterization of early Judah as a dimorphic chiefdom has some suggestive historical confirmation in an era several centuries before David’s time. A collection of almost four hundred cuneiform tablets was discovered by chance in the late nineteenth century by local peasants digging at the site of el-Amarna in Egypt, about 150 miles south of Cairo. Written in cuneiform script in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the ancient Near East, they form part of the diplomatic correspondence between Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (the famous Akhenaten), on the one hand, and rulers of Asiatic states and Canaanite city-states, on the other, in the fourteenth century BCE.

At this time the Egyptians administered all of Canaan as a province and maintained garrisons in a few major cities, but left most of the country under nominal local control. The lowlands were divided between a number of relatively densely settled territories ruled from city-states, while the highlands comprised much larger but sparsely inhabited territories. The information contained in the Amarna archive conforms quite closely with the archaeological evidence, and its personal and political details offer us a unique glimpse at the structure of society and its inner tensions in the area that would later be called Judah— and that would some centuries later become the scene of David’s rise.

In the time of the Amarna archive, Jerusalem was ruled by a certain Abdi-Heba. The six letters he dispatched to Egypt and the letters of his neighbors provide valuable information on his city, his territory, and his subjects. The territory under his control stretched from the area of Bethel, about ten miles to the north of Jerusalem, to the Beer-sheba Valley in the south, and from the Judean Desert in the east to the border between the hill country and the Shephelah in the west— a rough approximation of the core area later controlled by the kingdom of Judah. This area contained a small number of villages and groups of pastoral nomads— called Shosu, or “plunderers,” in the Egyptian records— who were found in all parts of the country but were especially dominant in the relatively empty regions of the steppe and the highlands. On the basis of the archaeological evidence, we can assume that they formed a relatively large portion of the population of Abdi-Heba’s realm."

Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2006-01-31). David and Solomon (Kindle Locations 574-577). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Well, there is the 'Tell Dan inscription', discovered in 1994. Archaeologists found the ancient gate of the city of Dan, in northern Israel. On the gate, a king (probably Hazael, the King of Aram-Damascus), who conquered the city, boasts of having killed the 'king of Israel' and a king 'of the house of David'. The inscription dates to the late 9th Century B.C.E., well before the exile.

Of course, this does not prove that King David was an historical figure, but at least there were kings in the 9th Century B.C.E. who were claiming descent from him, so I think it tilts the balance of probability towards 'likely' that he did, in fact, exist. Even if the Biblical David resembled the historical David no more closely than Shakespeare's Richard III represented the real Richard III.

Yes, I merely meant to indicate that I'm aware of the fact that there is still controversy. About interpreting the "Tell Dan Stele" too. And that it - like the Amarna documents - isn't contemporary to the period of David / Solomon.

As, I suppose, most of you will be aware current Biblical archaeology is highly politicized, and (broadly) has one school that's trying to prove the bible right and one trying to minimize that. Thankfully, since I'm not professionally involved perhaps, I see no need to join either camp.

Personally I would agree though, that the "skeptics" are going overboard a bit on this issue. There was a population in the area at the time, they had rulers, and just a couple of centuries later it was claimed one was named "David" and another one "Solomon". I see nothing hugely improbable.

To put things into perspective: "The temple that King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high" (I Kings 6:2).

That would mean a structure (the cubit being less than two feet) of about 100 by 35 feet ground plan (and about 50 feet high). Nothing inherently impossible. And in fact roughly contemporary remains of temples of a similar size (and, by the way, having the same tripartite floor plan as the bible claims for Solomons temple) have been found in excavations elsewhere in the region.

Now, again, that obviously doesn't prove it was actually so (and I have my doubts about the amount of gold used on interiour as described in I Kings 6). But it supports the idea that the description of the building might be broadly correct.

p.s.: I happen to be fascinated by that temple. Not so much by the actual temple itself (just one more ancient edifice, long gone), but by the influence the idea of it had on architectural theory and because of its many - hugely differing - attempts at reconstruction. Don't mind me though, it's just some weirdness of somebody interested in architectural history. (If you like, check out my collection: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/BarkingMatt&tag=Temple%2Bof%2BJerusalem though).

That is quite a collection on the Temple, Matt! Well done.

>42 Nicole_VanK: It would be exciting if archaeologists could excavate under the temple mount, but it's too politically sensitive. Until they do, we'll never know for sure whether Solomon's temple existed or not, or whether it was as the Bible describes it. Although, like you said, there were many temples of similar shape and size from that era that have been dug up by archaeologists. So there is nothing improbable about it. Certainly Jerusalem, as the capital and largest city in the Kingdom of Judah, would have had a temple, and not a small one.

not really relevant, but:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ark/the-ark-goes-to-israel-pt-2---u...

>45 binders: Very interesting. I can only imagine the frustration of being an archaeologist in Jerusalem, with so much history waiting to be excavated, just a few meters away, yet the authorities refusing to allow the excavations.

When i was a young man, footloose and fancy free as they say, I spent months walking around the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, City of David -- walked and walked and looked and listened. It's a place that stirs the imagination.

Parenthetically, I got to know a few Palestinian kids who dug for antiquities to sell. They'd tunnel down deeply, sometimes pulling out salable items. One day I found that a tunnel had collapsed and two of them had died. I was told it happened sometimes.

>47 stellarexplorer: That's sad. I can see how it would be tempting, if you were a poor kid, knowing that there are possibly treasures right under your feet worth thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, to try digging them up.

Definitely, and it's still a huge problem over there today. It's easy for us to criticize them for destroying cultural inheritance, but if you're in that situation and it's either that or your family starving.....

>42 Nicole_VanK:: As I'm sure you're aware, there's an interesting subplot in the history of the temple's architectural influence involving the aftermath of the crusades. Many of the crusaders, not knowing any better, assumed that the Dome of the Rock was, in fact, the Temple of Solomon (they even hung a banner from it claiming it to be so). That, combined with the domes used in the architecture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, led to a strain of later medieval art in which the Temple of Solomon was depicted with a dome on top!

That's funny! But such mistakes are common in history. After the fall of the Roman Empire, many cities in southern Europe were sacked by Goths who went home bragging how they had sacked Rome.

Apparently, the Dome of the Rock was built over a Byzantine era church (they found mosaics from the church under the mosque). And I think the Romans, before that, built a pagan temple over the ruins of Herod's temple (which they destroyed). That site has been holy to many religions.

>50 nathanielcampbell:: Indeed. In fact even Raphael still did so in his "Marriage of Mary" (1504). And they also built several churches with a circular plan (or including a circular part) - especially Templar churches. More serious attempts at reconstruction only came in c. 1600 but they often confused the temples of Solomon and Herod, and that envisioned in the prophecy of Ezechiel. It's all part of what makes it such a delightful mess (for somebody with an interest in architectural history).

>51 madpoet:: Yes, I think Hadrian erected a sanctuary to Jupiter there after the Bar Kokhba revolt.

Back to the question of how much of the Phoenician alphabet was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics: whatever superficial resemblance there might be in some of the markings, the fact is that the Phoenician alphabet is phonetic (arbitrary written symbols representing sounds) whereas hieroglyphics are pictographs (the written symbols come are stylized images of real objects) and that makes all the difference. You can describe everything in the world which just a few handfuls of phonetic symbols, in contrast to any pictographic system, which takes thousands of symbols. This is a fundamental point in media history - e.g., Marshall McLuhan.

Not that I have any particular opinion about the Phoenician alphabet, but Egyptian hieroglyphs are ideographic and phonetic, both. The stamp sets they sell for kids are a good example of the single-sound phonetic signs.

Hieroglyphics are fundamentally pictographic, with some rebus touches - for example, if this were English, writing the word "belief" with a pictogram or ideogram of a bee and a leaf.

That's very different that the totally arbitrary creation of written words via letters than symbolize sounds with no connection to visual reality - which the way the Phoenician alphabet works.

Well, the Phoenician alphabet had some link to reality; the letters were stylized pictures of things starting with that letter. Why make a totally arbitrary set of glyphs when it's much easier to take inspiration from reality?

55) That's hardly correct, PaulLev: Egyptian (certainly Middle Egyptian) is largely phonetic. The adoption of Egyptian writing in Proto-Sinaitic is natural, and abandons the ideographic principle as well as the determinatives that classify words. The Proto-Sinaitic letters have no connection with the Egyptian values of the Egyptian letters they imitate, so the house-like letter that stands for /h/ in Egyptian (representing the word h, 'reed structure' according to Gardiner) stands for /b/ in Proto-Semitic and illustrates *baytum, 'house', hence Hebrew bēt, Phoenician bt and Greek beta (that's assuming that h was the model, not pr, 'house', which was used ideographically, but also phonetically--as in the start of 'pharaoh'--but more often as a determinative to classify a building; the shape is closer to h, however). Phoenician inherited the Proto-Sinaitic system after half a millenium, so any links to the mechanics of Egyptian still felt in the original system must have long been forgotten.

57> Nonetheless, shikari, the point remains - and as your description indicates - the hieroglyphic system is at its basis pictographic, and the Phoenician at its basis phonetic.

56>andejons - Sorry, I was imprecise in my comment above. What I intended to convey is that the written words created via the phonetic alphabet have no connection to visual reality. You're of course correct that the letters themselves have a pictographic ultimate origin.

58> No, I don't agree. It is in my opinion it is essentially phonetic, just as the cuneiform system is, essentially, though this is obviously debatable by us, and we probably won't agree (are we lumpers or splitters?). Sure, the ideographic component is the main difference from our own alphabetic system, but as we know it in Middle Egyptian and onward, it has developed a long way from a pure ideographic system and I would argue it is essentially phonetic. The whole system isn't alphabetic, but only a small minority of words are represented wholly ideographically (though more are often can be used like that, admittedly), and indeed it's not too far from an alphabetic system, as the phonetic component is effectively alphabetic (with a 24-letter alphabet). Each word normally, then, has a phonetic component and a determinative character. So 'day' has a phonetic component /hrw/ and a determinative component (the ideogram {sun}). The word 'sun' has the phonetic component /r’/ and the same determinative character {sun}. 'Time' has the phonetic component /rk/ ad again the same determinative character {sun}. You can use this character {sun} with a symbol | that shows there is no phonetic component to represent the word r’, 'sun', but the other words with this determinative have to be represented with the phonetic component.

The alphabetic nature of the phonetic component can be seen when you consider that the 'alphabetic' characters are used to represent their initial consonant regardless of which vowel follows (Cx). This is different from the consonantal system used in cuneiform (or, say, linear B) where a character used phonetically represents a consonant and a vowel in combination (CV), or a closed syllable (CVC). It is this Egyptian-style consonantal system that is used in Phoenician and Hebrew (and South Arabian, a separate development from Proto-Sinaitic). The Greek system where there are characters for consonants and different ones for vowels is later (Phoenician indicates even semi-vowels less than Hebrew or Aramaic, writing hbt ('the house').for Hebrew hbyt /hab-báyit/, Aramaic byt' /bētā/ or Arabic 'lbyt /al-baytu/.)

So the Proto-Sinaitic script just borrows the phonetic component (reconfigured with a somewhat different set of characters representing Semitic sounds) without the determinative. That is the innovation.

My Pharaoh example was bad, as pr ’3 is a fossilized purely ideographic expression (Gardiner p.75) meaning 'great house', and is archaic compared with most other Egyptian words. My mistake - excuse me, I am not an Egyptologist.

59> Ok, we'll probably just have to disagree. But let me put one more factor into this mix: The alphabet is not only phonetic, but has an extremely small number of symbols. Hieroglyphics, all considered and including its phonetic parts, has a relatively large number of symbols in comparison to the alphabet - 2000+ in comparison to 20+ for the alphabet. That difference, I would submit, is because hieroglyphics is picture derived - there are many more possible pictures of objects and events in the world than there are sounds. So the alphabet is not only phonetic, but takes advantage of the phonetic relationship, in terms of efficiency, etc.

No, PaulLev, I agree with you, of course, about the origins of the script. My disagreement is in how I would classify the language around the period of the formation of the Proto-Sinaitic script. The number of 2000-odd characters, perversely, seems to belong to the last phases of the heiroglyphic script, when the everyday written language (Demotic) reached its maximum difference from the hieroglyphic language. If I counted them correctly, Gardiner lists 734 characters in his grammar of 18th Dynasty Middle Egyptian. I think that's slightly more than you find in cuneiform, but not many more.

Oh, Huhnergard in Woodard's Encyclopedia of Ancient Languages gives 600 cuneiform signs in sign lists, but goes on to say that only 150 were used in everyday writing in Old Babylonian, for example, so it does seem to be Egyptians used more determinative characters.