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ORIGIN OF ALPHABET
211 that this early Canaanite script was either the prototype of our alphabet or rather a secondary branch of the prototype, but it is premature to present any such opinion as an unquestionable certainty,
For those readers who have a fondness for curious facts, I should like to point out that, probably by a sheer coincidence, the three groups of the early Canaanite inscriptions correspond roughly, the first to the Age of the Patriarchs; the second, to the Age of Joshua; the third, to the Age of the Judges, and that the lacuna of two or three centuries between the first and the second groups corresponds roughly to the period of oppression of the Israelites in Egypt.
In default of other evidence, it is preferable to hold the opinion that the actual prototype was not remarkably different from the writing of the earliest North Semitic inscriptions now extant, which are probably as early as the third group of the early Canaanite inscriptions. The North Semitic alphabet was for many centuries so constant that it
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Fig. 107-Early North Semitic inscriptions, I 1. The 'Abdo fragment. 2, The Shafaba'al inscription. 3. The Asdrubal spatula
is impossible to think of any alteration in the first centuries of its existence being so radical as to bring about an entire change in the form of many characters.
