Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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ORIGIN OF ALPHABET
205 The Pseudo-hieroglyphic Script of Byblos and the Origin of the Alphabet according to M. Dunand
Other very important documents (see p. 158f.) discovered by the French scholar M. Dunand in 1929, 1933, and in the following years, at Byblos, Syria, present a hitherto unknown type of writing, which according to Dunand, seems to be referred to in an ancient tradition quoted by Philo of Byblos.
Maurice Dunand considers the syllabic pseudo-hieroglyphic script of Byblos as the prototype of the alphabet. According to him signs intermediate between the two systems of writing (Fig. 104, 2) appear
some inscriptions from Byblos (Fig. 104, 2: signs marked (1)). These "intermediate" signs are considered by Dunand as the "linear representation" of the pseudo-hieroglyphic symbols. If the pseudo-hieroglyphic script was the invention of a non-Semitic people, the linear script may, according to Dunand, be its simplification adapted to the Phoenician tongue.
origin of the alphabet from the Byblos pseudohieroglyphic script is based on six points: (1) Both the scripts were in use, in succession, in the same locality. (2) All the Phænician letters, with the exception of the kheth and the goph, resemble symbols of the pseudohieroglyphic script or the Byblos linear writing (Fig. 104, 2). (3) Both the scripts are written from right to left. (4) There are inscriptions extant on similar documents (spatule, Fig. 107, 3, as compared with Fig. 82, 3: 83; and 84). (5) The direction of writing of the Byblos hieroglyphic script is, unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphic script, similar to that of the alphabet, and the lines are always horizontal (6) In some pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions, as in some very early alphabetic texts, the words are separated by vertical strokes.
Apart from the pseudo-hieroglyphic script, Dunand points out that various signs resembling early alphabetic letters, such as sh, m and 'ayin. are engraved on objects found in Byblos, and attributed to the period of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (roughly 2000-1800 B.C.).
Five apparently "alphabetiform" signs (Fig. 104, 3) are engraved on a statuette in bronze, also found in Byblos, and attributed to the end
the Egyptian twelfth dynasty or to the period of the thirteenth dynasty (that is to the early or middle eighteenth century B.C.). Dunand suggests the possibility of reading (1) Amn, "to (me) Ammon," written in boustrophedon style. This inscription, according to M. Dunand, may be "the incunable of the alphabetic script." Assuming that this is actually the case, we may-argues Durand-arrive at the following conclusions (1) The Phænician alphabet was already fully formed during the period of the Middle Kingdom, certainly in that of the thirteenth dynasty. (2) It was contemporary with the pseudo-hieroglyphic script. (3) It becomes plausible to add the aforementioned signs appearing on objects belonging to the Middle Kingdom) to the agreed list of the known alphabetic
