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THE ALPHABET
seems to be doubtful, would ante-date the invention of the alphabet by about half a millennium. Fig. 109 shows the early development of the North Semitic alphabet according to the theory of the French excavator, Maurice Dunand; the dates, however, are not agreed upon.
ORIGINAL ALPHABETIC WRITING
The incontestable facts about the original alphabetic writing may be summarized in this way: in the earliest stage (corresponding to the second half of the second millennium B.C.) of its history, the North Semitic alphabet was used by the Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Syria and Palestine, and was quite familiar to them. This script, compared with that of the Phoenician and of the early Hebrew inscriptions of the first half of the first millennium B.C., shows, as stated, close resemblances to them even in detail. This is the best evidence that the forms of the original letters were constant, and did not differ widely from their later shapes. It may be observed, finally, that a considerable degree of caution should be exercised in coming to conclusions or forming theories on this problem, because the evidence is so fragmentary, and in that respect so much inferior to what we possess about the more ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian scripts.
As the letters of the earliest North Semitic inscriptions extant show a certain external evolution, we can assume that the proto-Semitic alphabet was some centuries older than, for instance, the aforementioned Akhiram and Yekhimilk inscriptions. This assumption may be corroborated by the probability that, as already mentioned, the Ugarit alphabet, which apparently originated in the sixteenth century B.C., presupposes the existence of the proto-Semitic alphabet. On the other hand, cuneiform writing was currently used by the Semites of Syria and Palestine at the date of the Tell el-'Amarna letters (fifteenth-fourteenth centuries B.C.). This may be evidence that the alphabet was still of recent origin. It is, however, more probable that side by side with the cuneiform script. used for diplomatic purposes and for international business, there existed already a common native script.
Consequently, according to my opinion, we can date the origin of the North Semitic alphabet, or of its prototype, which we can call proto-Semitic alphabet, in the second quarter of the second millennium B.C. In other words, the great event occurred probably in the Hyksos period, which is now commonly dated 1730-1580 B.C. There is no doubt that the political situation of the Near East in that period favoured the creation of a "revolutionary" writing, a script which we can properly term "democratic" in distinction to the "theocratic" scripts of Egypt, Mesopotamia or China. All the other more important attempts at alphabetic writing, the early Sinaitic script, the early Byblian and the early Canaanite scripts, can also be attributed to the Hyksos period.
