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They continued until they had 27 letters - enough to represent all the consonants in their language. Next, they took the hieroglyph that looked like a house, which in Canaanite was called bayit, and designated it as the sound b. So, the ox head became ʾ, a sound made in the throat that we don't have in English. Taking the ox-head glyph, for instance, they decided it would represent the first letter of the word for ox in their language, ʾalef. Over 3,500 years ago, a few of them seem to have had the idea to adapt the writing system to their own language, and the way they repurposed hieroglyphs was inspired. Among her many jurisdictions, she presided over the gemstone turquoise, which is why she was worshipped at this temple in the mining settlement of Serabit el-Khadim. Hathor was one of the most important goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon. Whether they were miners, guides, or traders picking up gemstones for transport, they would have marvelled at the colourful, lifelike hieroglyphs carved into the walls of the temple to Hathor, goddess of turquoise, above the mining camps. Serabit el-Khadim was studded with rich turquoise deposits, and a small number of Canaanites were employed there alongside Egyptians. Canaanites worked across Egypt in a variety of occupations and even made their way to a remote, windswept plateau in the Sinai desert called Serabit el-Khadim. People from Canaan - modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan - often travelled to wealthy, neighbouring Egypt to seek their fortunes. Because each symbol could have several different meanings, though, hieroglyphs were a very challenging writing system to read, and it took years of dedicated study to master the system. This combination of direct representation, sound-substitution, and the occasional extra sign for clarification enabled hieroglyphs to represent the entire Egyptian language. A goose could stand for the word "goose" gb, the sound gb, or - followed by a glyph of a seated god - the name of the earth-god Geb. Other hieroglyphs represented strings of sounds. The writing system operated on the same principle as a rebus puzzle, in which you might use a picture of a bumblebee as a substitute for the verb "be" because they sound the same. All Egyptian hieroglyphs, for instance, were images of objects and animals in the real world, but they didn't always represent those objects directly.Ī drawing of a reed could mean "reed," but, since the Egyptian word for reed was ỉ, it could also stand for the sound ỉ in other words. These early scripts weren't alphabets, but they weren't simple picture-writing, either. It was later reinvented, independently, in China and Mesoamerica. Writing was invented in two different places around the same time 5,500 years ago: Mesopotamia (the region of modern-day Iraq) and Egypt.
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Our ancestors spoke and signed for hundreds of thousands - possibly tens of millions - of years before they devised a technology for representing language in art. The written word, so indispensable to modern society, is easy to take for granted, but writing was a late development in the history of human language. Yet the Latin alphabet is a direct descendent of those dynamic inscriptions. The vipers, vultures, baskets and bread loaves that parade across tomb walls in the Nile Valley bear little resemblance, at first glance, to the matter-of-fact Arial font that lines the average website. Of all the world's writing systems, hieroglyphs may be among the most mysterious to those of us who speak and read English and French. (Public domain)Ī is for ox, B is for house, C is for throw stick.ĭoesn't sound familiar? You may not have learned it in elementary school, but this formula goes back to the earliest history of the Latin alphabet and its origins in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The text on this statuette, running from upper left to lower right, seems to read 'mt l bʿlt,' meaning 'gift for the lady.' From Althebräische Inschriften vom Sinai by Hubert Grimme, 1923. Canaanite miners used their new alphabet to write on mine walls and to inscribe gifts to Hathor.