Talk:Middle Bronze Age alphabets

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Contents 1 date 2 Ħ, ħ (1) 3 wording 4 merge? 5 Ħ, ħ (2) 6 Linguistic reconstruction 7 Table 8 Ugaritic and Sinaitic 9 Old European 10 Fair use rationale for Image:Wadi el-Hol inscriptions drawing.jpg 11 baʿalat vs. baʿlat 12 Letter names

[edit] date

What is the relation of MBA alephbeths (1800, 1500 BCE) and LINEAR A, "in use before 1400 BCE"? If Linear A was in use for any length of time, it would have to be nearly as old as MBA's!

[edit] Ħ, ħ (1)

why the "Ħ"? Is that supposed to be the uppercase version of ẖ? If so, this should be pointed out at Arabic alphabet, otherwise people won't know what to make of the letter. dab (ᛏ) 15:19, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

It's the catital of the letter "ħ", which is both the appropriate IPA symbol, and the letter used when writing Arabic in the Latin alphabet (that is, the Maltese lect of Arabic). But you're right, I should do something about the alphabet transcription page. kwami 18:58, 2005 May 24 (UTC)

[edit] wording

I've removed the phrase "as well as being more esthetically satisfying" from the "Origins of the alphabet" chapter. That a writing system is aesthetically satisfying or not is definitely POV. However, I'd rather have reworded the phrase than straight-out removed it, since it may be worth to say that the Egyptian script had a "pictorial potential" that was exploited by scribes making it a form of art besides a script. But I'm not sure how to write this down concisely - certainly, "it's more aesthetically satisfying" is not it.

Besides this, I've edited the phrase "they are superior to alphabets when it comes to reading". AFAIK, there is strong debate over this. And, AFAIK again, there is no real evidence that this is true. I've changed it to "sometimes considered superior", but I'd ask whether it wouldn't be better to remove that phrase completely; the following paragraph would lose its meaning, though. Perhaps "sometimes considered superior by those who have learnt it as their first writing system".

LjL 22:13, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, kanji is not my first writing system, and I was an adult before I leaned it, and yet I find it much easier to read than the Latin alphabet (given my limitations with the language being written, of course). kwami 18:30, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

Wadi el-Hol section: There's one simple error in the section and at least one possibly misleading wording. (1) The direction that the second inscription (i.e., on the right) runs is said to be upper right to bottom left, but both Colless and the Wimmers read it from lower left to upper right, given the way you have reproduced it. If you have reproduced it correctly (and have not flipped the image, for example), then the wording needs to be corrected. (2) Whoever it is that wants to read the first Wadi el-Hol inscription as beginning with "rb" is reading it in the opposite direction from the direction that both Colless and the Wimmers do. If this unattributed point is kept at all, this should be made clear. Right now, "the beginning" that is assumed by this dubious reading is simply stated as if that were the accepted beginning of the inscription.

66.135.106.50 (talk) 15:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC) Cy

I just checked one of Colless' blogs, and the article appears to be correct. Why do you say it's wrong? — kwami (talk) 17:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I can read the stuff, more or less, as Colless and the Wimmers do. I don't think that Colless is responding to what I meant (or maybe he didn't notice the upper right/lower left stuff, which is easy to miss). I'll try again. Colless and the Wimmers are reading Inscription 2 from lower left to upper right, not from upper right to lower left. You can see for yourself. (Ask Colless specifically about that, please, if you have access to him. Or ask someone whose expertise you trust.) I'll list for you some of the letters that you can recognize and compare to the transcriptions. Start Inscription 2 from lower left. The first letter, a hook, is transcribed as L (lamed). (You can compare with other Semitic inscriptions in wiki: in later scripts the hook tended to face the other way, though.) The 2nd letter, the ox head, is aleph, transcribed as "?" (glottal stop). (Cf. Inscription 1 where the aleph ["?"] is the 5th letter.) In Inscription 2 the 3rd letter is the curve with two loops, transcribed as s-with-diacritical (shin), which is also the 2nd-last letter in Inscription 2. (Compare again to the transcriptions.) The long plain wavy line (no fork at its end) which is the last letter in Inscription 2 is the M (mem) (cf. Inscription 1 where the same M comes 3rd and 12th). The 4th letter in Inscription 2 Colless reads as a G (gimel) but the Wimmers read as a P (pe); cf. the 8th letter in Inscription 1. And so forth: you can keep going throughout the whole inscription like that, making comparisons even if you don't recognize any letters a priori. (And you can fill in the gaps by comparing letter forms with the same in later versions of Semitic script in wiki.) But if you read Inscription 2 from upper right to lower left, nothing corresponds between the two inscriptions or between Inscription 2 and its transcriptions by Colless and the Wimmers.

Sorry I was so long-winded -- but I'm happy you were interested.

66.135.106.50 (talk) 22:40, 27 March 2008 (UTC)Cy

[edit] merge?

Someone put in a merge notice for History of alphabets (who changed it to that unfelicitous title?). As the one who wrote both articles (at least in their present forms), I must say this doesn't make any sense to me. There are several scripts that have been very important to the history of the alphabet. This is one. Imperial Aramaic and Latin are others. I don't think anyone would suggest we merge the article on the Latin alphabet into History of the Alphabet. However, I could understand that there may be too much overlap for some people's tastes. kwami 22:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

After reading this article (and Sacks' book a few months ago) I have to agree with user kwami that it would be a mistake to merge this article into the article History of the alphabet (History of alphabets is a redirect). This article is very informative, uses its graphics well, and only becomes overly technical in a few places. Most linguistic articles on WP read at a very advanced level. The proposed destination article does need some attention, however, in terms of layout, mostly in the good use of white space and graphics. -Acjelen 00:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't merge. This article is too detailed to fit well into the overall History of the Alphabet page. --Macrakis 20:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

don't merge. This is the article about the Wadi el Hol finds in particular. dab (ᛏ) 19:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to remove the merge tag. I am, however, adding a merge tag for the other article, which should merge here. That will be a readily easy job, but I'm wiking on the sly at work. -Acjelen 20:21, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

yes, I found a delapidated stub at Proto-semitic alphabet, and moved the content from here to there. If we redirect it here, the link should be removed from the {{alphabet}} template, too. dab (ᛏ) 16:01, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, no one's objected, so I'll merge. Since the info is completely duplicated (that was me, I think), it's a question of either merge or split up this article. Since the two scripts may turn out to be the same, merging is probably a better idea. kwami 20:10, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ħ, ħ (2)

I know I have brought this up before (see top of page), but I am convinced now that we shouldn't spell Ħol, since the name is not Maltese, and Arabic isn't transliterated in IPA, and IPA is never capitalized anyway. See Arabic transliteration: the proper spelling is ẖ or ḫ therefore, if at all, Wadi el-Ḫol. dab (ᛏ) 16:26, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

You may be right. I was thinking in practical terms: many people will not see the higher-numbered unicode glyphs at all, and if we use diacritics they won't align properly on many browsers. The Maltese letters, by contrast, are almost universally supported, and there are no display problems. kwami 22:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I tried to introduce correct Unicode encoding of Semitic transliteration now; there seems to have been some confusion of ḥ vs. ḫ, I hope I got it right. dab (ᛏ) 19:37, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

It's still a mixed system, but more importantly, it's illegible. In the old system you could tell the letters apart. kwami 20:28, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this is the standard transliteration of Semitic languages; it's not my fault if ḥ looks similar to ḫ in your browser; anyway, we can look for improvements. The important thing is that we have got all letters right first. We can still opt to represent ḫ as x (in the transcription of ancient alphabets, not in the transliteration of Arabic, though) -- we'd just have to make this choice clear at the beginning. Maybe even a short section addressing transliteration issues first? dab (ᛏ) 20:42, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me, what's wrong about simply transliterating "Wadi el-Hol", with a plain H? "Wadi el-Hol" is a modern Arabic place name, and this is normal usage in any kind of media or text, apart of course books or web pages which deal specifically with Arabic language or Semitic linguistics -- but this is an article about archaeology and the history of the alphabet, not about Arabic or Semitistics. Anyway, if you really want a scientific transliteration/transcription, well, I fail to undertsand why you use "e", "o", and omit macrons! 194.176.201.28 09:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linguistic reconstruction

The second "a" vowels in Hebrew Ba`al (masculine) and Ba`alah (feminine) are epenthetic vowels (introduced by two different epenthesis processes), and probably didn't exist at the time that the Sinaitic inscriptions were written -- so that the pronunciation would have been more like Ba`lat, not Ba`alat. AnonMoos 06:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table

Wouldn't it be better to use the older Phoenician (the source of most alphabets) than Hebrew to demonstrate the alphabetic changes? — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 07:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

yes, but we need to make clear exactly what our sources are here. The statement "Only the Colless reconstruction is shown here. For the Albright identification of the Egyptian prototypes, see the Proto-Canaanite alphabet." is unsatisfactory. Both reconstructions (and others, if we find them) should be discussed and compared here. dab (ᛏ) 08:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Brian E(dric) Colless responds: I am very pleased with the table showing my identifications for the characters of the proto-alphabet, and I am grateful to the person who has taken the trouble to construct it. My own version has never been published in print in this complete form.

The sources for my thoughts on the proto-alphabet and the Wadi el-Hol Canaanite (West Semitic) graffit are in the archives of listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane, notably:

Wadi el-Hol Alphabetica (4) and (5)

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-February/017682.html https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2005-February/017858.html

"Cuneiform alphabet and picto-proto-alphabet"

https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-November/015436.html

This has a list of all my publications on the Canaanite proto-alphabet:

COLLESS, Brian E., "Recent Discoveries Illuminating the Origin of the Alphabet", Abr-Nahrain, 26 (1988), pp. 30-67. A preliminary attempt to construct a table of signs and values for the proto-alphabet, and to make sense of some of the inscriptions from Sinai and Canaan.

COLLESS, B.E., "The Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions of Sinai", Abr-Nahrain, 28 (1990), pp. 1-52. An interpretation of 44 inscriptions from the turquoise-mining region of Sinai.

COLLESS, B.E., "The Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions of Canaan", Abr-Nahrain, 29 (1991), pp. 18-66. An interpretation of 30 brief inscriptions from Late-Bronze-Age Palestine.

COLLESS, B.E., 1996, The Egyptian and Mesopotamian Contributions to the Origins of the Alphabet, in Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Near East, ed. Guy Bunnens, Abr-Nahrain Supplement Series 5 (Louvain) 67-76.

And also my articles on the Canaanite syllabary ("Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic script") in Abr-Nahrain (now Ancient Near Eastern Studies) from 1992 to 1998, culminating in:

Colless, Brian E.,The Canaanite Syllabary, Abr-Nahrain 35 (1998) 28-46.

From Thebes in Egypt we also have a copy of the proto-alphabet (published by Flinders Petrie in 1912) which has been ignored ever since. See now my discussions on: Cryptcracker.blogspot.com 27 August 2006 BEC

[edit] Ugaritic and Sinaitic

Comparison of Ugaritic and Sinaitic scripts is as follows:

I'm all for the comparison with Ugaritic. However, I don't think this is the proper place for it for two reasons: (1) the connection is controversial, more even than the other connections in this table, and (2) here we are concerned with the development of the Sinaitic and Wadi al-Hhol scripts, which means that only part of Ugaritic will be listed, as Ugaritic innovations are not relevant. Therefore I think this kind of comparison belongs in the article on Ugaritic itself. kwami 21:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

name (and meaning)	hieroglyph	translit.	Phoenician	Hebrew	Greek	Ugaritic
’alp (ox)	(ỉħ)	ʾa		א	Α	𐎀 alpa
bayt (house)	(pr)	b		ב	Β	𐎁 beta
gaml (throwstick)	(qm’)	g		ג	Γ	𐎂 gamla
xayt (thread [skein])	(ħ)	ẖ	–	→ ḥ	Ψ	𐎃 ẖa
dalt (door)	(c’)	d		ד	Δ	𐎄 delta
hillul (jubilation)	; (q’; xrd)	h		ה	Ε	𐎅 ho
waw (hook)	–	w		ו	Ϝ	𐎆 wo
ziqq (manacle)	–	z		ז	Ζ	𐎇 zeta
ħasir (court)		ḥ		ח	Η	𐎈 ḥota
ţab (good)	(nfr)	ṭ		ט	Θ	𐎉 ṭet
yad (arm/hand)	(c)	y		י	Ι	𐎊 yod
kapp (palm [of hand]), (palm branch)	(d, drt) –	k		כ,ך	Κ	𐎋 kaf
šim (sun [uræus])	(rac)	š		ש	Σ	𐎌 šin
šimš (sun)	(rac)	š2	–	–	Ϲ	𐎞 šinš
lamd (crook/goad)	(cwt)	l		ל	Λ	𐎍 lamda
mu (water)	(nt)	m		מ,ם	Μ	𐎎 mem
ðayp (eyebrow)		ḏ	–	→ z	∇	𐎟 ḏal
naħaš (snake)	(j)	n		נ,ן	Ν	𐎐 nun
–	–	ẓ	–	–	Ϡ	𐎑 ẓu
samk (support [vine tutor]), (fish)	(jd, dd) (ỉn)	s		ס	Ξ	𐎒 samka
cayn (eye)	(ỉr)	ʿ		ע	Ο	𐎓 ʿain
pu (mouth)	(r, r’)	p		פ,ף	Π	𐎔 pu
ṣirar (tied bag)	(sšr)	ṣ		צ,ץ	Ϻ	𐎕 ṣade
qaw (cord [wound on stick])	(wj)	q		ק	Ϟ	𐎖 qopa
ra’iš (head)	(tp)	r		ר	Ρ	𐎗 raša
θad (breast)	–	ṯ	–	→ š	Ϛ	𐎘 ṯanna
γinab? (grape?)	–	ġ	–	–	Χ	𐎙 ġain
taw (mark)	–	t		ת	Τ	𐎚 to
–	–	s2	–	–	Ϸ	𐎝 śu
–	–	ʾi	–	–	ϒ	𐎛 i
–	–	ʾu	–	–	Υ	𐎜 u
–	–					𐎟 word divider

Wikinger 20:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old European

Why no mention of work connecting proto-Sinaitic alphabets with northern Europe. There's the work of A Marshack, et al., see particularly the Current Anthropology article (1979, p. 277) and compare the graphic system there to Schmitz's 2002 article in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, p 818. There are many other references. Thing is, the Russian material is much older than the Proto-Sinaitic examples. Gimbutas's table of European letters from 8,800 BP and onward is also deserving mention. It's true that this alphabet is not a self-sufficient alphabet, but the similarity of it to the Phoenician alphabet is strong. Marshack has written quite a bit on this, and provides excellent picturse of early inscriptions dated to the Mousterian These inscriptions are a bit earlier in No. Russia, but he finds them in Iberia much earlier than the so-called Iberian script and believes they have iconic meaning and are not decorative. This becomes important because the same type of script is found in the New World at a later date, but no trace of Phoenicians.130.166.33.188 (talk) 04:37, 27 November 2007 (UTC)Kamaila.

You could find similarities with chicken scratches, if you looked hard enough. Anyway, there's not much evidence that "Old European" is even a writing system, let alone an alphabet. kwami (talk) 10:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Wadi el-Hol inscriptions drawing.jpg

Image:Wadi el-Hol inscriptions drawing.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 03:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The drawing has no copyright, or actually, the copyright expired 2000 years ago (if that makes any sense). No 'fair use' comment is required. — kwami (talk) 06:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

However this drawing is by BRUCE ZUCKERMAN IN COLLABORATION WITH LYNN SWARTZ DODD, rather than a photo. So these two own the copyright. It will need to be recopied for wikipedia free use. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:28, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter who it's by, or how much work went into it, there is no creative process in tracing someone else's work. — kwami (talk) 06:45, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

In that case the picture needs to have its copyright notice changed, as the fair use is not justified, but public domain is. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:45, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] baʿalat vs. baʿlat

The middle vowel is epenthetic in Hebrew, and probably wouldn't be present as early as ca. 1500 BC, so [baʿlat] would probably be more correct... AnonMoos (talk) 20:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Letter names

Unless someone can provide sources for the letter "names", and soon, I will delete them as being Original Research. Cbdorsett (talk) 00:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

We do not know what these letters were called. However, it is conventional to refer to all Semitic letters with Semitic names, whether or not names are attested from the alphabet or era in question. This is simply a practical affair, and due to the recognition that these are historically one and the same, rather as we call the Latin letter B "bee", even though that's not how the Romans pronounced it. I've changed the rubric to "conventional name" to clarify this. Although you wouldn't be wrong in deleting the names, that would make it difficult to refer to individual letters in this or other articles. kwami (talk) 00:28, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that explicit letter names are mainly attested in the A.D. period, so that reconstructing letter names for the Middle Bronze Age alphabets involves reconstructing the phonology of the A.D. letter names backwards over a thousand years, and then trying to correlate these reconstructed names with meaningful words whose meanings correlate with the objects apparently depicted by Egyptian-influenced signs according to the "acrophonic principle" (i.e. that a hieroglyph sign-shape borrowed from Egyptian was used to write the consonant sound which began the word for the Northwest Semitic word for the object depicted).

Sometimes it all works out perfectly, as with bet reconstructed back to baytu which means "house", and the house-looking sign is known to have written a [b] consonant due to the securely-deciphered word laba`lat. The same with `en-`aynu-"eye"-voiced-pharyngeal. But with a lot of the others, there are problems or major uncertainties -- for example, more scholars have reconstructed a snake-looking sign to write the sound [n] than a fish-looking sign, etc. etc.

Some of the entries in the table are effectively the same as the rows of "Fig I" of the 1971 Albright book (though sometimes with different spellings), but others are different... AnonMoos (talk) 02:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC)