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Jour. Egypt. Archaeol
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Historical SummaryFollowing this the theory prevailed that this was the Phoenician alphabet later borrowed and developed by the Greeks. The assumption was that the Phoenicians, a northern Semitic people, had invented this alphabet independently in connection with their commerce and business. There were, however, four ancient South Semitic groups possessing alphabets and in one of them, the Sabaean (in the district of Nemen, Southern Arabia) an inscription has been found dating from about the sixth century B.C., and comparison of the Phoenician and South Semitic forms led to the supposition that there was a proto-Semitic precursor from which all were derived. In this connection, Prätorius wrote in 1909:
We are obliged very seriously to weigh the possibility that the South-Semitic alphabet is descended, not from the Mesha [Moabite] alphabet or from some only slightly different and slightly older script, but rather from a much older script now unknown to us—a script which must in essentials have exhibited an alphabetic character. On this view the
uniformity which the letters of the South-Semitic alphabet display among themselves, in strong contrast to the wholly different Phoenician alphabet, would find its explanation in the fact that the South-Semitic and the Phoenician alphabets were very ancient bifurcations from a script still plastic and not yet reduced to uniformity. A further inference to be drawn would be this, that very possibly the intermediate stages between the Mesha alphabet and the South-Semitic may now have completely disappeared.1
1 Quoted by Gardiner, A. H., "The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet," ., 3: 4–5.
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Chicago: Gardiner, A. H., ed., "Jour. Egypt. Archaeol," Jour. Egypt. Archaeol in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. Thomas, William I. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937), Original Sources, accessed May 16, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=WWSZML94VVFWQII.
MLA: . "Jour. Egypt. Archaeol." Jour. Egypt. Archaeol, edited by Gardiner, A. H., Vol. 3, in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, edited by Thomas, William I., New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937, Original Sources. 16 May. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=WWSZML94VVFWQII.
Harvard: (ed.), 'Jour. Egypt. Archaeol' in Jour. Egypt. Archaeol. cited in 1937, Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. , McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York. Original Sources, retrieved 16 May 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=WWSZML94VVFWQII.
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