Thus [he says] we have to face the fact that, at all events not later than 1500 B.C., there existed in Sinai, i.e., on Semitic soil, a form of writing almost certainly alphabetic in character and clearly modeled on the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Exception may perhaps be taken to the detailed comparison of signs that have here been made, but if the new Sinaitic script is not the particular script from which the Phoenician and the South-Semitic alphabets are descended I can see no alternative to regarding it as a tentative essay in that direction, which at all events constitutes a good analogy upon which the Egyptian hypothesis can be argued. The common parent of the Phoenician, the Greek, and the Sabaean may have been one out of several more or less plastic local varieties of alphabet, all developing on the acrophonic principle under the influence of the Egyptian hieroglyphs.²

The most plausible interpretation of the precise relation of the Semitic alphabet to Egyptian writing was formulated by Champollion in the general terms that Egyptian was "not the origin but the methodological model" of the alphabet. Sethe later elaborated such a view, advocating the claim of the Phoenicians as the direct creators of the alphabet. He points out the residence of the Israelites in the Nile Delta and their return to Palestine (1400–1300 B.C.) under Moses, mentions the invasion of the Semitic Hyksos or "Shepherd Kings," who from about 1700 B.C. ruled Lower Egypt for more than a century until they were driven back to Palestine, in fact to Phoenicia, and gives evidence indicating that the Phoenicians did not remodel the Egyptian system of writing but remodeled their own system in the direction of a pure alphabet on the basis of the suggestion provided by their familiarity with the Egyptian language. Following Champollion’s suggestion, Lidzbarski had concluded that the Phoenician alphabet was invented by a Semite in Canaan "who knew of the existence of the Egyptian writing and something of the system, but whose knowledge was not sufficiently precise to borrow certain of its particular characters," but Sethe, who never doubts that the alphabet was invented at a given point by a clever individual Phoenician, contends that, in his adaptation of signs to Semitic speech and taste, this person showed an extensive acquaintance with Egyptian.¹

To the sociologist these interesting attempts at historical reconstruction seem at least to reveal that the reduction of signs to an alphabet was a vulgar or nonprofessional performance. There is a tendency to assume that so unique an invention was a tour de force at a given point by an educated and gifted person. We have seen, however, that spoken languages were not so developed but in an anonymous way among the people, and the organization of sounds into a language is as remarkable a performance as the association of sounds with signs. In this case the Egyptian writing had developed an alphabet supporting pictures, but had perseverated in this line, and the completion of the alphabet was apparently in the hands of more vulgar scribes not connected with royalty. The Sinai script, found in a country barren of culture, may be an example of this (it is not known whether the scribes were Egyptians or Semites) and seems to represent a widespread movement going on among the general population, much as dialects depart from classical languages and may in turn become standard and classic. The line of development advocated by Sethe indicates also that Egyptian contacts had given an alphabetic trend to Semitic attention. The particular steps were, however, presumably taken anonymously from point to point, as we have seen certain trends followed in language. From this standpoint the South-Semitic and the Phoenician North-Semitic alphabets are comparable with dialects derived from a common source. Popular letter writing and trade seem to have been incentives to the dissociation of the sound symbols completely from pictures. The alphabet was a short and at first a vulgar way of record making. It was used by the Phoenicians and Greeks in trading operations, and the cleverness of the Greeks was limited to converting into vowels certain superfluous Phoenician consonant sounds (aspirates and semivowels).

² Quoted by Gardiner, A. H., "The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet," , 12.

¹ Sethe, K., "Der Ursprung des Alphabets," Nachrichten der K. Gesellsch. der Wissensch. zu Göttingen, 1916: 133–139.