The Alphabet

For many thousands of years, when people wanted to write something they had to draw pictures. In Egypt and other Mediterranean countries they were called hieroglyphs. Then, from about 2,500 BC¹, a new system of writing began – the alphabet.

Nowadays there are seven major alphabets but they all have one thing in common²: they consist of a fixed set of written signs. Each sign is used to show a particular sound. By putting different signs together in different ways all the words in a language can be formed.

In some languages the letters nearly always mean exactly the same sounds. It is very easy to read such languages and make the correct sounds. In others, such as English, some letters or groups of letters do not always make the same sound – although they should! These languages are not so easy to read.

We do not know who made the first alphabet. We do know, however, that the most important of them was the Phoenician³ alphabet. The Greeks used this alphabet to help form theirs. The Romans used it for Latin, and before long⁴ it had spread throughout Europe. It also spread to the east and became, though greatly changed, the Indian, Arabic and Hebrew⁵ alphabets.

The Phoenicians came from the part of the Mediterranean that is now called the Lebanon⁶. They were merchants and builders. They did not have an empire the way the Romans had one, but they spread throughout the Mediterranean building cities along the coast of North Africa and elsewhere.

It is not difficult to understand how the Phoenician alphabet spread. It is very useful for keeping business records⁷ and the Phoenician merchants took it with them wherever they went. Other peoples, seeing how useful it was, began to use it, making changes to meet the needs⁸ of their own languages.

Most Europeans today believe that their own alphabet comes from the Greek alphabet. They talk about the Greek letters alpha, beta, delta, gamma, etc., and how these became in turn A, B, D, G. They do not know that these Greek letters in turn⁹ come from the Phoenician alphabet – one of the most important inventions in the history of human knowledge.