Ancient Hebrew alphabet
| Paleo-Hebrew alphabet |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type | |
| Languages | Biblical Hebrew |
|
Time period
|
10th century BCE – 135 CE |
|
Parent systems
|
Egyptian hieroglyphs
|
|
Child systems
|
Samaritan alphabet |
| Direction | Right-to-left |
| ISO 15924 | Phnx, 115 |
|
Unicode alias
|
Phoenician |
| U+10900–U+1091F | |
The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: הכתב העברי הקדום), also spelt Palaeo-Hebrew alphabet, is a variant of the Phoenician alphabet. Like the Phoenician alphabet, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters, all of which are consonants, and is described as an abjad. The term was coined by Solomon Birnbaum in 1954; he wrote, "To apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable". Still, the script is nearly identical to the Phoenician script.
Archeological evidence of the use of the script by the Israelites for writing the Hebrew language dates to around the 10th century BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet began to fall out of use by the Jews in the 5th century BCE, when the Aramaic alphabet was adopted as the predominant writing system for Hebrew. The present Jewish "square-script" Hebrew alphabet evolved from the Aramaic alphabet. The Samaritans, now fewer than 1000 people, have continued to use a derivative of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, known as the Samaritan alphabet.
The chart below compares the letters of the Phoenician script with those of the Paleo-Hebrew and the present Hebrew alphabet, with names traditionally used in English.
According to contemporary scholars, the Paleo-Hebrew script developed alongside others in the region during the course of the late second and first millennia BCE. It is closely related to the Phoenician script.
The earliest known inscription in the Paleo-Hebrew script was the Zayit Stone discovered on a wall at Tel Zayit, in the Beth Guvrin Valley in the lowlands of ancient Judea in 2005. The 22 letters were carved on one side of the 38 lb (17 kg) stone - which resembles a bowl on the other. The find is attributed to the mid-10th century BCE.
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