Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions: the first alphabetic writing
- Date
- c. 1850 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Sinai & Egypt (Levantine workers)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
At the Egyptian turquoise-mining settlement of Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai, and at Wadi el-Hol in Egypt, Semitic-speaking workers adapted a small number of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs into a radically simpler system in which each symbol stood for a single consonant.
Working on the acrophonic principle (a picture of a house, Semitic 'bayt', supplied the sound 'b'), this Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite script reduced writing from hundreds of logographic and syllabic signs to roughly two to three dozen letters. This was the ancestor of every alphabet later used, including Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin. Because it could be learned quickly, alphabetic writing eventually broke the monopoly that scribal elites had held over literacy in cuneiform and hieroglyphic cultures. The inscriptions were first identified by Flinders Petrie (1905) and only partly deciphered; many remain uncertain, but their place at the head of alphabetic history is widely accepted.
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Empires active in c. 1850 BCE
- Old Babylonian Empire1894 BCE – 1595 BCE
- Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (Oxus Civilization)2250 BCE – 1700 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
- Xia Dynasty2070 BCE – 1600 BCE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Development of the Linear A Script in Minoan Cretec. 1800 BCE
- Old Babylonian mathematics: base-60 and Plimpton 322c. 1800–1600 BCE
- The Taung Child and the naming of Australopithecus africanus1924–1925 CE (fossil c. 2.8 million years old)
- Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, earliest known treatise on traumac. 1600 BCE
- Rhind Mathematical Papyrus copied by the scribe Ahmesc. 1650 BCE
- Sintashta culture and the first spoke-wheeled war chariotsc. 2100–2000 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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