Standardisation of the Phoenician alphabet

Date

c. 1050 BCE

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Phoenicia (coastal Lebanon)

Era

Ancient Civilizations

Significance

By around 1050 BCE the linear Canaanite letter-forms had stabilised into the 22-consonant Phoenician alphabet, written right-to-left with fixed letter names, shapes and order.

Conventionally dated to this period (the figure marks a gap in the epigraphic record, with the earliest securely dated inscriptions, such as the Ahiram sarcophagus, falling in the 10th century BCE), the Phoenician script became the standard writing of the Levantine coastal cities and, through their trade, the seed of most later alphabets. Phoenician merchants and colonists carried it across the Mediterranean; Greeks adopted it (adding vowels) to create the Greek alphabet, from which Etruscan and Latin descend, while Aramaic and Hebrew scripts branched off in the Near East. The system's economy and portability made literacy far more accessible than the cuneiform and hieroglyphic traditions it would eventually overshadow.

Empires active in c. 1050 BCE

• Shang Dynasty
  1600 BCE – 1046 BCE
• Kingdom of Kush
  1070 BCE – 350 CE
• Phoenician City-States
  1200 BCE – 539 BCE
• Elamite Kingdom
  2700 BCE – 539 BCE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Compilation of MUL.APIN and Babylonian astronomy
  c. 1000 BCE
• Casting of the Houmuwu Ding, Peak of Shang Bronze Art
  c. 1200 BCE
• The Cascajal Block: earliest writing in the Americas
  c. 900 BCE
• Iron Smelting Develops in the Nok Culture of West Africa
  c. 800 BCE
• The Bronze-to-Iron transition and the early Iron Age
  c. 1200 BCE
• Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, earliest known treatise on trauma
  c. 1600 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

Get it on Amazon →

As an Amazon Associate, Human Saga earns from qualifying purchases.