PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY AND ALPHABET

The science of paleogrammatology 

and the evolution of the alphabet

                I am not here to blind you with SCIENCE but with SIGNS.

Anyone who knew me during my years as a lecturer at Massey University (1970 till 2001) thinks of me as a teacher of religion. Certainly, in 1970, I came from Melbourne University with a masterate in Hebrew Bible theology and a doctorate in Syriac Christian mysticism, to establish Religious Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Massey University in Palmerston North. First it was a non-entity without a department to belong to, then a sub-department, next a thriving little independent department (when small was beautiful and in this case rationally economic), and finally as an unmentionable segment of the School of History, Philosophy, Politics, and Classical Studies (no space left for including Religious Studies). In this same connection, in the years 1962 and 1963, I was a lecturer in a theological college in South Australia.
    However, at Massey university I endeavoured to present my subject not as theology but as “phenomenology of religion”, and as a science, Religionswissenschaft (religion-science) as it is known in German. And yet it has often been observed that I do not go around spouting religion so much as languages and scripts, or to be technical, talking about linguistics (the scientific study of languages and their structure), epigraphy (the study of inscriptions), and palaeography (study of ancient writings and inscriptions, which involves dating, deciphering, interpreting).
    Originally, however, I was a secondary school teacher at Granville Boys High School in Sydney, from 1959 to 1961 (Crocodile Dundee alias Paul Hogan was a pupil there, but not in my time); my teaching subjects were Latin, French, English, and Ancient History; and subsequently in other states of Australia I gave instruction in German, and also ancient Hebrew and Greek. Along the way I have learnt many other ancient and modern languages in order to read original texts and academic literature in my fields of study, which are many and various. So I can claim to be a linguist and an antiquarian (I live more in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age than in the current Gas Age).
     Now, the subject of this discourse is “paleogrammatology” (a word I have invented and which you have now discovered), and paleogrammatology is not about ancient languages but about ancient letters (Greek paleo, old; and grammata, written characters, from the verb grapho, write or draw). So we will be talking, in the English language, about scripts or writing systems, rather than about languages.
    In 1964, I was teaching English, French, and German in Launceston, in Tasmania, and on the side I was studying extramurally for a London University degree in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac (its title was Master of Theology, and I failed it). This also involved reading ancient inscriptions in Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite (all dialects of the same language, which I call Canaanian, the language of Canaan (Kana`an), which the benighted English blithely pronounce as Keinen. I had already been delving into the ancient languages and scripts of the Bible lands in 1958, while I was supposed to be studying for my Diploma in Education at Sydney University.
    While I was at Granville Boys High (it had been Granville Tech, before I came and introduced foreign languages into the curriculum, and it was still a tough environment) I organized a linguistics club after school hours, with some of my brightest students. By digging deeply and archaeologically in my filing cabinet (which has traveled over land and sea with me since then) I have found the exercise book in which I kept notes, including the name of the group as the “Granville Linguistic Society”.  We also talked about “writing”, which is not strictly a part of linguistics, and we had as one of our resources a table of the development of many of the letters of the alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphs, taken from the back of a breakfast-cereal packet (corn flakes, to be scientifically accurate, probably Kellogg brand). Looking at that incomplete and inaccurate chart now, in my humble capacity as an expert on the original alphabet (the proto-alphabet, I have dubbed it) I see that it did not do too much damage to the minds of those eager young learners.
    I hope they remember me with affection, and likewise those fifty (quinquaginta, cinquante, fünfzig) good keen lads in my Ancient History class; this was my most glorious year in education; if any of those twelve-year-olds misbehaved in the classroom the rest would hiss him; and whenever I arrived to begin each lesson there was always someone waiting at the door for me with something to show and tell; antiquarianism is such fun. I now feel, with regret, that when I had to take detention classes after school, instead of making them sit there in silent penance for their disruptive behaviour in other people’s classes, I should have encouraged them to practise yoga meditation, or stimulated them with the origin of the letters of the alphabet. But my knowledge was rudimentary and as imprecise as any other expert’s opinions in those unenlightened times, as the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica show. They still have not got it right.
    During my year in Tasmania (1964), teaching English, French, and German at Scotch (sic!) College in Launceston (sick indeed, as tuberculosis had raged there before I joined the staff), I also began reading seriously about decipherment of mysterious scripts (including the proto-alphabet). For resources, I only had my own books, purchased by mail from Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford, and those available in the local public library.
    One thing I remembered ever after from that search (it was not yet research of my own): some of the great decipherers, having cracked the code of one particular script, then thought they had obtained the key to open other doors leading to the decoding of more undeciphered scripts, and in the process they made idiots of themselves. So in my own sleuthing in this treacherous minefield, I have trodden warily, with that warning in mind. (A related anecdotal real-life experience: once, at the Suez Canal in Egypt, I got out of the bus and went running over the landscape for exercise; I was called back urgently by a local Arab, because there were bombs in the ground.)
     Nevertheless, in spite of that caveat about thinking you have discovered the key, when I eventually worked out the origins of the alphabet, I became more audacious. After identifying the source of each letter (Aleph and Alpha an ox; Bayt and Beta a house; Gaml and Gamma a boomerang; Dalt and Delta a door, and so on), building on the “experiments” and discoveries of my predecessors, I did begin trying to unravel other enigmatic scripts, because I had in fact found the key to open their locked gateways. In a word: ACROPHONY, also known as “the acrophonic principle”.
    My first lecture on the subject of ancient scripts (particularly the proto-alphabet) was presented at a language and literature conference in Christchurch in January 1987; it was ground-breaking (though not earth-shaking. like their recent devastating earthquakes); it was published in 1988 as “Recent discoveries illuminating the origin of the alphabet”. Strange to say, it did not contain the word acrophony, nor the term acrophonic principle, though this was the underlying unstated assumption of my thesis.
    The word acrophony (as distinct from cacophony, “bad sound”) is apparently not in common or decent usage, since it is absent from my Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1990); but acrophobia is there as “fear of heights” (from Greek akron, “summit”), and, more significantly, acronym, which refers to a noun or name constructed from the initial (or “top”) letters of other words (radar from radio detection and ranging;  RADA from Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). Accordingly, acrophony is “summit sound”, and refers to taking the initial letter of a word that goes with a particular depiction of some object or symbol.


ACROPHONY the key to ancient syllabaries and the original alphabet (a consonantary)

Step 1 REBUS (whole word) > a syllabogram (Mesopotamia, logo-syllabary) (ab, ba, bat)

Step 2 REBUS (first syllable) > a syllabogram (Canaan, and then Crete, Anatolia, Mesoamerica)

Step 3 REBUS (initial consonant) > a consonantogram (Canaan, proto-alphabet)

The results of my research show that the original letters of the proto-alphabet (Canaanian logo-consonantary) could act as:

(1) an acrophonic consonantogram (picture of snake > nakhash > N)

(2) a complex consonantogram (N–Kh-Sh + T = “copper”)

(3) a logogram (snake > nakhash)

See further on this subject:
http://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/alphabetevolution
Also available there is a typology of scripts and my table of signs charting the development of the alphabet out of the Canaanian syllabary that preceded it, and with the assistance of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is something to print out and hang on the wall.

Is Paleogrammatology a science?

Establishing TAXONOMY with TYPOLOGY should make it a scientific procedure. Right?

Like paleontology and paleobotany we have FOSSILS to work on, in the form of clay tablets (and even papyrus rolls), and these stones still cry out.

PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY study of ancient writing systems

GRAMMATOLOGY study of scripts and their components

EPIGRAPHY study of inscriptions

PALEOGRAPHY study of ancient writings: involves dating, deciphering, interpreting

Linguistics, the scientific study of languages and their structure (cp physics, mathematics)

Grammatology, scientific study of writing systems, not “grammatics” or “graphics” (cp geology, biology)


TYPOLOGY OF ANCIENT SCRIPTS

SEMASIOGRAPHY communication through Sematograms or Ideograms

LOGOGRAPHY communication through Logographs/Logograms, Morphographic

PHONOGRAPHY communication through Phonograms (have sound-value but no meaning)

SYLLABARY a system of Syllabograms  (ba bi bu)

LOGOSYLLABARY a system of Logograms and Syllabograms (Mesopotamia, Canaan)

CONSONANTARY a system of Consonantograms (b g d) Abgad (Abjad)  (Phoenician alphabet)

LOGOCONSONANTARY a system of Logograms and Consonantograms (Egypt, proto-alphabet)

VOCOCONSONANTARY (ALPHABET) includes vocalic letters (vowel-signs)  (Greek alphabet)

ALPHASYLLABARY a special system of syllabograms (each basic sign has the vowel /a/ built into it, but appendages indicate the other vowels [(Abugida) Abagada Abagidu]  (Ethiopic, Indic)


Logography is practically impossible; English and Chinese texts are virtually logographic but both provide some phonetic assistance; generally, look at each word and say it (from memory: to too two), not sound it out, as is possible with Mâori or Suomi (Finnish).



TYPOLOGY OF CHARACTERS

GRAMMATA = Characters or Letters

LOGOGRAM or LOGOGRAPH represents a word

XENOGRAM a sign borrowed from another system (& =et = and)

PHONOGRAM represents a sound, single or syllabic, but has no meaning

REBOGRAM a phonogram used to represent other words or parts of words (rebus)

ACROPHONOGRAM says only the first consonant (a consonantogram) or syllable (syllabogram) of the word that goes with a particular image (depiction or symbol)

SYLLABOGRAM represents a syllable, bu, gi, du

CONSONANTOGRAM represents a consonant

VOCALOGRAM represents a vowel

ORTHOGRAM a determinative sign, written but not spoken,

PICTOGRAM or PICTOGRAPH? A picture telling a story?

SEMATOGRAM (IDEOGRAM) signs not attached to speech (heart-sign for love)

PALEOGRAM  could mean an ancient letter or sign?!

POLYPHONOGRAM more than one possible reference (Mesopotamia)

A sign may belong to more than one category, and function in more than one way in different settings

(one sign as acrophonogram/syllabogram and also logogram).

The original letters of the proto-alphabet (Canaanite logo-consonantary) could act as:

(1) an acrophonic consonantogram (picture of snake > nakhash > N)

(2) a complex consonantogram (N–Kh-Sh + T = “copper”)

(3) a logogram (snake > nakhash)


ALPHABET here defined as a minimal set of signs for writing a language (whether vowels are represented or not) BEC 1996 (Contributions) 69

It is an informal word, and technical terms need to be used or created for the various types. Peter Daniels has offered ABJAD and ABUGIDA, but I think these are not formal terms

Incidentally, just because a writing system is complex does not mean there will be low literacy in the land. The Babylonian logosyllabary had hundreds of signs but a writer could get by with less than a hundred.

The Japanese writing system, (syllabic and logographic) is extremely complicated, and yet Japan has a higher literacy rate than France. Then there is the English logographic orthography

(Seed cede, supersede or supercede?)

What was the original form of each letter?

Which of the original signs (logograms, consonantograms) have disappeared over time?
What happened to the fish (Samek), the wick (a double helix, a hank of thread, H), and the grape-vine (Gh)?

PHAISTOS DISK

This is a printed document, from around 1700 before the current era, 
long before printing was invented!

 Detailed photographs are available here.

The Phaistos disc was discovered in 1908 in a Bronze-Age building, 
at Phaistos (Festos) in SW Crete. It is indeed a 'provenanced' find, 
but it could have been 'planted' (deliberately inserted into the soil 
to be uncovered/discovered in situ the next day)?

Could the Phaistos disc be a forgery? 

   That would be a very elaborate hoax to perpetrate: making 45 little stamps
to imprint on clay, on both sides of the object, and printing 30 clusters of
signs (words or phrases ?) on one side and 31 on the other.
   I know personally two different scholars (out of a host of hopefuls) who have
published confident attempts at decipherment (both read it as Hellenic, but
produce entirely different transcriptions and translations).
    My observations on it, after looking at all the other scripts of Crete (and
Cyprus) is that it does not belong to the same family as Linear B (used for
Mycenean Greek texts).
    There is a line of development in Crete from a set of pictographs to
stylized Linear A characters (language arguably West Semitic) and even more stylized
Linear B; and on Cyprus a derived syllabic script from the same source
(through Linear A), used for a Hellenic dialect and other languages.

My judgement is that the Cretan pictographs and the Phaistos pictographs 

(in spite of similarities and apparent correspondences) do not belong to the
same system. And they are not Egyptian, Sumerian, Luwian, or Cana'anite
(neither the proto-alphabet, nor the logo-syllabary best-known from the
Byblos texts).

If the characters on the Phaistos Disc do not have any known counterparts,
what would be the purpose of such fakery? Our analogy cannot be with the
forgeries from Israel, which use scripts and languages that are known, and
can fetch a good price because of their pseudo-historical connections.

We must accept the Phaistos document on trust, hoping that a companion will
be found for it to aid in its elucidation. (Well now: there's a motive and a
project for a forger!)

Jerome M. Eisenberg, The Phaistos Disk: A 100-Year-Old Hoax? Minerva 19, 4 (2008)

However, a claim has been made that the object was forged by its discoverer, and 

Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in fake ancient art, has pointed the finger at 

Luigi Pernier, the Italian archaeologist who found it in the Phaistos palace. 

A motive would possibly have been to compete with the remarkable discoveries 

being made at Knossos by Arthur Evans (whose drawing of the two sides of the disc 

is reproduced above).

Eisenberg sees the forger's error in creating a terracotta 'pancake' with a clean-cut 

edge and firing it. Cretan clay tablets (as evidenced at Knossos and Phaistos) were 

rough and ready, and not deliberately fired, though it could happen accidentally 

(when the buildings containing them were destroyed by fire). 

Perhaps so, but if the Phaistos Disc really is ancient, and if its maker considered it 

to be a significant or sacred object then it may well have been purposefully baked.

Eisenberg has given us nothing but speculation, so far, and his idea could be verified 

or falsified by thermoluminescence dating, but because of the risk involved (the

object could be damaged) his request has been refused by the Heraklion Museum. 

Actually this method of dating determines the latest time the object was fired,

and if it had been put in an oven to dry it out in 1908 or later , the original date 

would have been obliterated.

Eisenberg has given a quite a few suggestions for sources the forger could have 

used to copy various signs from, notably Linear A. My answer to that is to see two 

different but related writing systems on the island of Crete:

 the Knossos script (northern), a picto-phonetic syllabary > Linear A and B;
 the Phaistos script (southern), a picto-phonetic syllabary.

Looking at the 30 accountancy tablets from Phaistos (as distinct from adjacent
Hagia Triada, where the Linear A script was used, a stylized form of the northern 

picto-phonetic script), most seem to be Linear A, but some (PH 8, 9, 13, 15, 17, 26) 

have signs known from the Phaistos Disc, and notably PH 12:

PhD sign 14 (fetter, Greek pedé, Linear B PE), 
PhD 1 (striding man), 
PhD 22 (cuttlefish, Greek sépia, Linear B SA), 
PhD 27 ( hide, talent?).

PH 13 has a fish (Phaistos Disc sign 35), which is not found in the northern 

picto-syllabary or its descendant, Linear A. 

Thus the Phaistos script has its own set of signs, but some of them are shared 

with the Knossos  syllabary.

 The 45 characters on the Phaistos Disc (after Arthur Evans)

If this is a discovery I have made, it will still not help us read the Phaistos Disc! 
Or perhaps it will. If enough signs are common to both systems, and we substitute 

the known values from Linear B, then we are on our way with a flying start.

I could argue for at least 20 correspondences out of 45 (the number of separate 

signs on the Disc), and I will do that in another article. This was the approach of 

StevenFischer in his attempt at decipherment.

But the fact remains that the Phaistos script is represented on other documents from 

Phaistos, and  so the forgery hypothesis is unnecessary. 

We have other evidence to draw on. The comb sign (PD21 on the table above) was 

found on a lump of clay in the Phaistos palace (document HM 992). 

And the Arkalokhori Ax has 15 characters, some of them duplicates, with apparent 

connections to the Phaistos Disk set of signs, and/or to the Knossos inventory.

With regard to the general question of the scripts, languages, and ethnic groups 

of Crete in the Bronze Age, I would tentatively respond to  genetic evidence 
offered by Tristan Carter et al:

    Differential Y-chromosome Anatolian influences on the Greek and Cretan Neolithic’     Annals of Human Genetics 72(2) (2008): 1-10 (205-214).

They posit newcomers from Syria-Palestine and East Aegean/NW Anatolia.

This suggests Semitic-speaking people (let's call them Semites!), and Trojans or Etruscans (!), or even Hellenes. I am struck by the possibility that Greek words
fit with the syllabograms (two examples are given above: pedé, sépia).

 I surmise that the Semites went south to Phaistos (and Hagia Triada), where the accountancy documents use the term KU-RO for 'total', possibly Semitic kull (Cyrus Gordon). There are Semitic words and names on the Linear A tablets from the south (example: TINITA could be the West Semitic goddess).

Knossos, on the northern part of the island, would have been the home of the other  group, from the far north-east of the Aegean. They devised the picto-syllabic script that became Linear A, and then Linear B (used by Mycenean Greeks).

How the very ancient Phaistos Disc, with its picto-phonetic text, fits into this picture is a puzzle, but it might be Semitic rather than Anatolian or Hellenic.

It has a script that was inspired by the West Semitic logo-syllabary (23rd C BCE),
I presume, but it is not the same as the similar picto-phonetic syllabary found in the north of Crete (the ancestral script of Linear A and B, and of the Cyprus syllabary).

My hypothesis looks untidy, but I am arguing for two scripts in Bronze-Age Crete, invented by the two groups of settlers. The model they both used was not the Egyptian hieroglyphic consonantal script (no vowels represented, as in the original alphabet) but the acrophonic syllabary of Byblos (vowels built into the characters, based on the initial syllable of the word that goes with the picture).

For the moment, in the light of the new genetic evidence I am thinking once again that a Semitic approach should be taken to some, most, or all of the religious texts written in Linear A script on cultic objects. Cyrus Gordon and Jan Best have published studies on this possibility.

An East Semitic as well as a West Semitic test should be applied (Cyrus Gordon wavered between both), since Akkadian (Babylonian) was the international language in those times.

For an examination of the Phaistos script see Phaistos Syllabary.

TIMNA INSCRIPTIONS

 Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah

Antiguo Oriente 8 , 2010 (expanded version of this essay)

The copper mines at Timna (in the Wadi Arabah/Arava, in Israel) have yielded a number of West Semitic inscriptions, and here are some interesting and instructive examples. They assist us in solving the problem of the identification of Sh, Ss, and Q in the proto-alphabet.

TIMNA ROCK INSCRIPTION

In August 2009 Joseph Otto of Stonewatch reported an inscription, and published a photograph of it; he would not reveal its precise location, but added that the Egyptologist Stefan Jakob Wimmer was working on it. It looks very Egyptian, with two 'cartouches', one showing an eye (of Horus?), and the other displaying a double serpent, protecting the sun, which could say Shimsh ('sun') in Canaanite, or simply be the letter Sh.

In the right-hand set of symbols, the circle under the eye (and its two lines) might represent the sun-disc. Or it may be a human head, R.

The two wavy lines symbolize water, and could the Canaanite MM (Hebrew mayim).

Is that a seated human person, or a human head (R) with a dot above it? As a logogram R'Sh ('head') it could say 'top-class' or 'prime quality' (as I have argued in two instances on the Wadi el-Hol inscription); hence it says "excellent water".  On the other hand, if it reads M MR, it becomes "bitter water". The eye at the top could thus be a logogram, or a rebogram, standing for `ayin 'spring'; three examples of such usage can be invoked from the Sinai mining region.

The other set of symbols is puzzling: 3 horizontal parallel lines, 3 oblique lines, and a character resembling the Egyptian nfr symbol (the lower part depicts the heart), standing for goodness and beauty, and borrowed in the proto-alphabet for T.et, and in the syllabary for T.A, or as a logogram t.ab 'good'. The trio of strokes might represent the spinal column (the Egyptian djed, 'stability'), used for the letter Samek ('support'), though the fish-symbol is more often found for Samek, until the Phoenician alphabet settled for the column S (and then into the Greek alphabet for Xsi).

The cartouches suggest that an important person  would be named in the text. But is this actually a 'sign' saying: "spring",  "excellent water", "good support"?

As always, we cannot be sure about the writer's intended meaning. But on Vladimir's photograph there are more marks: possibly N (snake) and G (throwstick), and others below them, not completely in the frame. If we can read GN (gan 'garden') then we would have a counterpart for the Garden of the Sun at the Sinai turquoise mines (Sinai 353), and this could explain the sun-symbol here.

If this hypothesis is correct, the site should have an ample patch of ground for a vegetable garden, and be near the camp of the miners. The Sinai horticultural inscriptions were on the exterior wall of a mine, indicating that the garden plot was right there. If this supposition fails, a new context for this inscription must be sought. The possibility remains that it is marking a well, but again the feasibility of this idea needs to be tested by an examination of the site.

Stefan Wimmer has now provided a full description of the place and the text, in JOURNAL OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN INTERCONNECTIONS (online,  http://jaei.library.arizona.edu| Vol. 2:2, 2010| 1–12 pdf).

 Stefan Wimmer's photographs show that there is ample space for an irrigated vegetable garden; and the inscription (its position is indicated by the white arrow on the left, and the seated man on the right, who is in a pose similar to that of the human figure in the inscription) is actually horizontal (not vertical, as other pictures of it may have suggested) and situated on a tabletop rock (about 2 metres high). Whether there was ever a spring on this spot is not a question I can answer.

Here is a copy of his drawing.

Stefan's interpretation is interesting and authoritative: the two ovals are not Egyptian cartouches enclosing royal names (they lack the mandatory horizontal line at the bottom); the writing is not Egyptian but belongs to the same family as the pictorial characters from the Sinai turquoise mines, the so-called 'Proto-Sinaitic' script, but  I would refer to it as  the West Semitic proto-alphabet or the Proto-Canaanite pictophonographic consonantary, represented by numerous inscriptions in Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Sinai (including Timna and Har Karkom), from the Bronze Age.

The ovals could depict tablets (like the two tablets of Moses), and SJW proposes to find a word for 'tablet'  in the one on the left; or else footprints, with the name of the person engraved on them (and this might make it a 'Kilroy was here' graffito).

The oval on the right has the following signs: `(ayin), Z (properly Dh), R (head), M M, and the human figure is a classifier borrowed from the Egyptian repertory, indicating a male person.  So we would have a  man's name: ` Z R M M.

The other oval has the sun symbol at the top (Sh, from shimsh 'sun', hieroglyph N6B, two uraeus serpents encompassing the sun, though here the sun-disc is omitted), and Stefan has accepted my argument (first published in 1988 and reiterated and reinforced ever since, but almost totally ignored by scholars in this field) for seeing hieroglyphs representing the sun (r`) as the source of proto-alphabetic Sh-signs. He compares the character appearing twice on the Wadi el-Hol inscription (see my notes on Sh-signs there) with two circles joined by a curved line (which he has always thought to be Sh, but without making this connection), and he sees that as a variant of what we have here: the  two snakes without the sun disc. However, whereas here the serpents have heads of the same size, there the scribe has in each case made the circle on the right considerably smaller than the one on the left, suggesting that one represents the sun-disc and the other is the head of the snake. Thus, as I see it,  there we have an example related to hieroglyph N6, with only one serpent, but here we have N6B with two.  This is a crucial point for dating: the hieroglyph with two snakes (N6B) is perennial (known in the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom), but the single-serpent icon does not appear before the New Kingdom, and this means that the Wadi el-Hol inscription can not be assigned to the Middle Kingdom, where everyone wants it to be,  so that it can maintain its supposed position as the oldest alphabetic inscription. 

Now, the typical Sh-sign in the Sinai collection does not include the sun-disc, and because it curls round at each end, the two-serpent hypothesis seems to fit the case admirably, rather than seeing a head at one head and a curly tail at the other; N6 has a straight tail, and this does not appear on the Wadi el-Hol examples.

However, the disc is not always omitted, as shown on the inscribed Timna stone that I am examining here (see below): head, sun, and straight tail.

Or on this potsherd from the Valley of Queens in southern Egypt.

My reading for the two lines (right to left):
' M H T (maidservants), ' Sh T (women)
The lower line should be viewed vertically to see the ox-head (`aleph), the sun with a single serpent (Sh), and the cross (T).
(See Benjamin Sass, Genesis of the Alphabet, 1988, figure 286, and p.104, but he disallows this as proto-alphabetic, contra Leibovitch, Albright, van den Branden, and myself).

Then an example from Thebes (5th character from the left), which (although it is in a syllabic inscription, as ShI) seems to show how the form without the disc came into being.

(William Flinders Petrie, in the frontispiece of his book The Formation of the Alphabet, 1912 )

Of course, even though this Timna inscription could not be a hoax (see Stefan's arguments, p. 7-8), we might actually be looking at two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and all this agonizing over the origin of Sh (which, incidentally, did not find its way into the Phoenician and Grecian alphabets) crumbles to dust. On the other hand, if it is correct, then all the speculative theorizing about Sh as a thorn and Sh/Th as a composite bow (following W. F. Albright, most recently in Gordon Hamilton's The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet, 2006, 123-125, 231-244) collapses in ruins.

However, the three horizontal lines below the sun-symbol are not a mouth but a hand, in the simplified three-finger form often used for K; Stefan has observed (on the site) a line joining the three digits on the right, and this is included in his drawing.

Significantly, the failure to recognize the solar connections of the sign for Sh/S (cp Hebrew Shin/Sin) caused the exponents of the composite-bow hypothesis to read Th every time it occurred, producing Dh T B Th N 'the serpent woman' in Sinai inscription 351, instead of Dh K B Sh N M Sh 'this melt-furnace' (Hebrew kibshan 'furnace', with Shin; and mss 'melt', with Sin); the K has three fingers, pointing down. The same term reappears in other inscriptions, in a material context of metal-working equipment, and this is one of the keys to the decipherment of these documents.

Moving on, the sign on the bottom left  is understood as L, a crook (like Hieroglyph S38 rather than S39 which is simpler, not curved backward), though it is inverted here; it is not so likely to be in imitation of V1, the coil of rope favoured by Hamilton (126-137).

Finally, the three oblique strokes are provided with a stem, and instead of making a connection with the Egyptian djed column (R11) and the letter Samek (as I suggested above), or interpreting it as another K, he invokes the hieratic version of V28 (ooo<) with strokes not circles for this double-helix sign. This is an original idea and worthy of consideration. However, there is a serious mistake here: although this hieroglyph stands for Egyptian Hh (dotted h), it does not have this value in the proto-alphabet, but Kh (see Hamilton, 57-60). He seems to imply that this is the sign used for Hh in Sinai, but not in Canaan. However, this character (a hank of thread or a wick) represents Kh in proto-alphabetic inscriptions in Egypt, Sinai, and Canaan, and also in the cuneiform alphabet, where Kh is a cluster of three vertical wedges, obviously based on this pictophonogram (see the Kh and Hh lines on my table, at the end of this article).

The resulting sequence is stated as Sh K L Hh (properly Kh).
The proposed interpretation is S´K L (L) Hh 'tablet-expert' (cp Hebrew s´kl 'have insight'; luah. 'tablet')
The difficulty is that the Ugaritic evidence clearly  has LHh not LKh for 'tablet'. Nevertheless, there may be a way out of this dead-end:  in the shorter 'linear' version of the pictorial alphabet the sign for Kh disappeared, and Kh coalesced with Hh, but in the shorter cuneiform alphabet Kh replaced Hh.
This inscription is presumably from the  Ramesside period, when the Bronze Age is ending and the Iron Age is commencing, and things are in a fluid state in the evolution of the alphabet and the phonology of the Canaanite dialects.

This principle could be used to cover the Kh for Hh here in oval L, and the Dh for Z in oval R. The inscribed stone studied below has ShQL 'weight, shekel', but this should be ThQL in a Bronze-Age setting; but Th (breast) is the one that survives in the alphabet. This is a limited corpus to work with, but the Hh sign is lacking in it, and again this will be the one that remains, while the Kh (thread, wick) will disappear.

Now, it is a truism that only the writer of an ancient inscription knew what it meant, and I and Stefan have proposed two vastly differing interpretations. His was a typical autograph graffito: " `Az-romam the scribe". Mine was a notice concerning a spring in the immediate vicinity, and the state of its water.

SJW has achieved his reading by doubling the L, and for this he refers us to the sequence M'HB`L[T] on the Sinai sphinx statuette (S345), standing for M'HB B`LT 'beloved of Ba`alat'. But nobody ever mentions that the B (a square representing a house, bayt) has a dot in it, presumably indicating the double B (as in classical Hebrew writing).

 The L here possibly has such a dot beside it, but so does the K. Now, a Hebrew root ShKK appears in the Flood story in Genesis (8:1): 'the waters abated'. When we add to this the fact noted by SJW (5b) that three parallel straight lines (instead of wavy lines, as in oval R) is the hieratic form of mw 'water', we have the waters abating here also!

The first thoughts I had on this inscription might merit recording here. 

Allowing that the right side is telling us about a water-well (`ayin 'spring', M 'water'), the left side might contain a reference to an important piece of apparatus, namely a bucket for drawing water out of the well.  The Semitic root is DL (Akkadian dalu 'draw water', 'bucket'). The L is on the bottom left, and the two oblique lines beside it may have joining strokes, making a door, hence D (Dalet). The top line of this trio could be a simple snake, N, preceded by K and Sh. The combination ShKN produces the root that means 'put, place' or 'dwell' or 'be present'. The word MShKN (used for the 'tabernacle' of the Bible, the tent where the Shekinah 'presence' of God dwells) is found at the camp site of the Egyptian turquoise expeditions in Sinai (S365). Here it signals the place where the bucket is to be placed after use.

If there is no possibility of a well having been situated here in the remote past, then this line of interpretation must be rejected. Would that the author of this puzzle had left the solution under the rock.

INSCRIBED STONE

Beno Rothenberg, The Egyptian Mining Temple at Timna (London 1988)

Plate 116 : 4 and 5

Sandstone pebble (6.5 x 7.5 cm) with engraved signs on both sides; unstratified (p. 268b)

This is possibly a weight, and indeed the word shekel (ShQL) appears on it, apparently.  The Q (-o-) is in the middle of the object, on the first side. It is surely not necessary for me to go into a long defence of this identification, even though the handbooks on early West Semitic writing have overlooked it, and assigned the value q to the tied-bag sign, which is actually S.adey. Because S.adey and Qoph are relatively rare letters and difficult to identify,  this school of thought  takes the Hebrew name Qoph, meaning 'monkey', and turns the bag into an ape. However, Q survived (in the form seen here) in the old Arabian script; and moved into the Phoenician consonantal alphabet without the top projecting stroke (see the Q line on the table at the end). It represents a line (qaw), a cord wound on a stick, and it has an alternative form, imitating its borrowed  Egyptian hieroglyph (V24, V25): an end of the cord pokes out at the top (see the table), and this is found on the sphinx (Sinai 345) from the Sinai temple of Hat-Hor (an earlier counterpart to the shrine at Timna); it has been unrecognized by previous observers (but note the dot in the middle of the main stem, and the other projrcting line on the left). This later form does not appear till the New Kingdom in Egypt (Late Bronze Age), and this should mean that the inscription on the sphinx can not be dated to the Middle Kingdom (Middle Bronze Age), as many have assumed. The example we see here seems to have only one projecting line at the top, though it is easy to imagine another one among all the marks. The development of the letter Q involves elimination of all lines above the circle, as in Roman Q. There is another example on the inscribed plaque, below (in an unusual horizontal stance).

The Sh sign is the sun with a serpent; the tail is on the right, and the head on the left (see the Sh/Th secton of the table, below). The presumed  L stands next to the Q; it is a simple crook (see the L line on the table).

There is a fish below the Sh, which would represent S (not D for dag 'fish', as commonly supposed; D is from dalt 'door', and there may be one on the other side of the stone). To the right is a right-angle, presumably a boomerang, and thus G (gaml, not P).

On the other face, three signs are detectable. From the left: a door, D; an ox-head, 'alep; a hook, W, or a head, R (but the neck is too long), or another L with the top more curled than the other.

If the sequence is S G D ' L, then it can be analysed as SGD 'worship' and 'L 'El' (God), though a preposition l ('to') would be expected. As a guess, are these extra words somehow giving divine sanction to the trustworthiness of the weight?

INSCRIBED PLAQUE

Stone plaque from the Arabah
Photograph and drawing as reproduced by Sass (fig 276, 277)
See Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet, p. 103 for information

Assuming that this is another West Semitic inscription, and giving credence to the drawing: the bottom sign is T (+), beneath N (nahhash 'snake'), then Q (qaw, cord wound on a stick, as on the stone, above); the most likely identity for the next one is Ss (s.irar, a tied bag, see the Egyptian original on the table, below); the wavy line is a short M (water), or possibly Th (breast); at the top we have a sign shaped like H, which is a late example of Z (not Dh). There are other possible letters above and beside this Z.

There are more marks to the left of this column of writing. Level with the Q is possibly an eye (signaling another spring, as possibly in the rock inscription above?).

The sequence of signs on the drawing would be:  Z M Ss Q N T

In the light of the mining and smelting of copper that was done in this area, a connection could reasonably sought with the root ys.q (Y Ss Q, Ugaritic and Hebrew) 'pour' or 'cast' metal. If the MSsQ means "(place of) pouring" or "casting" (cp Hbr mus.aq), then NT could be analysed as a rebogram plus a consonantogram: NHhSh (the consonants of the word for 'snake') + T, producing NHhShT, "copper" or "bronze". If Z is 'this' (though Dh would be expected in the Bronze Age, but these mines belong in the Ramesside period, when some consonants are coalescing) we could interpret the statement thus:

  Z MSsQ N(HhSh)T

 "This is the copper-smelting (place)"

Incidentally, I trace the Z-sign to ziqqu 'manacle', and as a rebogram it can represent the root zqq 'refine'; this term appears in connection with refining gold on an inscription from Thebes (ostracon 4).

The snake rebus for copper (possibly also on Sinai 352) would show that the characters of the proto-alphabet could be used like Egyptian hieroglyphs, that is, as logograms and rebograms (rebuses).

CONCLUSION

These three inscriptions seem to be giving support to ideas I have been promoting for many years, notably that the proto-alphabet was in a way a simplification of the Egyptian writing system.

They also bolster my identifications of the controversial signs: there are two instances of the true Q (qaw, 'line', string on stick), and (on the plaque) one of them is right next to the false Q (tied bag) which is actually Ss, and occurs in the Sinai texts in such words as s.btm 'handfuls' (375), s.rp 'crucible' (372), s.rh. 'excavation chamber' (356), and ns.b 'foreman' (346, 349, 351). The choice made by Albright and his followers to read nqb 'piercer', supposedly meaning 'miner', instead of ns.b 'prefect', sent them off on a wrong track, on which they were compelled to overlook the occurrences of the real Q, in ql` 'inscribe' (376), qnt 'elegy' (363), nqy 'my offering' (345, the sphinx). 

The confusion of the door as D (dalt) with the fish as S (dag 'fish' is invoked to justify it as D) can be refuted when both are found in the same text; there is a faint possibility of such an occurrence on the small stone, but a clear case is on the wall above Bir Nas.b, the well where water was obtained for the turquoise and copper expeditions, in the words DWT 'sickness' and 'S' (Asa) (Sinai 376).

One way of confirming that D is a door is by examining the rectangular shape it has in the cuneiform  alphabet (see the full cuneiform table, and also the Canaan column of the table): D has 3 vertical wedges (the sections of the door) on 3 horizontal wedges (the door post); B, the square house, has four wedges, similarly arranged. Compare also the form for S, which has 3 wedges, representing the fish, very simply, with head and tail. Note that the alternative form of Samek (spinal column), which possibly appears in the rock inscription, also has a place in the cuneiform alphabet.

Comparing the cuneiform  S. and Q, the Q has a horizontal wedge (note the -o- form on the plaque, above) with a type of wedge that usually represents a circle in the original pictogram (it is employed for the eye of `ayin); S. has two vertical wedges, representing the bag standing upright, presumably.  Additional confirmation comes from the Arabian forms: Q has retained the cord-and-stick, and S. is the bag.

Sh (sun) and Th (breast) both have the wedge representing roundness; but Sh has 3 parts, for sun and serpent head and tail, or two snake heads; the form with two sun-serpents (N6B), seen on the rock inscription above (but with the sun-disc omitted), seems a better model for the typical form of Sh in the Sinai inscriptions, I would now say. Nevertheless, on the stone above we see a form of N6A, with one head and a tail. The 2 examples on the vertical inscription of Wadi el-Hol (shown on the chart) both have a small head and a large sun, and no tail. This version resembles the Arabian Th (o-o), and it appears that Sh and Th have exchanged places in the Arabian script.

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A darker version may be viewed here