How did Egyptian hieroglyphs become the Phoenician alphabet?

Egyptian hieroglyphs served as the ultimate ancestor for the Phoenician alphabet through an intermediary known as the Proto-Sinaitic script. West Semitic laborers in the Sinai Peninsula adapted a small selection of hieroglyph symbols to represent the individual sounds of their native Canaanite language rather than their original semantic values. This simplified consonantal system eventually evolved into the Phoenician abjad used widely across the Mediterranean.

What we know

• The Phoenician script developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs. [2, 3]
• The oldest known traces of alphabetic writing date back to the 2nd millennium BCE among West Semitic laborers in the Sinai Peninsula who were exposed to Egyptian hieroglyphs. [4]
• The creators of the early alphabetic script selected a small number of hieroglyphs commonly seen in their surroundings to describe the sounds of their own Canaanite language instead of keeping their semantic values. [4]
• The Phoenician alphabet proper is an abjad featuring 22 consonant letters that leaves vowel sounds implicit. [2]

Where to go next

• how it workedWhat was the Proto-Sinaitic script?
• what followedHow did the Phoenician alphabet influence the Greek alphabet?
• whoHow did Jean-François Champollion decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs?
• compared withWhat are the differences between an abjad and a true alphabet?
• the bigger pictureWhat is the history of the alphabet?
• an unexpected connectionHow are modern Russian and Arabic scripts related?Both writing systems ultimately descend from Egyptian hieroglyphs, with Cyrillic branching through the Greek adaptation of Phoenician and Arabic branching through the Aramaic branch of Phoenician.

Sources

• [1]Phoenician script (Wikidata Q26752) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Phoenician alphabet · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Egyptian hieroglyphs · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]History of the alphabet · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Alphabet · CC BY-SA 4.0

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