https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-the-first-alphabet-119394 (accessed April 11, 2021). For example, “mu” means “tree,” but it also means “to wash oneself.” And so, the stylized picture of a tree can represent the word “tree,” and it can also be used as a so-called phonogram to represent the sound “mu,” “to wash.” But, that of course, could be confusing. Do you think I am drawing a picture or a character? NARRATOR: The turquoise mine workings are still dotted with inscriptions carved nearly 4,000 years ago, which mark the moment hieroglyphs became letters. How did technologies from pen to paper to printing press make it all possible? By comparison, the history of … All Episodes (914) Next. The creation of printing, the first information technology, drove empires and revolutions. NARRATOR: Aboriginal culture has been handed down orally, through poetry and song, for tens of thousands of years, without the need to write anything down. The Sinai Desert: Thirteen-hundred feet above the sand dunes rises the plateau of Serabit El-Khadim. Now the word for barley in Sumerian is, is pronounced like “sheh.” So your Sumerian sees this and says “ah, “sheh,” “barley.” But at the same time, this scribe or a fellow scribe, in writing a totally different kind of document, could use this sign not to mean barley, but just to write the sound of “sheh.” And this giant leap is something rather simple, and it’s something which could have occurred to a child, but nevertheless it is of great lasting significance. NARRATOR: So, Gardiner guessed that this was what the last four symbols spelled out. And everybody makes puns, and puns are a natural human form of humor. So, who invented it? IRVING FINKEL: The giant leap came when somebody conceived of this matter: that you could draw a picture which represented something that someone could recognize, but at the same time that sign could be used just for the sound of the thing it looked like. Oh, there’s so much writing! ZAI YUHONG (English name “Sophia,” Chinese for “Teacher,”): (Translated from Chinese) I am going to draw a picture. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS viewers. That is, an alphabet requires symbols for vowels. We are at the very beginning of democratization of writing, which began right here, at Serabit El-Khadim, in about 1850 B.C. And then in the Koran fragment that we looked at, we can see that the loop has almost completely disappeared, and we simply have this little tail, and in the modern Arabic script, a straight line. That’s the moon that you can see there. And that, I think, was first developed in Egypt. This page lists the letters of the English alphabet from a to z. ORLY GOLDWASSER: The complete name of the Canaanite goddess that he presumes should play the role of Hathor here: Ba’alat. And this country now, from the soft high mound became a rock, and all these people become a tree and changed all the different animals, kangaroos, dingoes, whatever you can make it, lizards, snakes and all. Again, the Egyptian hieroglyph is hiding in the R. NARRATOR: But it’s not just Latin and Greek letters that derive from Serabit. It was made 5,700 years ago, and it seems to use imagery in a new way. PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) The brother of the Prince of Retenu, a certain Khebded, who joins the expedition to help the Egyptians. By 2700 BCE Egyptian writing had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. What is the first letter of the arabic alphabet - Nehmen Sie dem Gewinner der Experten. He was in the mud, now he’s in the rock. How Writing Changed the World: Follow the evolution of the written word, from millennia old carvings in an Egyptian turquoise mine to our modern-day alphabets. The first alphabet emerged among Semitic speaking mercenaries in Egyptian service for managing their warfare and economic activities. But it’s been centuries and centuries since we’ve seen any kind of image in this, and I don’t think anybody would know that behind that letter is actually a profile of a head. NARRATOR: Today, we take it for granted, but writing is arguably the most powerful idea we humans have ever come up with. Egyptians are never pictured riding donkeys. Below it is a rectangle, similar to the ones on the Abydos vase. The first letter, this rectangle, was clearly based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for house, “per.” Egyptian scribes used this symbol in three ways: to write the word house, to represent the sound “per” and, finally, as a classifier, attached to any word to do with buildings in general. But, in many other cases he is not a duck at all. Let's explore the oldest runic writing system as well as the oldest runic alphabet, known so far. DR. IRVING FINKEL (Assyriologist): When you scrutinize what happened, it is actually very dramatic, the giant leap for mankind. DR. PIERRE TALLET (Egyptologist): You have, in front of you, one of the first A of history, followed by one of the first Bs of history, also. And then the Romans just change the direction, and you reach your A in English and in Latin. NARRATOR: At root, like hieroglyphs, Chinese characters are stylized pictures. BILL HARNEY: When he sang out “koooooo” like this, the dog is the one whose sound made everything change, he changed the whole world. Exploring a variety of writing systems. The rebus is arguably the most consequential intellectual innovation of all time. The hieroglyphic inscription explains that 37 foreigners came to make offerings to the local ruler, perhaps hoping to be given work. Five-thousand years ago, Egypt lay at one end of a zone of cultivation called the “Fertile Crescent.” At the other end lay Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. Ancient Egyptian life was largely confined to this narrow strip of green; the desert highlands on either side were where the dead were buried. (Premiered September 23, 2020), NARRATOR: It’s our most important tool, one we all take for granted: writing. Cut French bread, which gives the meaning “tuh,” so, “soh-t.”. Their heads were put between their legs, and even their penises were cut off and, in some instances, put on their heads. NARRATOR: The name of the goddess was the key to understanding the mysterious Serabit script. Gill, N.S. Additional funding is provided by the NOVA Science Trust. They can be used to distinguish “mu,” “tree,” from “mu,” “to wash” and so clarify the ambiguity inherent in rebus writing. NARRATOR: But is there, in fact, a common origin of all writing, a single time and place where the secret of turning pictures into words was first discovered? 0 /5000. (2020, August 26). A to Z: The First Alphabet. Egyptians have always lived on the land immediately adjacent to the Nile, where irrigation ditches can bring river water to the fields. Sometimes the connection is far from obvious, but it’s still there. And we know all the songs now. NARRATOR: By conquering the Nile Delta, Narmer took control of the river, all the way to the sea, becoming the first pharaoh of a unified Egyptian state. The consort in Canaanite is always with a “t” ending of the female and she is Ba’alat. These wall paintings decorate a tomb above the Nile in Upper Egypt. Human there. In doing so, the Egyptians created what was possibly the world’s first true writing system, a complex and beautiful script: hieroglyphs. Instead, he says the first alphabet is the Greek revision of Semitic syllabic writing. Where would we be without the world’s alphabets? PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) This place is somewhat magical, not only probably one of the most beautiful sites in Egypt, it is also a place that is of fundamental importance to us all. The Sinai Peninsula, Egypt: Archaeologist Pierre Tallet returns with old friends back to the plateau of Serabit El-Khadim. The king appears with his entourage. This technology allows us to teleport our thoughts into another person’s brain, across space and time. NARRATOR: It seemed that the inscriptions in the mines were related to the hieroglyphs in the temple, but how? ThoughtCo. If the vowels are dropped from English sentences, while the consonants remain in... Greek Modification of … GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) The palette conveys a historical event, the victory of King Narmer over Lower Egypt, the Delta people. Researchers uncover the evolution of writing and the story of the alphabet, dating back to millennia, old carvings in an Egyptian turquoise mine. They were not scribes or scholars, but when they adapted the rebus principle, which was the basis of all ancient scripts, to make the first letters, they created a form of communication which would eventually sweep the globe. They just turn it around, because they don’t care about the image. As it happens, “ga” means milk. February 10, 2021 . Every mission left one inside the temple precincts. "What Was the First Alphabet?" Season 47 Episode 13 | 54m 1s | Video has closed captioning. And it gets stylized in Phoenician, simplified to simply this. DR. ORLY GOLDWASSER (Egyptologist): This is the greatest experiment ever conducted to write language in pictures only, only pictures. YONGSHENG CHEN: Egyptian and Chinese writing are very comparable. So, writing binds humanity together, practically more than any other activity. Those enemies were completely destroyed. CHINESE PUPILS: (Translated from Chinese) A fish! It shows a big rectangle in the middle, which is separated into small rectangles; on the left and right of it there are zig zag lines. Now the connection between that and our A in English is quite obvious. NARRATOR: How did our ancestors conceive of writing? ORLY GOLDWASSER: Hilda stepped on a stone, and she picked up this stone and told Petrie “there is something here.” And this stone in the mine was the first inscription in something very strange, nobody saw ever before. And that’s the headdress he used. WRITE A REVIEW NO, THANK YOU. So, for the “soh,” we have our dear duck. The earliest known alphabet in the wider sense is the Wadi el-Hol script, believed to be an abjad, which through its successor Phoenician is the ancestor of modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin (via the Old Italic alphabet), Cyrillic (via the Greek alphabet) and Hebrew (via Aramaic). The First Alphabet Leave a reply Premiering this Wednesday is a documentary on the history of writing that experts have been working on for sixteen years; twelve years to puzzle out a story and four to film and edit. It’s a character. Egypt could be named as the nation with the first alphabet were the provision of vowels was considered unnecessary. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: What is their word for head? In most alphabets the characters are arranged in a definite order, or sequence, and each alphabetic character represents either a consonant or a vowel rather than a syllable or a group of consonants and vowels. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Gardiner looks on it, and it’s very easy for him to read the Egyptian part. The Chinese script is ancient. YIDUMDUMA BILL HARNEY (Wardaman Elder): All these song line trails that were made, happening all the way right back from the beginning of everything, to people, to people, to people, all the way right back, billion years ago, to million years, come down to hundred years, and now, now come back, right up to us. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yes, with an R at the beginning, and here they will reach the R. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: So, this is the Canaanite head. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: This is the earliest known complete text, ancient Egyptian text. NARRATOR: In the Wardaman creation story, all the plants and animals of the world were once people, the Wardaman’s ancestors, wandering across a formless muddy land, until the creation dog let out a mighty howl. It’s an enormous cognitive effort to read it or to write it, but it’s fantastic! Alphabets don’t seem to have anything to do with the rebus principle, so what is the connection between the way writing began, and the way most people write today? This is how to write fish in the ancient oracle bone script. In Egypt, too, writing has been found that uses only consonants. In the Northern Territory of Australia, Yidumduma Bill Harney, an elder of the Wardaman people, is singing an ancient song about the creation of the world. It’s just obvious. Orly Goldwasser has made them a lifetime’s study. What they did in this place would transform the most important technology human beings have ever invented, one we all use every single day. Professor Yongsheng Chen is a philologist who studies both writing systems. It is the ground plan of a house clearly drawn, which will through a process of graphic evolution become the letter B that we use today. It is a kind of pun that you get another meaning out of the sign. At present, based primarily on what archaeology has taught us, the consensus view is that the alphabet was first invented over 3,500 years ago in the Near East by the Canaanites, a Semitic people. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: The Romans turned everything the other way, systematically. Do You Know Everything About Consonant Sounds and Letters in English? Then the shadow of the old moon, he went into all the rock, as well, during the creation time. BRITISH MUSEUM EMPLOYEE: Into a basket, yeah. In Hebrew, the first two letters of the abecedary (as in A-B-C) are, likewise, aleph and bet, but unlike the Greek letters, the Semitic "alphabet" lacked vowels: Aleph wasn't an /a/. Those enemies were shackled. The Greek alphabet originally had only 5 vowels; the additional, long ones were added over time. NARRATOR: But A Brush with Silence presents its audience with a puzzle. The Latin alphabet was derived from Greek letterforms by way of the Etruscans, who were indigenous to the Italian peninsula. It looks like ugly, very ugly hieroglyphs, but it’s not Egyptian. YONGSHENG CHEN: Sometimes, we don’t know what the phonograms indicate, the meaning or the sound? In 2300 B.C., what today looks like a hill of sand was the pyramid tomb of Pharaoh Teti. If the vowels are dropped from English sentences, while the consonants remain in their correct position with respect to the other consonants, literate, native English speakers can usually still understand it. But researchers are only now uncovering the origin story to our own alphabet, which may have gotten its beginnings in a turquoise mine 4,000 years ago. Character. We are speaking about him right now. NOVA: Beyond the Elements: Life. The temple was dedicated to the goddess of turquoise, Hathor, and here the miners could make offerings in the hope of enlisting her aid. You can say a falcon and then you will have a duck, which means that the falcon belongs to the category of birds. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) It shows King Narmer defeating an enemy. And if so, who was responsible for it? This so-called “oracle bone script” can help the children understand the origin of the characters they are learning. One of the very oldest was discovered by Günter Dreyer in the 1990s, at a dig in the city of Abydos. And then you take only the first sound, the “ba,” and whenever you will need the “ba,” you draw this house. Everything is in the leading direction. NARRATOR: The next step was to extend the rebus principle, which on the Palette is used to spell names, to the full vocabulary of the Egyptian language. Follow the evolution of the written word, from 4,000-year-old carvings in an Egyptian turquoise mine to modern-day alphabets. NARRATOR: Almost all the letters of the Latin alphabet are ultimately derived from the hieroglyphs that the Canaanites of Serabit chose to represent the sounds of their tongue. As the alphabet plays such an important role in our world today, one might expect that this writing system has existed since the dawn of civilization. It’s a repetitive formula, hundreds of times in Serabit El-Khadim, says “the beloved of the goddess Hathor.” And then he looks on the strange signs below. IRVING FINKEL: This material goes from near the beginning of writing, so this is what we call a “pictographic” tablet from 3000 B.C. NARRATOR: This is the familiar rebus principle, but applied in a radically new way. The history of alphabetic writing goes back to the consonantal writing system used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. It represents one of the earliest examples of writing Arabic in a calligraphic style. It all links up. Traders and seafarers, they spread the alphabet across the Middle East and the Mediterranean, where it was taken up by Greeks and then Romans. So, the modern Arabic alphabet and the Latin alphabet that we use to write English are, are cousins. The first complete alphabet in world history is the Greek alphabet, as it emerged around the start of Ancient Greece, roughly 800 BCE. PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) What we see here with this bull’s head, which is crowned by two horns, is probably the first prototype of our letter A. So the word “turquoise” appears here. The means of doing so were handy clay tablets on which the Sumerians could easily make marks, some of which would be familiar to any bookkeeper today. It is the world's first complete alphabet in the sense that it has a letter to represent each unique vowel and consonant character. DR. AHMAD AL-JALLAD (Philologist): This document is a leaf from a seventh century Koran, dated to 675 C.E., the first Islamic century. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yes. While the Japanese and Chinese calligraphers draw Chinese characters that clearly connect to the origin of writing, at every other table the calligraphers are using scripts which look very different. Some cultures still do. Then, another Egyptologist examined an object that Petrie had brought back from Serabit to the British Museum. There’s a word “shega” in Sumerian, which means “beautiful” or “pretty” or “nice” or something like that. What Was the First Alphabet? there was the crucial conceptual leap. Firstly, the ancient people think to use pictures, but they found pictograms are not enough, because there are many abstract concepts and abstract words in language. NARRATOR: The Egyptian word for catfish is “nar.” A chisel is “mer.” When combined they sound out “Nar-mer,” the name of the first of the pharaohs. Season 47 | Episode 11. But, when I look at it, I see, in these archaic letter shapes, the echoes of the alphabet at Serabit. It was quickly adopted by their neighbors and relatives to the east and north, the Canaanites, the Hebrews, and the Phoenicians. Original funding for this program was provided by Draper, the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the George D. Smith Fund, the NOVA Science Trust and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. So, the first question about writing is, why did our ancestors feel the need for it? With his guide Salem, Pierre sets off to climb 1,300 feet from the desert floor. First, if my analysis is correct, then this epoch-making invention was borne of religious and emotional impulses, rather than administrative needs such as tax collection. Our species has existed for about 300,000 years, and for all but the last 5,000 of them, people had to record and transmit vital knowledge without the aid of writing. So, he wants the name. Take your bread that rots not, your beer that sours not. How did they learn to make pictures speak? And one panel shows travelers, in the distinctive patterned robes of Canaan, which contrast with the simple white loincloths of the Egyptians. They developed their own style and characters based on the Greek foundation. Discover the fascinating chemistry that makes our world and everything in it—including us. And once you start with the idea of reducing speech to any kind of symbol from which language can be retrieved, then the rebus thing hits you in the face, because when you’re casting around for the way to do it, it’s obvious. In a song line trail, there is the knowledge that is given to you from the old people, in what they call “song line trails,” for naming all the different sites, the plants, trees, mountains, water hole and all of that, like a map, it is a map, in your mind. The NATO phonetic alphabet is a Spelling Alphabet, a set of words used instead of letters in oral communication (i.e. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yeah. It is a meditation in ink. (Dramatization) Oh! It was rich deposits of the gemstone that brought regular mining expeditions to Serabit. February 17, 2021. DR. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER (Calligrapher): Writing is one of the few things all societies do. The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. Powell is a Classical scholar with publications in Homer and mythology. Watch Preview. Something similar happened at Serabit, but on the plateau the cultural exchange between Canaanites and Egyptians seems to have had momentous consequences. This is the Alif, the first letter, the A. NARRATOR: At the edge of the plateau, Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda came across the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple, dominated by dozens of stone markers, or “stelae.”, PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) These commemorative stelae are one of the features of the temple at Serabit El-Khadim. And what you have here is actually the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph of the bull, sleeping forever in the letter A, because this is just the bull turned on his horns. A slightly different question from "what was the world's first writing system?" Additional funding for "How Writing Changed the World" is provided by the George D. Smith Fund. Instead of thousands of pictographic characters they employ just a few dozen simple shapes. And this image is not at all the image of an Egyptian. W; Languages; NATO Phonetic Alphabet; NATO Phonetic Alphabet. So, this is a kind of rebus writing. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) The big rectangle divided into small panels shows the irrigated land, and left and right of the Nile Valley are the mountains. The characters do not stand for the sound of the whole word, but only for the sound at the beginning of the word. NARRATOR: This clay tablet is the distant ancestor of today’s spreadsheet: a grid of boxes with symbols that represent numbers and pictures that represent commodities. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Many hundreds of years later, scribes in Phoenicia adopt this drawing of the bull. It originally looked a little like a bull, like this. Beginning in ancient Egypt, A TO Z: "The First Alphabet" explores some of the first known scribes, and how they discovered that by recording names and histories, it … Writing is a recent innovation. We don’t know exactly how to pronounce that. And if a picture can represent a thing, it can represent a word. They may not raise the dead, but, like all writing, they allow them to speak. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: Yes, these are all magic spells, designed to resurrect the king so he could live forever in the afterlife. So, we use a “determinative.”. CHINESE PUPILS: (Translated from Chinese) Character. YONGSHENG CHEN: The phonogram-classifier combination is a very good way to represent a word. Your score has been saved for A to Z: The First Alphabet. But this is not decoration. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. So, that straight line through these stages goes all the way back to that bull, even though, at different ends, they look nothing alike.

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