Individuals and administrative bodies used seals to denote ownership of items and to authenticate documents. A man typically carried his seal on his robe for easy access. Wearing a seal became recognized as a method of protection and good fortune. The earliest stamp seals have dated to ~6000 BC, excavated at Neolithic sites including Catal Hoyuk and Hacilar. Neolithic stamp seals were flat with geometric and abstract shapes. Animal forms appeared on stamp seals by the start of the Early Bronze Age (~3500-3100 BC). Simultaneously, cylinder seals began to appear ~3500 BC. Cylinder seals were better than stamp seals for impressing onto clay tablets and pottery jar caps.

N.E. Syria or S. Anatolia ~6th-4th millenia BC Clay LACMA M.76.174.640	~4th millennium BC Black Serpentine LACMA M.76.1774.522	~6th-4th millenia BC N.E. Syria or S.E. Anatolia Black Chlorite LACMA M.76.174.501

A wedge-shaped form of writing that can be impressed on small clay tablet, engraved onto large monuments or rarely even engraved onto metal. Below are some wonderful examples of small cuneiform tablets from LACMA. Each tablet is no more than a few inches from one tip to another.

Query tablets are noted for being large and coarse and by their equally large and coarse cuneiform inscription, generally written broadside across the rectangular surface ^{(1, p xiii)}. Queries were often presented with an additional document containing relevant details. If included at all, accompanying extispic omens were inscribed on any space left on the query tablet. Omens were thus found in a smaller script, sometimes next and perpendicular to the query text.

Queries were part of an aged tradition. They were attested in Old Babylonia and in the introductory formulae of Kassite extispicy reports ^{(1, p xiv)}. Despite being often undated, queries can be identified to a particular reign by distinct opening, closing and ezib (disregard) formulas ^{(1, p xiii)}. An ezib formula were meant to eliminate any misunderstanding or mishap that could affect the outcome of an extispicy. Below is an ezib formula found within queries to the sun god Samas during the reign of Esarhaddon:

Semitic languages are broken into: East Semitic (Akkadian, Eblaite); West Semitic (Amorite, Aramaic, Canaanite, Ugaritic); and South West Semitic (Arabic, Ethiopic and South Arabian).

The birth of the alphabet has two key players: Canaanites and Phoenicians. Canaan is a region which, today, spans Israel, Lebanon, Palestinian territories and nearby lands (including part of Egypt). Much like Mesopotamia, Canaan was home to a slew of ethnicities, cultures and writing forms. Among these writing forms was the alphabet. Rather than using one image to represent each word, each character represent a consonant. Together, these consonants formed words. From these words, literacy flourished to accommodate bureaucratic needs and to tell some of the earliest literary works (mostly pious works describing pagan and archaic deities). Hailing from the north of Canaan, the Phoenicians were residents of Canaan responsible for polishing the Canaanite alphabet – known as proto-Canaanite – into a standardized and modernized form known as Phoenician. (Naveh 1982, 23-42) (Zemánek, 1-4)

The alphabet’s origin was first illuminated by the 1905 discovery of an Egyptian temple containing short inscriptions. Quickly identified as Canaanite alphabetic pictograms, these letters were definitively found to be the precursors to Phoenician letters. (Canaan is a region encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories, and which housed several ethnic groups). (Zemánek, 1-4) According to the Greeks’ own written history, the Phoenicians then brought the alphabet to Greece. Palestinian sites have since rendered various other pictographic inscriptions, with origins beginning in c 1500 BC and continuing, with alphabetic evolution, to the 13th and 12th centuries BC. (Naveh 1982, 23-42)

This information makes clear that the alphabet originated in ancient Palestine (part of Canaan) and took hundreds of years to evolve and spread. However, Egyptian hieroglyphs were in use when proto-Canaanite was developed, and was even known of by the people of Canaan. The Phoenicians (fellow residents of Canaan) developed the proto-Canaanite alphabet by making the Canaanite symbols more linear, reducing the number of letters and establishing character conventions. After this refinement, which stabilized by c 1100 BC, the proto-Canaanite alphabet becomes known as Phoenician. The direct descendant of proto-Canaanite, Phoenician was used alongside Akkadian (an alphabetic cuneiform) from North Syria to Egypt. This compact alphabet allowed the inscription of everything from administrative documents to precious fictional works, and allowed an unprecedented explosion of literacy due to its manageable learning curve (versus memorizing hundreds of symbols, as with ancient cuneiform). Also, tangentially, proto-Canaanite branched off into two other scripts: Proto-Arabian in c 1300 BC and Archaic Greek in c 1100 BC. (Naveh 1982, 23-42)

In the ancient city of Ugarit (now part of North Syria), the earliest clear precursor to our modern alphabet was discovered. This Phoenician alphabet incorporated elements of cuneiform, including a unique system of stick and tip stylus impressions, to form an alphabet that has been deciphered using Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew. At this point, various Greek scholars – despite disagreeing on the origin of the Phoenician alphabet – agree that the Phoenicians brought to Greece their crude tool. The Greeks harnessed it, refining it further and harnessing it to construct some of history’s most famous testaments to human intelligence. (Naveh 1982, 23-42)

Bibliography

Naveh, Joseph. 1982. Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Paleography. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. pp. 23-42.

Zemánek, Petr. A Treebank of Ugaritic. Prague: Charles University. pp. 1-4.