Reflections on the Development of Hebrew Letters

All good points Firemaiden, I'm asking some experts I know for answers.

firemaiden said:

The Egyptian vulture represents the glottal stop sound. The word for vulture in the proto-canaanite language must not have begun with the glottal stop, so they must have chosen instead the glyph for a word which in their language, did represent the glottal stop... it seems they borrowed Aua - the bull glyph.

Click to expand...

Isn't it amazing as well that this first "alphabet" had a symbol for a glottal stop *at all*? It isn't a sound in its own right, in fact it's the absence of a sound.

What a weird way to start an alphabet.

Ross

There does appear to be some controversy around the topic of the names of the letters.

I get the sense that the Flinders Petrie and Albright acrophony explanation is unfounded, but essentially unchallenged. At least, the challengers aren't widely known.

Trying to think of words that might be related, I thought of Elephant - and older dictionaries suggested a derivation from "Aleph - bull", such as Webster's 1913 -

"(El"e*phant) n. [OE. elefaunt, olifant, OF. olifant, F. éléphant, L. elephantus, elephas, -antis, fr. Gr. 'ele`fas, -fantos; of unknown origin; perh. fr. Skr. ibha, with the Semitic article al, el, prefixed, or fr. Semitic Aleph hindi Indian bull; or cf. Goth. ulbandus camel, AS. olfend.]"
http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/Webster/data/512.html

(and scores of other places on the internet)

Ross

Cool!!! Now that is truly a delightful insight. Thank you, Ross.

You remind me that ivory in German is "Elfenbein" (I keep running across this word in the opera Salome and thinking "Elf-legs?")

Clearing throat...

I think the "glottal stop" question is difficult. Perhaps we should await an expert? (My) problem is always to remember that Egyptian Hieroglypcs really didn't represent the vowels. I suspect (but don't know) that the Egyptian word vulture DID begin (and end?) with exactly that glyph? But we have no way of knowing what vowel sound followed (or even preceeded) it! There seems to be some evidence that the invisible vowel that usually followed the vulture glyph was pronounced "ah". What we then have in any extended hieroglyph text is a glottal stop followed by this "ah" sound?

Macavity

Here's the response of Peter T. Daniels (one of the most highly regarded authorities in these very kinds of questions - editor of "The World's Writing Systems"):

My question specifically what texts give us the Phoenician letters' names -

Ross Sinclair Caldwell wrote:
>
> In histories of the alphabet, invariably it is asserted that 'alef, bet,
> gimel etc. are Phoenician names. But no one ever gives the Phoenician
> sources that say this. So what Phoenician sources are there that list the
> names of the letters of the alphabet?
>
> (i.e., here's such an assertion taken at random from scores of competent
> web-pages -
> Prof. Sven Öhman's paper "Do the letters of the alphabet have a
> pronunciation?" (TMH-QPSR vol. 44 - Fonetik 2002)
> http://www.speech.kth.se/qpsr/tmh/2002/02-44-125-128.pdf
>
> "In ancient times one learned to read by means of learning the *names* of
> the letters together with a certain technique of collecting letters into
> syllables. In ancient Greece the letter names had been taken over from the
> Phoenicians who originally taught the Greeks to read and write. Where the
> Phoenicians said 'alef, bet, gimel, daleth and so on..." (pp. 125-126)
>
> I know his topic isn't the history of the alphabet, but this assertion is
> typical of every other source I find.
>
> What Phoenician text(s) list the names of the letters of the alphabet?

(Peter T. Daniels' response)

There is absolutely no evidence for the Phoenician names of the letters; the earliest source for letter names is their transcription from Hebrew in LXX headings to Psalm 119. The "earliest" source for the Greek letter names is in Athenaeus, purporting to be very old.

However, there's no denying that the Greek letter names are borrowed from a set of names very like the Hebrew names, and the Phoenician forms can be _reconstructed_ with considerably certainty.

The fullest discussion probably remains Driver, Semitic Writing (with the addenda in the 1976 reprint).

The attempt by Cross & Lambdin to show that the Ugaritic-Mesopotamian cuneiform biscriptal gives (just) the first CV of each letter name is unconvincing, to say the least (why wouldn't the complete letter name have been given?).

See also my article in the 1991 Leslau Festschrift ed. Kaye.
--
Peter T. Daniels

Ross

Elephants are in Africa and India

Aleph doesn't come from elephant ....

We have here the relicts of a "WORLD-RELIGION", you cannot easily change the main protagonist.

It may be good idea to ask, if the object "Elephant" got the name "Elephant, cause it also was an impressive animal (and a more impressive one) as the ox, perhaps meant as an language-escalation of aleph = Ox or bull.

World Religion:

1. Crete has its height between 2000 - 1500, the central religious object is the bull. Minostauros. Zeus captures Europe as a bull, Herakles later captures a famous bull of Crete. Pasiphae sleeps with this bull. There is no doubt about it: it's a bull cult. All important Crete myths center the bull.

2. Delta-Region of Nile. The Egyptian have animal cults generally, of special concentration in the Delta-Region are cow- and bull-cults (Apis-cult, Isis has a cow-head), naturally as at the upper Nile you had no good regions to feed cows.
At least 4 of the 20 Gau-names directly relate to the bull-cult:

a. Gau of the mountain-bull
b. Gau of the black bull
c. Gau of the god-calf
d. Gau of the slaughtered (bull)

In the greatest of all Egyptian myths, the Osiris-cult, Isis looses her head and gets a cowhead.
The Osiris-myth connects Phoenicia with Egyptia. Osiris is cut in pieces by Seth, but Isis collects the 14 (13) pieces. One she doesn't find, the genital. She replaces it. For the honour of the places where she found it, there were 14 cult places, which were located at the nile, the last being Byblos (that's in Phoenicia)
The death-journey leads the dead Osiris from the Nile crossing the sea to Byblos, where was a big Osiris-cult-center.

Osiris reigned 28 years to please the moon-calendar, but also to be added with his 14 pieces to the number 42, which was loved as "number of the Gaue".

There are archeological fragments enough about the bull-cult.

3. The central figures of the Kanaan-mythology knows El, which is the highest God and Baal, which is the hero-god, which has to fight with Jam (sea) and Mot (death). The myth is only known by fragments found 1929 and the translation from Ugarit has difficulties.
At least: Baal sleeps with cows.

The conflict between sea and agriculture-cowbreeding is a very special Phoenician problem, cause they became great sea-explorers.

4. The bull-killing Mithras was still active in Roman time as the MAIN concurrent to Christianity (also strong was the Isis-cult) - you should know, that we had Isis-cult and Mithras-cult here in Germany (!) in late Roman time. This were also WORLD-RELIGIONS.
It is said, that it derived from Persia and Mesopotamia, very old, perhaps even reaching back in times of the Alphabet.

Bull-Killing is not a bull-cult, you should see the difference, which has the historical context, that in the final fights after 1000 BC it was the Mesopotamians, which killed the BULL of the Egyptia-Phoenecia-Creta regions in long fights, finally establishing a very great dominion called Persia, which ruled as far as Egyptia but also 1000s of miles in the East. This great dominion, accompanied by the Fire-religion of Zoroastrism, but also the "bull-killer cult Mithras", found their quick and sudden end by the Greek idea of a very special polytheism, which we all do know well, and which luckily revived after being "also killed" by Roman Catholic Church in 14th/15th century in the time, which interests Tarot-researchers.

Cause of all this it is quite doubtful, that Aleph has an origin as "Elephant" .

I miss a continuation of the basic-questions:

A: Is there a face in the alphabet-letter-names?

B: If it is accepted, that there is a face at the tail of the Alphabet, then ... where is the body?

The body of the ABC-man or Alph-beth-gimel-man.


*** It's often useful to think about complicated matters like a child. How old was you, when you learnt the Alphabet? 6 years? 7 years? Earlier?
Go back to that place in your memory. Somebody explains you how to read and write. Remember.

Your teacher doesn't speak of elephants, you do not know.

I checked my Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, and it does seem that even in the Psalms, the name of the letter is not spelled out.

Thus, unless the Qumran psalter or some other book spells them out, it is precisely as kwaw suggested, and Peter Daniels confirmed: the oldest list of Hebrew letters is from around AD 350, in the text of the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX) (of course the text of the LXX is held to have been composed around 280 b.c.e., but the oldest actual text of the Psalter, that I know of is this version, the manscript now held in the Vatican (hence Vaticanus) and one called Sinaiticus, because found in the monastery at the foot of mount Sinai, but now in London. Both are from the 4th century of the common era.)

There are other places in the LXX where the letters are named in full; in the text of Lamentations as well. In the Hebrew, the letters are not named, the text is rather an acrostic.

In the Vulgate, the Latin bible, there are even more instances of spelling the letters of the whole alphabet - I counted 12, in Jerome's version. In the Old Latin text of the psalter, only Psalm 118 (119 in the Hebrew and English bibles) has the letters spelled out.

Here is an old post of mine to TarotL (May 13, 2002) where they are all listed:
_________________________
I don't know if this is common knowledge (if it is kindly correct me
and show me to the door) but it is not at all implausible that 14th
century Italians, or any medieval Europeans at all, would know the Hebrew alphabet (spelled in Latin, at least) and connect it with prophecy.

It's spelled out completely 12 times in the Vulgate, six times alone
in Lamentations, all in acrostic contexts - but you wouldn't know
this from reading English translations, especially the venerable
King James, which seems to have gone to great lengths to hide it
(except in psalm 119). The Psalms are numbered according to the
Vulgate and Septuagint - Hebrew and English Bibles use the number in
(parenthesis).

1) Psalm 36 (37)
2) Psalm 110 (111) - 10 verses/22
3) Psalm 111 (112) - 10 verses/22
4) Psalm 118 (119) - 176 verses/8
5) Psalm 144 (145) - this one is missing the NUN, so only 21 verses
6) Proverbs 31 - verses 10-31 are an acrostic
7) Lamentations 1
8) Lamentations 2 - Fe and Ain transposed
9,10,11) Lamentations 3 - 66 verses, each verse three lines
beginning with a letter, and this is spelled out each time in the
Vulgate; Fe and Ain transposed again
12) Lamentations 4 - Fe and Ain transposed
Scholars also point out that Lamentations 5 has 22 verses.

The latin spelling is:
Aleph
Beth
Gimel
Deleth
He
Vav
Zai
Heth
Teth
Ioth
Caph
Lameth
Mem
Nun
Samech
Ain
Fe (or twice "Phe")
Sade
Coph
Res
Sen
Thav

Can anyone tell me what Kabbalists have to say about the missing Nun
in Psalm 145 and why Jeremiah transposes the order of Ain and Fe?

Of course, knowing the Alef-Bet is a far cry from studying Kabbalah
(or Cabala), and we're still further from showing distinctly
Kabbalistic content in the Trumps - but at least we can say that the
Hebrew Alphabet would have been no mystery. And it would have been
associated with praise of God and prophecy.

Ross
_________________________

I should add now that I understand the reason that the King James and subsequent English translators would omit the fully spelled letters, since they rely on the Hebrew and not the Latin or Greek text.

Now that we know we are dealing with the oldest list of Hebrew letters, right in the Bible, we have a better handle on the facts.

In the Greek of the LXX, Vaticanus (4th century), the Hebrew alphabet goes like this (with variants among the manuscripts) note f=phi, h=eta, 8=theta, w=omega, x=chi

alf (alef)
bht
gimal (gimel)
del8 (dele8, dale8)
h
ouau
zai (zain)
h8
th8
iw8 (iwd)
xaf
labd (lamed)
mhm
noun
samx
ain
fh
sadh (tiadh - ti is an approximation to our ts in "tsade")
kwf
rhs (rhxs - xs is an approximation to our sh in "resh")
sen (xsen - xs is an approximation to our sh in "shin")
8au

Ross

Re: Elephants are in Africa and India

Huck said:

Aleph doesn't come from elephant ....

Click to expand...

I think you misunderstand what I was getting at. I didn't mean to say that the name of the letter comes from the animal, but that the "elef" part of "elefas" might have the same root as the letter 'alef, since an elephant could be described as a kind of bull. At least, the editors of Webster's thought so. But it is unproven.

Where does it come from? My dictionary of Aramaic doesn't have that definition for 'alef. Kwaw said he could find in a Hebrew dictionary. Isn't it possible that the early scholars like Petrie, looking at the old glyph A (upside down, or sideways) saw a "bull" in it, and on this basis alone asserted that in Phoenician (and by extension Hebrew) 'alef must have meant "bull."

But there are no texts that say so. On what possible basis can you assert, then, that 'alef means "bull"?

'alef=ox appears to be a scholarly myth. As Daniels says, there is no evidence whatsoever for the Phoenician names for the letters.
We have the names, from about 2300 ago, but only physically from 1650 years ago. We have letters from 3500 years ago, and somebody thought they looked like a bull's head.

It might just have been the Egyptian demotic for "vulture" ('ah), and then taken on the same acrophonic principle for another word in the Phoenician language.

Ross

'alef (in the plural) means "oxen" at Isaiah 30:24 ('alafim), and in other places, so "ox" is an attested meaning for 'alef.

Ross

Re: Re: Elephants are in Africa and India

Ross G Caldwell said:

I think you misunderstand what I was getting at. I didn't mean to say that the name of the letter comes from the animal, but that the "elef" part of "elefas" might have the same root as the letter 'alef, since an elephant could be described as a kind of bull. At least, the editors of Webster's thought so. But it is unproven.

Where does it come from? My dictionary of Aramaic doesn't have that definition for 'alef. Kwaw said he could find in a Hebrew dictionary. Isn't it possible that the early scholars like Petrie, looking at the old glyph A (upside down, or sideways) saw a "bull" in it, and on this basis alone asserted that in Phoenician (and by extension Hebrew) 'alef must have meant "bull."

But there are no texts that say so. On what possible basis can you assert, then, that 'alef means "bull"?

'alef=ox appears to be a scholarly myth. As Daniels says, there is no evidence whatsoever for the Phoenician names for the letters.
We have the names, from about 2300 ago, but only physically from 1650 years ago. We have letters from 3500 years ago, and somebody thought they looked like a bull's head.

It might just have been the Egyptian demotic for "vulture" ('ah), and then taken on the same acrophonic principle for another word in the Phoenician language.

Ross

Click to expand...

Does the early form of ain look like an "eye"? Yes.
Does the early form of pe look like a "mouth"? Yes, if you turn it to the right side.
Does aleph look like a bull? Yes, if you turn it to the right side.
Does mem look like water? Yes.

Are these Hebrew words not appearing in texts, which are older than the Septuaginta? I don't know it for sure and it leads into field, where I am not too familiar with, but I cant imagine, that they don't.

In later forms the letters loose the quality of that "looking like". The early letters, that we know, already show a discrepancy between form and "name", which leads to the problem that we've difficulties in some cases to identify the idea, which both unites.

IT IS OLD, logic doesn't give place for a great change or production in late time - this might be true in detail, but you must see the whole, then the changed details don't change much.

Your bothering about scholars in the past only blocks your personal intuitive possibilities to see what it is. Equally to Kwaw, who has filled his mind with special forms and ideas of much later time, which doesn't touch the real object.

Mankind creates curious phenomens. Very curious it is, why scholars don't see simply things.

You've seen a face.