Endnote 12 – How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs

From the 12th century B.C.E., see the Qubur el-Walaydah fragment (northwest Negev) and the Izbet Sartah ostracon in Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet, pp. 36–37. For a recently discovered mid-tenth century B.C.E. example, see the Tel Zayit abecedary in Ron Tappy et al., “An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century from the Judaean Shephelah,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344 (2006), p. 27. A stratified ostracon carrying a text (probably a letter) dated to the tenth century B.C.E. was also found recently at Khirbet Qeiyafa near Beit Shemesh by Yossef Garfinkel. He identified the site as a Judean city from the time of King David. See “Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time,” BAR 35:01 2009 and “Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered in Israelite Fort on Philistine Border,” in this issue. For a different, later dating of these inscriptions, see Benjamin Sass, “The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium,” The Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv Univ. Occasional Publications No. 4 (2005). However, the dates of these finds are still highly debated.