Endnote 2 – How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs

A few very short, similar inscriptions have turned up in Canaan—called Proto-Canaanite—but they are dated later, to the late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom (17th–16th century B.C.E. at the earliest). See especially the examples of the Shechem plaque, the Gezer sherd and the Lachish dagger in Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography, reprint of 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1997), pp. 26–27. See also the Tell Nagila sherd in Gordon J. Hamilton, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2006), p. 392. Another small, two-line example comes from Wadi el-Hôl (near Thebes) from a wall with Egyptian inscriptions which date to the late Middle Kingdom (late Dynasty XII and Dynasty XIII) and Second Intermediate period. These inscriptions seem also to date a little later than the Sinai inscriptions.