Alphabets and Elements

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Alphabets and Elements Michael David Coogan Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 216. (Dec., 1974), pp. 61-63. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-097X%28197412%290%3A216%3C61%3AAAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research is currently published by The American Schools of Oriental Research.

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Alphabets and Elements MICHAEL DAVID COOGAN

Albright Institute of Archaeological Research Jerusalem, Israel 3"bgdhwzht The Greek word alphabeton has a transparent 4 lb' . etymology, and illustrates both the Semitic origin of the alphabet and the conservatism with which it has been treated by its successive adopters. l In later Both the repetitions and the omissions confirm de Latin the alphabet was the abecedarium, reflecting Vaux's analysis of the ostracon as a student's the traditional pronunciation of the first several exercise. Although there is sufficient space for y and letters; in classical sources, however, the word k either at the end ofline 3 or at the beginning ofline elementa is occasionally used for the alphabet, and 2, they have been omitted, presumably because of a its etymology is a problem. 2 Most of the standard memory lapse. But the student apparently dictionaries state that the origin of elementum is remembered that the second half of the alphabet uncertain, but there have been proposals to derive began with I, m, n, and so made a fresh start, as it the word from the names of the first three letters of were, with line 2. This suggests that at Qumran the the second half of the alphabet (el, em, en).3 I alphabet was taught in two halves, dividing it after intend here to give some evidence supporting this k. It should be noted here that in the Hebrew alphabet there are eleven letters from 'alefto kaf, etymology. and eleven from lamed to taw, counting the The earliest abecedaries known are from Ugarit,4 grapheme s only once. 8 (In the ostracon s is and the order of the letters used there remains repeated; this does not reflect the double value of essentially the same, with minor substitutions and the grapheme in Hebrew but is simply part of the deletions, in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, or an error: note the similar repetition of exercise Greek, Etruscan, and Latin alphabets. As Jeffery 'alefand !e!.) Lamed is thus the exact beginning of has noted, the force of convention is such that letters the second half of the alphabet. are often retained even when there is no The only other complete Hebrew abecedary of corresponding phoneme in a borrowing language, relatively early date in which the alphabet is divided and there is a strong reluctance to interrupt the is from Wadi Murabba'iit (ca. A.D. 135) and reads: 9 received series with additional letters. 5 When new symbols are adopted, they are generally placed at I ' b g d h w Z Q t y k k* the end of the alphabet. Thus, Ugaritic adds 'i, 'u, 2 I m* n n* s • p p* ~ ~* q r s and s after the original twenty-seven graphemes of 3 4 t' k k* I m* the Canaanite proto-alphabet;6 Greek (and its 5 k* daughter alphabet Etruscan) adds upsilon (a doublet of the original waw), phi, chi, psi, and The division of the alphabet after kafmay reflect the omega at the end; and Latin has x, y, and z after the same practice suggested by the Qumran ostracon, already secondary v. It is noteworthy that the order but this interpretation is weakened by the sequence of the letters I, m, and n is preserved not only in all of on line 4. It thus seems likely that the division is due the alphabets just mentioned, as well as in Hebrew to the space available on the writing surface; the and Aramaic, but also in Arabic, where the letters ostracon is apparently complete. 10 have for the most part been rearranged on a visual At Ugarit there are three complete abecedaries. principle, and that the letters occur without Two of them, PRU II, nos. 184 and l88B, 11. 4-5, interruption except in Ugaritic. are written on three lines, and on both the first line Abecedaries in the various languages are contains the signs from 'a to I. The third example, relatively rare. For our purposes the most striking is PRU II, no. 185 (= eTA 186), reads: from Qumran, in Hebrew, on an ostracon dated stratigraphically to shprtly before 31 B.C.;? it reads: I ['a] b g b d h w I rt' ~ ~ 2 I m* n* s • p

~

q r

2 [z] ~ t y k ~ 3 [I] m d n ~ 4 [s] 1 P s q r

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MICHAEL DAVID COOGAN

Here the division seems to have been caused by the size of the tablet rather than by an extraneous principle. It should be noted, however, that in the Ugaritic alphabet there are thirteen letters before I, with I begimiing the second half which consists of fourteen letters (not including 'j, 'u, and local additions to the original alphabet). Before leaving the West Semitic world we should mention the Aramaic abecedary from Hatra, dated to the first or second century A.D., which reads: 1l

s,

BASOR 216

then is evidence for writing only the first eleven letters of the alphabet ending with K. 14 The second half consists of another eleven letters including T, after which the consonants v ~ cf> X were added. We turn finally to the Latin alphabet. The most interesting abecedaries are graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum. The complete alphabet of that period occurs several times at Pompeii as follows: IS AXBVCTDSERFQGPHOINKML

Y and Z had not yet been added; L marks the midpoint of a twenty-one letter alphabet. In addition there is a graffito from Herculaneum 'bgdhwzlqy reading ABC D E F G H I K (CIL IV, no. 10712), klmns'p~qrst which is duplicated in Pannonia (CIL III, no. Here too the alphabet was apparently divided 11469).16 This evidence must be set beside other according to the available space and not in the inscriptions which divide the alphabet after H, 17 1,18 L,19 or M;20 the practice of dividing before L was center. thus by no means universal. Turning to the West, there are three relevant To conclude: Greek abecedaries. 12 On a cup from Boiotia 1. In the Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, (Jeffery, pI. 10, no. 20), containing two alphabets, and Latin alphabets the letters I, Greek, Etruscan, and on a stamnos from southern Italy (Jeffery, pI. m, and n occur in that order and, except for 50, no. 19), both dating from the fifth century B.C., Ugaritic, without interruption. the alphabet is divided by the handles on the vessels after I or m. There is thus no indication before the 2. In all of the alphabets with the exception of Hellenistic period of a practice of dividing the Arabic the letter I is approximately the center of the alphabet after k. We note some variation in the alphabet, if the additional signs at the end of the letters added after tau. On the Boiotian cup the first alphabet in each langauge are not included. alphabet ends with v ~ cf> x '" w and the second 3. The abecedaries from Qumran, Narce, and with v ~ cf> x; the alphabet on the stamnos, however, Herculaneum and Pannonia suggest that there was ends with v cf> x ~ "'. These variants show that the a practice of writing the alphabet in two parts, the number and order of the final signs had not yet been second part of which began with the letters I, m, and n. There is ambiguous evidence in support of this fixed. Most surviving Etruscan abecedaries are written hypothesis from Ugarit, Murabba'at, and Pompeii. on one line; 13 the only significant exception is on a 4. Given the temporal and geographical Proto-Corinthian goblet from Narce (Jeffery, pI. separation of these examples, as well as the negative 48, no. 21), dated to ca. 650 B.C.; on the bottom of evidence discussed above, our proposal is necessarily tentative. But in view of the conservative the bowl of the goblet there are the letters: nature of alphabets the examples may reflect a ABCDEFZ}J®IK Semitic pedagogical practice continued in the West which resulted in the second half of the alphabet The alphabet was not continued on the other side, being called elementum. The entire alphabet then where a fragment of a word ARA is legible. Here could be called the elementa.

I The earliest attestation of alphabeton is in the Hellenistic period; Herodotus, for example, calls the alphabet ''the Phoenician letters." See further L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts oj Archaic Greece (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) 40. 2 This was first pointed out tei me by E. D. Cuffe, S.J., of Fordham University. 3 See J. B. Greenough, "Some Latin Etymologies," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology I (1890)97-99; M. Soro Cohen, La

grande invention de recriture et son evolution (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1958) 137f.; D. Diringer, The Alphabet (3d ed., London: Hutchinson, 1968) 420. The best evidence for the pronunciation of the names of the letters is regrettably late. In the 4th-5th century A.D. Arsinoe Papyrus, the letters of the Latin alphabet are listed with their names written above them in Greek: I is iIIe. m is imme, and n is inne; see H. Milne, Greek Shorthand Manuals (London and Antrim, N.H.: Egypt Exploration

1974

ALPHABETS AND ELEMENTS

Society, 1934) 70. For an earlier date for the pronunciation el, em, en based on inference, see W. Strzelecki, "Die lateinischen Buchstabennamen und ihre Geschichte," Dos Altertum 4 (1958) 28-29. 4 See PRU II, no. 19 (pp. 40-41 = UT 1019), and nos. 184-189 (pp. 199-203 = UT 1184-1189; no. 185 is also CTA 186). 5 Jeffery, Local Scripts, 4; see also B. Ullman, "The Etruscan Origin of the Roman Alphabet and the Names of the Letters," Classical Philology 22 (1927) 377. 6 See F. M. Cross, Jr., "The Origin and Early Evolution of the Alphabet," Eretz-Israel 8 (1967) 8*-24*, esp. 9*; and E. A. Speiser, "A Note on Alphabetic Origins," BASOR no. 121 (1951) 17. 7 The ostracon was published by De Vaux in RB61 (1954)229 and pI. Xa. There is also a photograph in Inscriptions Reveal (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1973) 22 (Hebrew section), no. 12. For the date and paleography, see F. M. Cross, "The Oldest Manuscripts from Qumran," JBL 74 (1955) 147, n. 2. In this and in the following inscriptions, an asterisked letter indicates that the final form is used. 8 At Qumran, J occurred only once in the twenty-one letter alphabet, as the acrostic poem II Q Ps· xxii: 1-15 shows. U. also the biblical acrostic poems, all of which have only one place for the grapheme J, and use words beginning with I J / or lsi in that place. 9 DJD II, Plate LV, no. 79. 10 See DJD II, 178. The remaining abecedaries from Wadi Murabba'it are not germane here, since they are either written

63

on one line (nos. 10 Band 78) or are fragmentary (nos. 11,72 and 80). II A. Caquot, "Nouvelles inscriptions arameennes de Hatra," Syria 29 (1952) 97, no. 14. The only other complete abecedary in the Aramaic alphabet known to me is on one line, and comes from the Wadi Hammamat in Egypt; see G. Goyon, Nouvelles inscriptions rupestres du Wadi Hammamat (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1957), pI. XXXV, and F. M. Cross, in W. K. Simpson, "Historical and Lexical Notes on the New Series of Hammamat Inscriptions," JNES 18 (1959) 35-36. 12 A third, from Vaste, is Messapic, and unfortunately survives only in an early nineteenth century copy; see Local Scripts, 283 and pI. 53, no. 15. J3 The evidence is conveniently summarized in G. Buonamici, Epigrafia Etrusca (Florence: Rinascimento, 1932) 101-27; see also Local Scripts, pI. 48, nos. 18-23 and 236-39. 14 See further J. A. Bundgard, "Why Did the Art of Writing Spread to the West? Reflexions on the Alphabet of Marsiliana," Analecta Romana Instituti Donici III (1965) 27. 15 ClL IV, nos. 5472, 5499, 6905, 6907, and 9272. These graffiti reflect a pedagogical practice described in Quintilian, Imt. orat. 1.1.25 and Jerome, In Jerem. 25 v. 26. 16 There is a similar graffito in Greek at Pompeii, referred to in ClL IV, 164. 17 CIL III, no. 11291 b. 18 ClL III, no. 8077.10. 19 ClL III, no. 11186; IV, no. 10710. 20 ClL III, no. 11453; XIII, no. 10035.19.