History of the alphabet

The history of the alphabet goes back to a writing system for consonants. This was used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BC.^[1]

Chart showing details of four alphabets' descent from Phoenician abjad, from left to right Latin, Greek, original Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic.

Early history

Hieroglyphs in Egypt

By 2700 BC, the ancient Egyptians had developed a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent the consonants of their language. A 23rd seems to have been for word-initial or word-final vowels. The first purely alphabetic script may have been developed around 2000 BC for Semitic workers in central Egypt.^[2]

Over the next 500 years, it spread north. All later alphabets around the world have either descended from it or been inspired by one of its descendants.^[3][4]