Who Really Invented the Alphabet-Illiterate Miners or Educated Sophisticates? | Biblica... - 2 views
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. We must be careful not to be blinded by the genius of the invention of the alphabet, and assume, therefore, that such a breakthrough could be born only in the circles of highly educated scribes
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The Semitic inventors of the alphabet found a new way of representing spoken language in script: Rather than capture whole words, they represented individual phonemes with icons. They were thus able to find a new solution for the picture-sound relationship. This leap in thought lead to a great innovation: a new, single, fixed relationship between picture and sound.
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My theory is that the alphabet was invented on the periphery of society, in Sinai, by people of Levantine origin, probably from somewhere on the Phoenician coast.
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It is in these circles, that the alphabet was invented, and not for any administrative purpose. No alphabetic text in Sinai mentions any administrative matter, and no numbers are discernable. We find only gods names, personal names and very short sentences including titles and the word “gift.”
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We must therefore surmise that the impetus for the invention of the alphabet was spiritual. The Canaanites wished to communicate with their gods, to talk to their gods in their own language and their own way.
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By sustaining and perpetuating what historically helped them to rule (hieroglyphics or cuneiform), the institutions of the Ancient Near East left the door open to “disruptive innovation”—the alphabet!