Phoenician/Canaanite

The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, during the 15th century BC. Before then the Phoenicians wrote with a cuneiform script. The earliest known inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet come from Byblos and date back to 1000 BC.

The Phoenician alphabet was perhaps the first alphabetic script to be widely-used - the Phoenicians traded around the Mediterraean and beyond, and set up cities and colonies in parts of southern Europe and North Africa - and the origins of most alphabetic writing systems can be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet, including Greek, Etruscan, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew, as well as the scripts of India and East Asia.

Notable features

Type of writing system:abjad / consonant alphabet with no vowel indication
Writing direction: right to left in hortizontal lines. Sometimes boustrophedon.
Script family:Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician
Number of letters: 22 - there was considerable variation in their forms in different regions and at different times.
The names of the letters are acrophonic, and their names and shapes can be ultimately traced back to Egyptian Hieroglyphs. For example, the name of the first letter, 'aleph, means ox and developed from a picture of an ox's head. Some of the letter names were changed by the Phoenicians, including gimel, which meant camel in Phoenician, but was originally a picture of a throwing stick (giml).

Used to write

Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language which originated in about the 11th century BC in what is now Lebannon, Syria and Israel, an area then known asPūt in Phoenician and Ancient Egyptian,Canaan in Biblical Hebrew, Old Arabic and Aramaic, andΦοινίκη (Phoiníkē) / Phoenicia in Greek and Latin.

Phoenician spread around the Mediterranean, particularly to Tunisia, southern parts of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), Malta, southern France and Sicily, and was spoken until the 2nd century AD.

A variant of Phoenician, known as Punic, was spoken in Carthage, a Phoencian colony in what is now Tunisia, until the 6th century AD.

The native name for the language was(𐤃𐤁𐤓𐤌) 𐤐𐤍𐤍𐤌 \ 𐤊𐤍𐤀𐤍𐤌 ((dabari-m) Pōnnīm / Kana'nīm), which means "Punic/Canaanite (speech)"

Phoenician alphabet

Phoenician Alphabet

Download an alphabet chart for Phoenician (Excel)

Sample video in Phoenician

Information about Phoenician |Numbers

Links

Information about the Phoenician alphabet and language
http://phoenicia.org/alphabet.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet
http://near-eastern-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_phoenician_alphabet
http://www.phoenician.org/alphabet.htm

Download a Phoenican font

About Phoenica
http://phoenicia.org

ALPHABETUM - a Unicode font for ancient scripts, including Classical & Medieval Latin, Ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberian, Celtiberian, Gothic, Runic, Old & Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Nordic, Ogham, Kharosthi, Glagolitic, Anatolian scripts, Phoenician, Brahmi, Imperial Aramaic, Old Turkic, Old Permic, Ugaritic, Linear B, Phaistos Disc, Meroitic, Coptic, Cypriot and Avestan.
https://www.typofonts.com/alphabetum.html

Consonant alphabets (Abjads)

Ancient Berber,Arabic,Aramaic,Chorasmian,Elymaic,Hatran,Hebrew,Manichaean,Nabataean,North Arabian,Pahlavi,Palmyrene,Parthian,Phoenician,Paleo-Hebrew,Proto-Sinaitic / Proto-Canaanite,Psalter,Punic,Sabaean,Samaritan,Sogdian,South Arabian,Syriac,Tifinagh,Ugaritic

Other writing systems

Semitic languages

Akkadian,Amharic,Arabic (Algerian),Arabic (Bedawi),Arabic (Chadian),Arabic (Egyptian),Arabic (Gulf),Arabic (Hassaniya),Arabic (Hejazi),Arabic (Lebanese),Arabic (Modern Standard),Arabic (Moroccan),Arabic (Najdi),Arabic (Sudanese),Arabic (Syrian),Aramaic,Argobba,Assyrian / Neo-Assyrian,Canaanite,Chaha,Chaldean Neo-Aramaic,Ge'ez,Hadhramautic,Harari,Hebrew,Himyaritic,Jewish Neo-Aramaic,Maltese,Mandaic,Nabataean,Neo-Mandaic,Phoenician,Punic,Qatabanic,Sabaean,Sabaic,Silt'e,Syriac,Tigre,Tigrinya,Turoyo,Ugaritic,Western Neo-Aramaic

Page last modified: 06.01.26

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