THE ORIGIN OF THE CANAANITE ALPHABET.+ 
By Franz Pratorivs. 
Soon after the year 1000 B. C. there appeared in Canaan a system 
of writing which has been very incorrectly called an alphabet, that 
is, a phonetic writing which resolves even the simple syllable into 
its component parts. With this reservation, however, for the sake 
of brevity, the system will herein be referred to as the Canaanite 
alphabet. 
It is well known that the Canaanite alphabet quickly conquered 
the world, but its definite origin has been shrouded in obscurity. 
There has been no lack of effort to derive this alphabet from older 
and more complicated oriental systems, but this has not been success- 
ful. Other methods of explanation have likewise led to no result. 
Canaan’s northern frontier borders the territory of the Hittite 
inscriptions, while opposite the coast of northern Canaan is the island 
of Cyprus, where, down to the time of Alexander the Great, there 
survived in the “ epichorial,” or native, syllabic writing, an especially 
pure phonetic system. There is a common tendency to derive this 
Cypriote syllabic system from the Hittite pictures. It is probable. 
however, that systems akin to Cypriote writing once spread over 
all of Asia Minor, as evidenced in the Greek alphabet in the exotic 
admixtures from some of the peoples of Asia Minor.? 
Thus considering the geographical position of these countries, the 
syllabic writing of Asia Minor and Cyprus might have been the 
source of the Canaanite alphabet. There are other reasons of a 
general character that may be adduced in favor of this possibility. 
Is the Canaanite system really an alphabetic one as it is commonly 
‘alled? TI believe that upon close observation this question will have 
to be answered in the negative. It is really a syllabic system lke the 
Cypriote, except that some of the Canaanite signs have the value of 
simple consonants only, as in the Cypriote. In Canaanite we have 
up, i. e., Ka-ta-l, just as the same group of sounds would be written 
@Translated, by permission, from the German of Franz Pretorius, Ueber den 
Ursprung des kanaanaeischen Alphabets. Berlin, Reuther und Reichard, 1906. 
b See Sayre in Schliemann’s ‘* Ilios,’ pp. 766 ff., and in The Transactions of 
the Society of Biblical Archeology, Vol. IX, pp. 112 ff. 
595 
