492 ANNUAL TwEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



writing. Once writing has reached the phonetic stage, each sign 

 represents a natural syllabic division of a word. The signary may be 

 reduced to the smallest syllabic divisions, but the signs will not be 

 made to represent such divisions of words (i. e., such sounds or combi- 

 nations of sounds) as are not normally pronounced "by themselves," 

 that is, as separate syllables There will, therefore, be no letters 

 representing the nonsyllabic consonants. But it is precisely these 

 that we have in both Phoenician and Ugaritic alphabets. In the 

 former, we know the reason: the juncture of circumstances which led 

 to the construction of the Phoenician alphabet on the acrophonic 

 principle (the principle of having a sign represent the fu-st sound of its 

 name). In the case of Ugaritic, what was the reason? 



The suggestion to derive the Ugaritic alphabet from the Akkadian 

 cuneiform may be set aside. No impressive similarities have been 

 established between Akkadian and Ugaritic signs, but even if there 

 were similarities they would not explain the source of the idea of 

 aljihabetic writing. Similarly, there are no grounds for the suggestion 

 that tliis alphabet was invented by non-Semites, a suggestion growing 

 out of the existence of vocalic aleph signs. The alphabet seems 

 definitely to fit the Semitic dialect of Ugarit, and the three alepli signs 

 may have been a special adjustment for the Hurrian population, 

 perhaps introduced for use in writing Hurrian. 



We must investigate the possible relations with the Phoenician 

 alphabet. The primitive inscriptions found at Serabit in Sinai show 

 that the alphabet existed as early as the twentieth century B. C. 

 (or, perhaps, the last prc-Hyksos period). The Phoenician alphabet 

 proper has been carried back to about the thirteenth centur}^, but 

 recent Palestine excavations have yielded some 10 archaic inscriptions 

 from between 1600 and 1200 B. C, all showing early stages of the 

 Phoenician alphabet. Some have suggested that the Ugaritic alpha- 

 bet is merely an attempt to transfer the Phoenician to use on clay 

 tablets, but in that case we should expect far greater similarity be- 

 tween the letters of the two alphabets. The only close similarity is 

 between the samek (s) of the Phoenician and the special Ugaritic s* 

 mentioned above, which appears in a few of the small tablets and is 

 entirely different from the ordinary s; this may, perhaps, be a variant 

 made as a copy of the Phoenician letter, only to die out without gain- 

 ing acceptance. It may be true that the forms of some Ugaritic 

 letters are based on the Phoenician. Some scholars have suggested 

 another point of connection between the two alphabets. In one of 

 the texts, a Hurrian one at that, the letter ayin appears with a small 

 circle about it. These scholars consider the circle to be the Phoenician 

 ayin, used here as a diacritical mark to distinguish the Ugaritic ayin 

 from the very similar t. However, for various reasons this view should 

 be rejected; the encircled sign in question probably represents a num- 



