A to Z: The First Alphabet. And it is in those enclaves of so-called civilization that the need was, I think, first felt for some kind of record keeping. There are too few signs here. IRVING FINKEL: To give a really clear example. Your score has been saved for A to Z: The First Alphabet. NARRATOR: The name of the goddess was the key to understanding the mysterious Serabit script. But Bill sings from memory. He has a small inscription in Egyptian and a parallel inscription in the strange signs below. But, in many other cases he is not a duck at all. DR. IRVING FINKEL (Assyriologist): When you scrutinize what happened, it is actually very dramatic, the giant leap for mankind. The Sinai Desert: Thirteen-hundred feet above the sand dunes rises the plateau of Serabit El-Khadim. The Egyptian hieroglyph for water, “mayim” in the Canaanite tongue, became the Greek “mu” and the Latin M. There were two Egyptian signs which represented snakes. NARRATOR: The Egyptian word for catfish is “nar.” A chisel is “mer.” When combined they sound out “Nar-mer,” the name of the first of the pharaohs. It’s inevitable. It’s a character. And once you start with the idea of reducing speech to any kind of symbol from which language can be retrieved, then the rebus thing hits you in the face, because when you’re casting around for the way to do it, it’s obvious. They just turn it around, because they don’t care about the image. NARRATOR: At the medieval Round Church in Cambridge, England, calligraphic artist Brody Neuenschwander is mounting an event which celebrates the diversity of the scripts in use by people around the world. So, he wants the name. If your review contains spoilers, please check the Spoiler box. NARRATOR: At the edge of the plateau, Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda came across the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple, dominated by dozens of stone markers, or “stelae.”, PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) These commemorative stelae are one of the features of the temple at Serabit El-Khadim. We are speaking about him right now. But, the similarities with ancient Egyptian writing do not end there. NARRATOR: It seems that Khebded and his followers took their new script back to Canaan, where it was adopted by another Canaanite people, the Phoenicians. It makes smartphones and computers possible, and yet it is thousands of years old. In around 30 pictures, 25 to 30 pictures, you can write everything, because you are after single sounds that you need. It seems that the alphabet, the concept of writing each phoneme with a separate glyph, that idea, as simple as it is, was only invented once. 0 /5000. The earliest known alphabet in the wider sense is the Wadi el-Hol script, believed to be an abjad, which through its successor Phoenician is the ancestor of modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin (via the Old Italic alphabet), Cyrillic (via the Greek alphabet) and Hebrew (via Aramaic). The Chinese script is ancient. He was in the mud, now he’s in the rock. YONGSHENG CHEN: Egyptian and Chinese writing are very comparable. The aleph, he, heth (originally an /h/, but later long /e/), yod, 'ayin, and waw became the Greek vowels alpha, epsilon, eta, iota, omicron, and upsilon. As it happens, “ga” means milk. Egypt: the Saqqara funerary complex near Cairo. Sometimes the connection is far from obvious, but it’s still there. Exploring a variety of writing systems. Stories of the letters of the English alphabet . NARRATOR: The incredible story of writing can finally be told. These became the Greek “nu” and our N. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: So, what was the Egyptian word for head? You can say a falcon and then you will have a duck, which means that the falcon belongs to the category of birds. Oh, there’s so much writing! And if so, who was responsible for it? Episodes. CHINESE BOY: (Translated from Chinese) The fish has scales; the two crosses look like scales. LYDIA WILSON: Wow! Alphabets don’t seem to have anything to do with the rebus principle, so what is the connection between the way writing began, and the way most people write today? ZAI YUHONG: (Translated from Chinese) It is “fish.” How do you know it is fish? PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) What appears at the bottom of this stela is really very interesting, since one finds here an engraving of someone riding a donkey. Egypt could be named as the nation with the first alphabet were the provision of vowels was considered unnecessary. But then, sometime around 3000 B.C. All Episodes (914) Next. NARRATOR: What Khebded and his followers did in the mines of Serabit changed the world. This is a typical representation of someone from the Negev, someone who is an Asiatic, as defined by the Egyptians. Could this be the first alphabet? Major funding for NOVA is provided by the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS viewers. NOVA: Beyond the Elements: Life. This is why I call him the Rosetta Stone of the alphabet! There is a dog there. W; Languages; NATO Phonetic Alphabet; NATO Phonetic Alphabet. Almost all the world’s alphabets share this same root. From this background, he posits that it's even possible the legendary Palamedes really did invent the (Greek) alphabet. Those enemies were shackled. There is a 75 character minimum for reviews. And that’s the headdress he used. A to Z: The First Alphabet. … It seems that they made the same giant leap at about the same time. This stela is a biographical account by an expedition leader who came to mine here. The Phoenicians and Arameans began to write, and soon the alphabet spread to the Aegean, where it spurred the Greeks to emerge from centuries of illiteracy. And how did those pictures eventually become the letters we use today? ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yes. Watch Preview. Where would we be without the world’s alphabets? But researchers are only now uncovering the origin story to our own alphabet, which may have gotten its beginnings in a turquoise mine 4,000 years ago. is "what was the world's first alphabet?" And to write something in this Canaanite dialect, you needed around 30 sounds, that’s all. The first complete alphabet in world history is the Greek alphabet, as it emerged around the start of Ancient Greece, roughly 800 BCE. All modern alphabets are believed to have developed from a single parent script, which originated sometime in the second millennium BC. IRVING FINKEL: And of course, there’s a bit of a squabble between Egyptologists and Assyriologists about who invented writing, and of course, we did. September 23, 2020. Sit down please. DR. PIERRE TALLET (Egyptologist): You have, in front of you, one of the first A of history, followed by one of the first Bs of history, also. If the vowels are dropped from English sentences, while the consonants remain in their correct position with respect to the other consonants, literate, native English speakers can usually still understand it. February 17, 2021. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: Writing always starts with pictures, and then it becomes a little bit more complicated. And one panel shows travelers, in the distinctive patterned robes of Canaan, which contrast with the simple white loincloths of the Egyptians. We’ve still got it there today. DR. ORLY GOLDWASSER (Egyptologist): This is the greatest experiment ever conducted to write language in pictures only, only pictures. Take your bread that rots not, your beer that sours not. It originally looked a little like a bull, like this. Original funding for this program was provided by Draper, the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the George D. Smith Fund, the NOVA Science Trust and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NARRATOR: The rebus principle is particularly useful in Chinese, because the spoken language has many homophones, words that sound the same, but have different meanings. These are the world’s alphabets. ORLY GOLDWASSER: For me it’s worth all the gold of Egypt, this little piece that stays here in the basket. He is just the sound of the duck, “soh.” For example, the word “daughter” is “soht,” or something like that. NARRATOR: But A Brush with Silence presents its audience with a puzzle. He wants the name of the goddess, because if his theory is correct, he has “the beloved of….” The beloved of whom? Great. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yeah, they said it in their own language; what do they care? And that, I think, was first developed in Egypt. Every mission left one inside the temple precincts. Experts featured in this film may have received support from funders of this program. They could immediately relate to it because this was the head of their own god Baal. While the Japanese and Chinese calligraphers draw Chinese characters that clearly connect to the origin of writing, at every other table the calligraphers are using scripts which look very different. Writing has played a vital role in the development and expansion of cultures throughout history. NARRATOR: Squabbling aside, where was the rebus born? And so a scribe would write it syllabically, “she” “ga.” So, he would use this sign, the barley sign, for the “she” bit, and then he’d have to write “ga” for the second bit. They can be used to distinguish “mu,” “tree,” from “mu,” “to wash” and so clarify the ambiguity inherent in rebus writing. This "alphabet" was spread by Phoenician traders and then modified by the inclusion of vowels by the Greeks, whose first 2 letters, alpha and beta were put together to form the name "alphabet.". So, that straight line through these stages goes all the way back to that bull, even though, at different ends, they look nothing alike. Another simplification, it looks simply like a six. What Was the First Alphabet? We owe to those migrant workers the invention of the alphabet, a script which spread and evolved to give the gift of writing to countless cultures across the world. So, who invented it? Everybody uses a pen, or a brush, and with that we can express all of our thoughts, record all of our information, study the stars, and compose poems and write letters to each other. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the NOVA Science Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS viewers. How did technologies from pen to paper to printing press make it all possible? With his guide Salem, Pierre sets off to climb 1,300 feet from the desert floor. This page lists the letters of the English alphabet from a to z. NARRATOR: Hieroglyphs are indeed magic. (Premiered September 23, 2020), NARRATOR: It’s our most important tool, one we all take for granted: writing. Rise up, oh Teti! Additional funding for "The First Alphabet" is provided by the George D. Smith Fund. NARRATOR: But what about the Egyptians? As far as we can tell from the evidence, for several centuries, the use of pictograms was limited to primitive accountancy. WRITE A REVIEW NO, THANK YOU. NARRATOR: A to Z: The First Alphabet, right now, on NOVA. By 2700 BCE Egyptian writing had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. The answers to those questions can only be found in an archaeology of the human mind. BRITISH MUSEUM EMPLOYEE: Into a basket, yeah. And then you take only the first sound, the “ba,” and whenever you will need the “ba,” you draw this house. PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) The basic principle of the alphabet, which is, in the end, a much simpler writing system, made writing much more accessible to a larger number of people. Next to his defeated enemy is the symbol for a harpoon, “war” in Egyptian. Images, of course, are part of all human cultures. They belong to the same family. IRVING FINKEL: And this is the sign for barley, which is drawn quite recognizably as a pictographic sign. This is the basis of thought. This technology allows us to teleport our thoughts into another person’s brain, across space and time. NARRATOR: But what was it that made people want to represent words in visual form? Then the shadow of the old moon, he went into all the rock, as well, during the creation time. "What Was the First Alphabet?" The temple was dedicated to the goddess of turquoise, Hathor, and here the miners could make offerings in the hope of enlisting her aid. Interesting Facts About the English Alphabet, Latin Alphabet Changes: How the Roman Alphabet Got Its G, Learn the Greek Alphabet With These Helpful Tips. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabet NARRATOR: This is the familiar rebus principle, but applied in a radically new way. NARRATOR: So, these lines represent something, something that is not present. BILL HARNEY: When he sang out “koooooo” like this, the dog is the one whose sound made everything change, he changed the whole world. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Hilda stepped on a stone, and she picked up this stone and told Petrie “there is something here.” And this stone in the mine was the first inscription in something very strange, nobody saw ever before. Would you like to write a review? Then there is all human footprints, all over, you can see it. Do you think I am drawing a picture or a character? NARRATOR: The code breaker was Sir Alan Gardiner. These images, powerful as they are, cannot tell him which words to use. ZAI YUHONG: (Translated from Chinese) He saw the scales. Writing shaped our world and the rise of human knowledge, from the trading of goods to tales of ancient goddesses and kings. NARRATOR: A determinative is a symbol that classifies words into categories and so, gives a clue as to the correct way to read a character. This is the Alif, the first letter, the A. This alphabet itself derives from earlier pictographic examples found at Wadi el-Hol. IRVING FINKEL: The way I look at it is this: these writing systems have in common the rebus principle. It shows a big rectangle in the middle, which is separated into small rectangles; on the left and right of it there are zig zag lines. They were not scribes or scholars, but when they adapted the rebus principle, which was the basis of all ancient scripts, to make the first letters, they created a form of communication which would eventually sweep the globe. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Gardiner looks on it, and it’s very easy for him to read the Egyptian part. Its first origins can be traced back to a Proto-Sinaitic script developed in Ancient Egypt to represent the language of Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in Egypt. Rebus writing is the written version of the pun in speech. Do you see? Some funders of NOVA also fund basic science research. DR. GÜNTER DREYER (Egyptologist): (Translated from German) In the beginning, there was the desire to capture the world in concepts and pictures. NARRATOR: On the other side of the Sphinx was what looked like a complete inscription, and Gardiner was struck by the last symbol. Now the connection between that and our A in English is quite obvious. And it gets stylized in Phoenician, simplified to simply this. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: The Romans turned everything the other way, systematically. In Hebrew, the first two letters of the abecedary (as in A-B-C) are, likewise, aleph and bet, but unlike the Greek letters, the Semitic "alphabet" lacked vowels: Aleph wasn't an /a/. This is how to write fish in the ancient oracle bone script. ORLY GOLDWASSER: The great trick, the genius trick was to take a picture, to read it in its Canaanite name: the house is beït in a Canaanite dialect. But, when I look at it, I see, in these archaic letter shapes, the echoes of the alphabet at Serabit. NARRATOR: Cuneiform, the writing system of Mesopotamia, also made use of classifiers, as did the last great picture-based writing system to be developed, in the New World, around 600 B.C. If the vowels are dropped from English sentences, while the consonants remain in... Greek Modification of … Please do not use ALL CAPS. Barry B. Powell says it is a misnomer to refer to the Semitic abecedary as an alphabet. These three strokes indicate that the character being written has something to do with water. But the Canaanites ignored all these complexities. But it’s been centuries and centuries since we’ve seen any kind of image in this, and I don’t think anybody would know that behind that letter is actually a profile of a head. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) The catfish and the chisel stand as sound values for the king’s name. So, he would draw the picture which represented milk. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) And this little panel of “irrigated land,” which we already know from the pre-dynastic clay vessel, stands for the sound value “sh.” So, you read his name as “War-sh.” Here are new possibilities of script being seized. NARRATOR: As the mud hardened, some of the ancestors passed into the rock, leaving traces of that moment of creation. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) The big rectangle divided into small panels shows the irrigated land, and left and right of the Nile Valley are the mountains. Even though you can see the general idea of head. There are 214 classifier signs and the majority of Chinese characters are formed using one. GÜNTER DREYER: True writing starts when the sounds of a language are represented. The First Alphabet Leave a reply Premiering this Wednesday is a documentary on the history of writing that experts have been working on for sixteen years; twelve years to puzzle out a story and four to film and edit. It looked like the letter “t” in the ancient paleo-Hebrew alphabet, and that reminded him of a Canaanite goddess known from scripture. With so many different writing systems, can we ever hope to trace the common origin of them all? Last time that I saw him he was in a box, he moved now into a basket. NARRATOR: The next step was to extend the rebus principle, which on the Palette is used to spell names, to the full vocabulary of the Egyptian language. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: Yes, these are all magic spells, designed to resurrect the king so he could live forever in the afterlife. YIDUMDUMA BILL HARNEY (Wardaman Elder): All these song line trails that were made, happening all the way right back from the beginning of everything, to people, to people, to people, all the way right back, billion years ago, to million years, come down to hundred years, and now, now come back, right up to us.