Alphabets and Elements

Author(s): Michael David Coogan

Source: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 216 (Dec., 1974), pp. 61-
63
Published by: The American Schools of Oriental Research
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1356335
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 Alphabets and Elements
MICHAEL DAVID COOGAN

Albright Institute of Archaeological Research

Jerusalem, Israel

The Greek word alphabiton has a transparent

3'' bgd hwzh.t
etymology, and illustrates both the Semitic origin of 4 b , t
the alphabet and the conservatism with which it has
BothIn
been treated by its successive adopters.' the repetitions and the omission
later
Latin the alphabet was the abecedarium, reflecting
Vaux's analysis of the ostracon as
exercise. Although there is sufficient sp
the traditional pronunciation of the first several
k either
letters; in classical sources, however, the wordat the end of line 3 or at the beg

elementa is occasionally used for the alphabet, and been omitted, presumably
2, they have
its etymology is a problem.2 Most ofmemory lapse. But the student apparently
the standard
dictionaries state that the origin of elementumthat
remembered is the second half of the alphabet
uncertain, but there have been proposals to deriven, and so made a fresh start, as it
began with 1, m,
were,letters
the word from the names of the first three with line
of2. This suggests that at Qumran the
alphabet
the second half of the alphabet (el, em, was taught
en).3 I in two halves, dividing it after
k. It should be noted here that in the Hebrew
intend here to give some evidence supporting this
alphabet there are eleven letters from 'alef to kaf,
etymology.
The earliest abecedaries known are from Ugarit,4
and eleven from lamed to taw, counting the
and the order of the letters used there remains grapheme S only once.8 (In the ostracon S
essentially the same, with minor substitutions and
repeated; this does not reflect the double value
deletions, in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, grapheme in Hebrew but is simply part of t
the
Greek, Etruscan, and Latin alphabets. As Jeffery exercise or an error: note the similar repetition
'alef and tet.) Lamed is thus the exact beginning of
has noted, the force of convention is such that letters
are often retained even when there is no the second half of the alphabet.
corresponding phoneme in a borrowing The only other complete Hebrew abecedary o
language,
relatively early date in which the alphabet is divid
and there is a strong reluctance to interrupt the
received series with additional letters.5 When new is from Wadi Murabba'ait (ca. A.D. 135) and reads:9
symbols are adopted, they are generally placed at 1 'b g d h w z h t y k k*
the end of the alphabet. Thus, Ugaritic adds 'i, 'u,
2 1 m* n n* s ' p p* s s* q r S
and S after the original twenty-seven graphemes of 3 t
4 t k k* I m*
the Canaanite proto-alphabet;6 Greek (and its
5 k*
daughter alphabet Etruscan) adds upsilon (a
doublet of the original waw), phi, chi, psi, and The divisio
omega at the end; and Latin has x, y, and z after the same prac
already secondary v. It is noteworthy that the order but this in
of the letters 1, m, and n is preserved not only in all of on line 4.
the alphabets just mentioned, as well as in Hebrew to the spa
and Aramaic, but also in Arabic, where the letters ostracon i
have for the most part been rearranged on a visual At Ugarit
principle, and that the letters occur without Two of th
interruption except in Ugaritic. are writte
Abecedaries in the various languages are contains t
relatively rare. For our purposes the most striking is PR U II,
from Qumran, in Hebrew, on an ostracon dated
stratigraphically to shortly before 31 B.C.;7 it reads: 1 ['a] b g b
2 [z] fit y
1 m~t s p 3 [1] m nz
2 1 m* n* s ' p s q r 4 [s] psqr

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 62 MICHAEL DAVID COOGAN BASOR 216

5 [t] i t'i'u then is evidence for writing only the first eleven
6 s
letters of the alphabet ending with K. 14 The second
half consists of another eleven letters including T,
Here the division
after which the consonants v P 0 x were added.
size of the table
We turn finally to the Latin alphabet. The most
principle. It are shoul
interesting abecedaries graffiti from Pompeii
Ugaritic and alphabet Herculaneum. The complete alphabet of that t
with I beginning
period occurs several times at Pompeii as follows:15
fourteen letters
additions AXBVCTDSERFQGPHOINKML
to the
Before leaving th
mention Y and the Z had not yet Arambeen added; L m
to the midpoint of a twenty-one
first or letter a
sec
addition there is a graffito from H
reading A B C D E F G H I K (CIL IV
'bgd
k 1mns'psq r t hwz h.ty
which is duplicated in Pannonia (C
Here too the alphabet was apparently 11469).16
divided This evidence must be set
according to the available space andinscriptions
not in which
the divide the alphabet after H,17 ,18
center. L,19 or M;20 the practice of dividing before L was
thus
Turning to the West, there are three relevantby no means universal.
To conclude:
Greek abecedaries.12 On a cup from Boiotia
1. In the Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic,
(Jeffery, pl. 10, no. 20), containing two alphabets,
and on a stamnos from southern Italy (Jeffery,Greek,
pl. Etruscan, and Latin alphabets the letters 1,
m, and n occur in that order and, except for
50, no. 19), both dating from the fifth century B.C.,
the alphabet is divided by the handles on the vessels without interruption.
Ugaritic,
after I or m. There is thus no indication before the 2. In all of the alphabets with the exception of
Arabic the letter 1 is approximately the center of the
Hellenistic period of a practice of dividing the
alphabet after k. We note some variation in thealphabet, if the additional signs at the end of the
letters added after tau. On the Boiotian cup the firstalphabet in each langauge are not included.
3. The abecedaries from Qumran, Narce, and
alphabet ends with v $P x o and the second Herculaneum and Pannonia suggest that there was
with v P 0 x; the alphabet on the stamnos, however,
a practice of writing the alphabet in two parts, the
ends with v P x $ q. These variants show that the
second part of which began with the letters 1, m, and
number and order of the final signs had not yet been
fixed. n. There is ambiguous evidence in support of this
Most surviving Etruscan abecedaries are written hypothesis from Ugarit, Murabba'at, and Pompeii.
on one line;13 the only significant exception is on a4. Given the temporal and geographical
Proto-Corinthian goblet from Narce (Jeffery, pl. separation of these examples, as well as the negative
evidence discussed above, our proposal is
48, no. 21), dated to ca. 650 B.c.; on the bottom of
the bowl of the goblet there are the letters: necessarily tentative. But in view of the conservative
nature of alphabets the examples may reflect a
A BCDE F Z H?I K Semitic pedagogical practice continued in the West
which resulted in the second half of the alphabet
The alphabet was not continued on the other side,being called elementum. The entire alphabet then
where a fragment of a word AAA is legible. Here could be called the elementa.

I The earliest attestation of alphabiton is in the Hellenistic

grande invention de l'criture et son evolution (Paris: C.
period; Herodotus, for example, calls the alphabet "the Klincksieck, 1958) 137f.; D. Diringer, The Alphabet (3d ed.,
London: Hutchinson, 1968) 420. The best evidence for the
Phoenician letters." See further L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts
of Archaic Greece (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) 40. pronunciation of the names of the letters is regrettably late. In the
2This was first pointed out to me by E. D. Cuffe, S.J., of
4th-5th century A.D. Arsinoe Papyrus, the letters of the Latin
Fordham University. alphabet are listed with their names written above them in Greek:
3 See J. B. Greenough, "Some Latin Etymologies," Harvard 1 is ille, m is imme, and n is inne; see H. Milne, Greek Shorthand
Studies in Classical Philology 1 (1890) 97-99; M. Soro Cohen,Manuals
La (London and Antrim, N.H.: Egypt Exploration

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 1974 ALPHABETS AND ELEMENTS 63

Society, 1934) 70. For onan earlier

one line (nos. date
10 B and 78) or are fragmentary for
(nos. 11, 72 and the p
em, en based on inference,
80). see W. Strzelecki, "
Buchstabennamen und 11ihre Geschichte,"
A. Caquot, "Nouvelles inscriptions aram6ennes de Hatra," Das Al
28-29. Syria 29 (1952) 97, no. 14. The only other complete abecedary in
4 See PR U II, no. 19 the(pp.
Aramaic alphabet known to me is on=
40-41 one line,
UT and comes
1019), an
(pp. 199-203 = UT 1184-1189;
from the Wadi Hammamat in Egypt; no. 185
see G. Goyon, Nouvelles is also
inscriptions4;
5 Jeffery, Local Scripts, rupestres
see du Wadi
also Hammamat B. (Paris: A.
Ullman
Maisonneuve, 1957), pl. XXXV,
Origin of the Roman Alphabet and andthe F. M. Cross, in W. K.
Names
Classical Philology 22Simpson,
(1927)"Historical and
377.Lexical Notes on the New Series of
6 See F. M. Cross, Hammamat
Jr., "The Inscriptions,"
Origin JNES 18 (1959)
and 35-36.Early E
Alphabet," Eretz-Israel 8from
12 A third, (1967)
Vaste, is Messapic,8*-24*, esp
and unfortunately survives
Speiser, "A Note on only
Alphabetic Origins,"
in an early nineteenth century copy; see Local Scripts, 283 B
(1951) 17. and pl. 53, no. 15.
7 The ostracon was published by De Vaux in RB 61 (1954) 229 13 The evidence is conveniently summarized in G. Buonamici,
and pl. Xa. There is also a photograph in Inscriptions Reveal Epigrafia Etrusca (Florence: Rinascimento, 1932) 101-27; see
(Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1973) 22 (Hebrew section), no. 12. also Local Scripts, pl. 48, nos. 18-23 and 236-39.
For the date and paleography, see F. M. Cross, "The Oldest 14 See further J. A. Bundgard, "Why Did the Art of Writing
Manuscripts from Qumran," JBL 74 (1955) 147, n. 2. In this and Spread to the West? Reflexions on the Alphabet of Marsiliana,"
Analecta Romana Instituti Danici III (1965) 27.
in the following inscriptions, an asterisked letter indicates that
the final form is used. '5 CIL IV, nos. 5472, 5499, 6905, 6907, and 9272. These
8 At Qumran, S occurred only once in the twenty-one lettergraffiti reflect a pedagogical practice described in Quintilian,
alphabet, as the acrostic poem 11Q Psa xxii:1-15 shows. Cf. alsoInst. orat. 1.1.25 and Jerome, In Jerem. 25 v. 26.
the biblical acrostic poems, all of which have only one place for 16 There is a similar graffito in Greek at Pompeii, referred to in
the grapheme S, and use words beginning with /S'/ or /S/ in thatCIL IV, 164.
place. 17 CIL III, no. 11291 b.
9 DJD II, Plate LV, no. 79. 18 CIL III, no. 8077.10.
10 See DJD II, 178. The remaining abecedaries from Wadi 19 CIL III, no. 11186; IV, no. 10710.
Murabba'at are not germane here, since they are either written 20 CIL III, no. 11453; XIII, no. 10035.19.

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