Everyone knows that European languages and their alphabets are essentially derived from Latin, because the Roman Empire brought its civilization to the "old continent" during its conquests over largely illiterate territories. The Romans themselves admitted that they had borrowed the use of the alphabet from the Greeks. As for the Greeks, they had themselves borrowed it from the Phoenicians, as explained in this testimonial from the great Greek historian, Herodotus, in the 5th century BCE:
These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus and of whom the Gephyraeans were a part brought with them to Hellas [Greece], among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet, which had been unknown before this, I think, to the Greeks. As time went on the sound and the form of the letters were changed. (Herodotus, Histories, Book V, section LVIII)
And so, for centuries, History has held that the Phoenicians had invented the alphabet. Now the oldest inscription found in Phoenician alphabetic writing dates back to the 10th century BCE: it is the inscription on the sarcophagus of King Hiram, friend and ally of David and his son Solomon. But, at the beginning of the 20th century, an archaeological discovery came to shake up this state of affairs: an alphabetic inscription was found in the Sinai Peninsula and dated back to the 15th century BCE, that is to say some 500 years before the oldest Phoenician inscription. Before shedding some light on this subject, let's first look at the continuation of the historical and biblical chronologies (refer to previous articles since Adam):
year 2210 (1550 BCE): in Egypt, beginning of the 18th dynasty with Pharaoh Ahmose I
year 2228 (1532 BCE): Ahmose expels the Hyksos and unifies Lower and Upper Egypt
year 2229 (1531 BCE): Joseph becomes viceroy of Egypt, start of 7 years of abundance
year 2235 (1525 BCE): death of Ahmose, regency of Nefertari
year 2236 (1524 BCE): start of 7 years of famine
year 2238 (1522 BCE): Jacob and his clan descend to Egypt
year 2255 (1506 BCE): death of Jacob in Egypt, at the age of 147
(1480 BCE): regency of Hatshepsut, widow of Thutmose II
(1458 BCE): death of Hatshepsut, reign of her son Thutmose III
year 2304 (1451 BCE): death of Joseph "Ineni"
(1401 BCE): reign of the usurper Thutmose IV, who had not known Joseph (Exodus 1:8)
(1391 BCE): reign of Amenhotep III
year 2374 (1386 BCE): adoption of Moses by daughter of Amenhotep III (Exodus 2:10)
It was during the excavations at Serabit el-Khadim in 1906 in the Sinai Peninsula, around a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Hathor, that the British Flinders Petrie discovered a small sphinx of about 25 cm that came to revolutionize our state of knowledge on the birth of the alphabet. This temple of Hathor had been built around the 20th century BCE to protect the workers of this place who exploited the turquoise mines. The sphinx contains a hieroglyphic inscription that also dates from this period. But, Petrie noticed another inscription, or rather a graffiti, with a writing that was not hieroglyphic. Petrie had already established that these mines and its temple had been used during the 18th Egyptian dynasty, namely from the 15th century BCE. The slaves who worked there were not yet Hebrew slaves (the Hebrews had not yet been enslaved) but were of Semitic origin, for example Canaanites. This graffiti, undoubtedly inscribed on the sphinx at this second period of use of the site, was deciphered as a Semitic language. For example, there is a dedication without the vowel l-b-l-t which is transcribed with the vowel as le-baalat which means in Hebrew "to the Mistress", therefore a reference to Hathor of course.
At the time of this discovery, and in absence of any reference to this writing for words that later turned out to be from Hebrew language, the term adopted was "proto-Sinaic writing", simply because it had been discovered in Sinai. Since this discovery, other inscriptions have been found in the land of Israel, later than those of Sinai but earlier than the Phoenician inscription: they were given the name "proto-Canaanite writing", again because they were discovered in Canaan. The question is why was an inscription in Hebrew language found in Sinai during the 18th dynasty? Probably because the Hebrews, before becoming slaves, were employed in all levels of the 18th Egyptian dynasty and, why not, as foremen of slaves employed in the mines of Sinai, a territory under Egyptian control at that time. The Bible also gives us the following detail:
Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land [of Egypt] was filled with them. (Exodus 1:6-7)
After the death of Joseph and his brothers, the Hebrew people resided in Egypt but without leadership: a flock without a shepherd! It was certainly easy for some of them to adopt the customs and even the religion of their hosts because, without any spiritual guide, they entered a phase of assimilation into Egyptian society. But they remained foreigners in the eyes of the Egyptians. The next step, with the rise to power of a new king who had not known Joseph (Exodus 1:8), was their enslavement.
These inscriptions found in Sinai and Canaan therefore all have one thing in common: their language is Hebrew! And the Hebrews are known, according to the Bible, to have stayed in Egypt at the beginning of the 18th dynasty, and until the end of this dynasty with the Exodus. Then, still according to the Bible, they began their conquest of Canaan where they established themselves with their own monotheistic cult. Now we see clearly that writings and graffiti in Hebrew language, in an archaic Hebrew writing (let's say proto-Hebrew), have been found on the trail of the presence of the Hebrews from Sinai to Canaan. In Egypt, another language and another writing (hieroglyphics) were used and, in Canaan, no specific language or writing has been discovered because the Canaanites spoke Semitic languages but wrote in cuneiform (as demonstrated by their letters addressed to Akhenaten). It was the Hittite civilization (Asia Minor) that brought them this cuneiform writing since they dominated over Canaan city-states before the conquest of this land by the conquering pharaoh, Thutmose III, in the middle of the 18th dynasty.
Have we revised our history books for all that? No, and so most general works on the subject repeat this two-thousand-year-old assertion that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet!
I hope that this article on the theme "the Bible is true" was of interest to you. Do not hesitate to send me your comments, while waiting for a next biblical episode proven by history and archaeology.
To return to the home page of articles on this theme of "the Bible is true", click here.
Albert Benhamou
Private tour guide in Israel
February 2025
