On the Transmission of the Alphabet to the Aegean before 1400 B. C.

Abstract

This article argues that Rhys Carpenter's date of ca. 700 and Naveh's of the 11th century B. C. for the transmission of the Semitic alphabet to Greece, are both far too low. New finds of early inscriptions in North Arabic scripts, notably that at Kāmid el-Lōz, revive the hypothesis proposed by Praetorius at the beginning of the century, that the so-called "new letters" in the Greek alphabet derive from ones found in Thamudic and Safaitic, for consonants that merged in Canaanite. As these letters seem to have disappeared from the Phoenician coast by the 14th century B. C., it is argued that the alphabet must have been transmitted to Greece before then. Further, the hypothesis of an earlier date removes many anomalies of the present schemes and makes possible a general theory for the many alphabets and alphabetically-based scripts that are found around the Mediterranean and beyond.

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