A History of Hebrew Part 8: The Proto-Semitic Alphabet

A History of Hebrew DVD available through Amazon.Com - http://www.amazon.com/History-Hebrew-Its-Language-Philosophy/dp/1621370593

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This is a segment of a much larger video production that I am working on and am looking for feedback (positive and negative) on the layout and content.

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In 1905, a new discovery changed the world's perception of the origins of this Semitic alphabet. Flinders Petrie, a renowned Egyptologist and pioneer in modern archeology, discovered inscriptions of previously unknown symbols at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula. Dr. Alan H. Gardiner, Another renowned Egyptologist, studied these inscriptions in detail. He discovered that these Sinaitic inscriptions consisted of a total of thirty-two symbols. Because of the limited number of symbols Dr. Gardiner determined that this was an alphabet. Gardiner was then able to easily identify this Sinaitic alphabet as Semitic because of the pictographic nature of this alphabet.

The name of each Hebrew letter is a Hebrew word with meaning. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called the aleph, which means "ox," The tenth letter is called the yud or yad meaning "hand" and the sixteenth letter is the ayin, a word meaning "eye."

Dr. Gardiner found that the letters in these ancient Sinaitic inscriptions were pictures of the very names of the Hebrew letters. The image of an ox head was the letter aleph, the image of the hand was the letter yad and the image of an eye was the letter ayin. This relationship between the pictograph and the names of the Semitic letters, Dr. Gardiner proposed, proved that this was the precursor to the previously known Phoenician/old hebrew alphabet.

Once it was determined that the new script was Semitic, Dr. Gardiner, in 1916, was able to translate a portion of one inscription. This inscription includes the letters lamed, beyt, ayin, lamed and tav, which for the Semitic word l'b'alt, meaning "to the lady."

In 1999, John and Deborah Darnell were surveying ancient travel routes in the deserts of southern Egypt when they came upon another set of inscriptions very similar to the Sinaitic inscriptions found by Petrie.

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Credits

Narration: Jeff A. Benner

Graphics: Jeff A. Benner

Music: Callen Clark

Photos: John Melzian, Bruce Zukerman, Marilyn Lundberg

Видео A History of Hebrew Part 8: The Proto-Semitic Alphabet канала Jeff A. Benner