Bartlett's Bible Quotations
Foreword
About halfway down the Sinai Peninsula, between Egypt and Israel,
lie the ruins of a rock-hewn temple known as Serabit el-Khadim, or
"Heights of the Slave." Built on a mountaintop in the early second
millennium B.C.E., Serabit el-Khadim represents an attempt by the
pharaohs to control workers in nearby turquoise mines. A short walk
away is a small cave. To enter, you must lie on your back and slide
down a red clay chute into a cavern about the size of the space
underneath a pickup truck. On the walls are a handful of
inscriptions that are animal-like or anthropoid: snake, ox, fish,
house.
Deciphered in 1940 by William Albright, these inscriptions are
believed to be the initial forms of a Semitic alphabet, the
precursor to our alphabet, and to all alphabets. The snake would
become the N, the fish the D, the house the B. These letters, called
the protosinaitic inscriptions, are the oldest letters ever found.
Visiting this site a few years ago, I was struck by the fact that
the Semitic alphabet was developed in the Ancient Near East in the
middle of the second millenn ... read full excerpt from: Bartlett's Bible Quotations ebook
