An outline, era by era

Canaanite city-states; early alphabet (Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician)

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

The Canaanite city-states were small, independent towns and their surrounding farmland along the eastern Mediterranean coast and inland, in what is now Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria and Jordan. In the Bronze Age, cities such as Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Ugarit, Hazor, Megiddo and Jerusalem were each ruled by their own king. They traded timber, purple dye, oil and metals, and often paid tribute to Egypt or to the Hittites, who competed for the region.

Canaan is also where the alphabet began. Around 1900 to 1800 BCE, workers who spoke a Semitic language and lived in Egyptian-controlled Sinai and Egypt adapted a small set of Egyptian picture signs to write their own speech. This early script is called Proto-Sinaitic. It later developed into the Proto-Canaanite script and then the Phoenician alphabet, of about twenty-two consonant letters, used from around 1050 BCE. Greek and Aramaic scripts descend from it, and through them most alphabets used today.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Cadmus brings the letters to Greece

    Origin story

    The legend

    Cadmus, a prince of the Phoenician city of Tyre, goes west searching for his sister Europa, who has been carried off by Zeus. He founds the city of Thebes in Greece. He brings with him the letters, which the Greeks call Phoenician signs, and teaches them to the people there.

    The rest is history

    The story is told by Herodotus in the fifth century BCE, who says the Greeks learned their letters from the Phoenicians and saw the old forms himself in Theban temples. The core is right: the Greek alphabet derives from a Phoenician one, as letter names such as alpha and beta, from aleph and beth, show. Cadmus himself is a mythical figure. The Greeks most likely borrowed the script around the ninth or eighth century BCE, though the exact date is debated, and they added signs for vowels. The earliest Greek inscriptions date to the eighth century BCE.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories, book 5, chapters 57 to 61. Greek prose history, c. 430 BCE.
    2. BookJeffery, L. H. The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.Classic study of how the Greek alphabet derived from Phoenician.
    3. BookPowell, Barry B. Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

  2. The alphabet was invented by Moses or by the Phoenicians alone

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common claim holds that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet from nothing, as traders who needed a quick way to keep accounts. In older versions of the claim the alphabet was a gift given to Moses at Sinai. Either way, it is said to have appeared as a sudden invention.

    The rest is history

    The alphabet was not a sudden invention by one people. Short inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai, dated to roughly 1900 to 1500 BCE, and at Wadi el-Hol in Egypt show Semitic speakers adapting Egyptian hieroglyphs to represent single consonants. The idea was probably worked out by people familiar with Egyptian writing, perhaps miners and soldiers. The name Proto-Sinaitic comes from the Sinai finds. A related alphabet written in cuneiform was used at Ugarit around 1300 BCE. The Phoenicians did not invent the alphabet, but they standardised and spread it by sea. The Ahiram sarcophagus from Byblos carries one of the earliest Phoenician inscriptions, dating to about 1000 BCE.

    Sources

    1. BookSass, Benjamin. The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium B.C. Ägypten und Altes Testament 13. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988.
    2. BookDarnell, John Coleman, et al. "Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol." Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59 (2005): 63-124.Egyptian desert inscriptions that push the alphabet's origin back.
    3. BookNaveh, Joseph. Early History of the Alphabet. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982.

  3. Baal defeats Yam and Mot

    Myth

    The legend

    The storm god Baal fights Yam, the sea, and defeats him with magic clubs made by the craftsman god Kothar. Baal then builds a palace on Mount Zaphon. Later he is swallowed by Mot, death, and the earth dries up. His sister Anat kills Mot, and Baal returns, bringing back the rains.

    The rest is history

    This story is known from clay tablets found from 1929 at Ugarit, modern Ras Shamra in Syria, and dated to about 1350 to 1200 BCE. They are written in the Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform script, and they give the best view of Canaanite religion before the Iron Age. The cycle seems to reflect the yearly cycle of rain and drought in a land that depended on rainfall. It also shares images with the Hebrew Bible, where Yahweh is described as defeating the sea and riding the clouds. Ugarit was destroyed around 1190 BCE.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryThe Baal Cycle (KTU 1.1 to 1.6). Ugaritic myth on clay tablets from Ugarit, c. 1350 to 1200 BCE.
    2. BookSmith, Mark S., and Wayne T. Pitard. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle. Volume 2. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
    3. BookParker, Simon B., ed. Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. Writings from the Ancient World 9. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997.

  4. Dido founds Carthage

    Origin story

    The legend

    Princess Elissa, called Dido, flees Tyre after her brother, King Pygmalion, murders her husband. She sails to North Africa and asks the local people for as much land as an oxhide can cover. She cuts the hide into thin strips and encloses a hill, where she founds Carthage.

    The rest is history

    The tale is told by later writers such as Timaeus, Justin and Virgil, who gave it its famous form in the Aeneid. The oxhide trick, which explains the name Byrsa, is probably a Greek play on words. Carthage was nonetheless a real Phoenician colony from Tyre. Ancient writers put its founding in the late ninth century BCE, and the earliest archaeological material in Carthage dates to about the later eighth century BCE. Tyre founded many colonies in the western Mediterranean, in search of metals such as silver from Spain.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryJustin. Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, book 18. Latin epitome, 2nd or 3rd century CE.
    2. BookAubet, Maria Eugenia. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
    3. BookMarkoe, Glenn. Phoenicians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

  5. The walls of Jericho fall

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    The Israelites under Joshua march around the Canaanite city of Jericho once a day for six days, with priests blowing rams' horns. On the seventh day they march around seven times and shout. The walls collapse and the city is taken.

    The rest is history

    The story comes from the Book of Joshua, written down many centuries after any events it may recall. Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho, by John Garstang, Kathleen Kenyon and others show the town was heavily fortified in the Early Bronze Age and again in the Middle Bronze Age, but it was thinly occupied in the Late Bronze Age, around 1400 to 1200 BCE. Kenyon found no sign of a walled city for Joshua to conquer. The Amarna letters of the 1300s BCE show Canaan as a patchwork of city-states under Egyptian rule, not one united by invasion. How Israel emerged in the region is still debated.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBook of Joshua, chapter 6. Hebrew Bible, compiled in its present form probably between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE.
    2. BookKenyon, Kathleen M. Digging Up Jericho. London: Ernest Benn, 1957.
    3. BookMoran, William L., ed. The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.Letters from Canaanite kings to the Egyptian pharaoh.

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