Additional funding is provided by the NOVA Science Trust. So, that straight line through these stages goes all the way back to that bull, even though, at different ends, they look nothing alike. The broken rectangle that was the Egyptian sign for house, was abbreviated by the Greeks and flipped by the Romans to create the Latin B. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yeah. Without vowels, consonants can't be pronounced, so only partial information on how to read a passage is provided by just the consonants. They could immediately relate to it because this was the head of their own god Baal. German for Beginners: Pronunciation and Alphabet, M.A., Linguistics, University of Minnesota. NARRATOR: So, the similarities between ancient writing systems reflect not a common origin, but what all people throughout history have always had in common, the human mind. NARRATOR: Using a picture to represent a sound in this way is called the “rebus principle,” and it allows pictures to spell out words. Then it reached Italy in the hands of the Etruscans, and Europe was never the same. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: Yeah, they are pretty impressive aren’t they? In doing so, the Egyptians created what was possibly the world’s first true writing system, a complex and beautiful script: hieroglyphs. NARRATOR: The code breaker was Sir Alan Gardiner. In the Northern Territory of Australia, Yidumduma Bill Harney, an elder of the Wardaman people, is singing an ancient song about the creation of the world. Vocabulary for ESL learners and teachers. A collection of 16 previously untranslated ancient inscriptions lay in museums for 100 years but have now proven that Hebrew is the very first Alphabet in earth history from which all other alphabets, including English, Latin and Arabic, are derived. is "what was the world's first alphabet?" Could this be the first alphabet? These three strokes indicate that the character being written has something to do with water. Egyptians have always lived on the land immediately adjacent to the Nile, where irrigation ditches can bring river water to the fields. It was quickly adopted by their neighbors and relatives to the east and north, the Canaanites, the Hebrews, and the Phoenicians. Season 47 | Episode 11. In der folgende Liste finden Sie als Kunde unsere Testsieger der getesteten What is the first letter of the arabic alphabet, während der erste Platz den oben genannten Vergleichssieger ausmacht. ThoughtCo, Aug. 26, 2020, thoughtco.com/what-was-the-first-alphabet-119394. A to Z: The First Alphabet. Then the shadow of the old moon, he went into all the rock, as well, during the creation time. Some cultures still do. After the victory, there was apparently a big victory celebration. What was, at first, only used in accounting, is now being used to clarify pictures, to help viewers read them. DR. PIERRE TALLET (Egyptologist): You have, in front of you, one of the first A of history, followed by one of the first Bs of history, also. In around 30 pictures, 25 to 30 pictures, you can write everything, because you are after single sounds that you need. They are following in the footsteps of a famous pair of archaeologists. The hieroglyphic inscription explains that 37 foreigners came to make offerings to the local ruler, perhaps hoping to be given work. The palette tells the story entirely through pictures. NARRATOR: So, these lines represent something, something that is not present. But, the similarities with ancient Egyptian writing do not end there. Please do not use ALL CAPS. So, on this tablet here, there is an ear of barley. DR. ORLY GOLDWASSER (Egyptologist): This is the greatest experiment ever conducted to write language in pictures only, only pictures. W; Languages; NATO Phonetic Alphabet; NATO Phonetic Alphabet. It had to be invented. For example, the following sentence: This may be opaque to someone not raised with English, perhaps especially if his native language is written without an alphabet. Alphabet, set of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. What Was the First Alphabet? ORLY GOLDWASSER: For example, you will have a duck after all the names of birds. And that’s what it is there. WRITE A REVIEW NO, THANK YOU. And afterwards we put another sign, something that looks like a small half French bread, you see it? As far as we can tell from the evidence, for several centuries, the use of pictograms was limited to primitive accountancy. PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) What appears at the bottom of this stela is really very interesting, since one finds here an engraving of someone riding a donkey. Waw was also kept as a consonant called wau or digamma, and located in the alphabet's order between epsilon and zeta. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: They are spells that help resurrect the king in the afterlife. The fact that his name is still there made him, in a sense, immortal. We don’t know exactly how to pronounce that. So, they think of the method of rebus, rebus principle. What prompted them to start recording things, not for the ear but for the eye? This "alphabet" was spread by Phoenician traders and then modified by the inclusion of vowels by the Greeks, whose first 2 letters, alpha and beta were put together to form the name "alphabet.". Everything is in the leading direction. They sit in silence, and they write their own scripts. "What Was the First Alphabet?" NARRATOR: The need was to tally up food production, so that it could be taxed and distributed to the cities. Origin of the Word "Alphabet". NARRATOR: The king’s name is repeated, again and again, in every incantation. And the ancient Egyptians realized that; they realized that the written word had so much power and that by writing your name you became immortal, you immortalized yourself. Cut French bread, which gives the meaning “tuh,” so, “soh-t.”. The first alphabet emerged among Semitic speaking mercenaries in Egyptian service for managing their warfare and economic activities. In Egypt or Mesopotamia or somewhere else entirely? If your review contains spoilers, please check the Spoiler box. It originally looked a little like a bull, like this. ORLY GOLDWASSER: And this is the great invention: this is the alphabet. NARRATOR: What makes hieroglyphs difficult is that Egyptian scribes used thousands of different symbols, and the rebus means that many of them have at least two different meanings. We are speaking about him right now. IRVING FINKEL: To give a really clear example. NARRATOR: …with more in common than we think. The first letter, this rectangle, was clearly based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for house, “per.” Egyptian scribes used this symbol in three ways: to write the word house, to represent the sound “per” and, finally, as a classifier, attached to any word to do with buildings in general. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) And this little panel of “irrigated land,” which we already know from the pre-dynastic clay vessel, stands for the sound value “sh.” So, you read his name as “War-sh.” Here are new possibilities of script being seized. Just below you can see the sign of the house that is being used for the sound value B in this script. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS viewers. So, he wants the name. … DR. GÜNTER DREYER (Egyptologist): (Translated from German) In the beginning, there was the desire to capture the world in concepts and pictures. This is the Alif, the first letter, the A. YONGSHENG CHEN: Egyptian and Chinese writing are very comparable. GÜNTER DREYER: True writing starts when the sounds of a language are represented. There is a 75 character minimum for reviews. And that’s how you develop into a purely alphabetic system later on. The king appears with his entourage. Barry B. Powell says it is a misnomer to refer to the Semitic abecedary as an alphabet. All modern alphabets are believed to have developed from a single parent script, which originated sometime in the second millennium BC. PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) What we see here with this bull’s head, which is crowned by two horns, is probably the first prototype of our letter A. Exploring a variety of writing systems. NARRATOR: At root, like hieroglyphs, Chinese characters are stylized pictures. For example, “mu” means “tree,” but it also means “to wash oneself.” And so, the stylized picture of a tree can represent the word “tree,” and it can also be used as a so-called phonogram to represent the sound “mu,” “to wash.” But, that of course, could be confusing. A to Z: The First Alphabet The birth of writing and the first alphabet were among the world’s most vital inventions. Where would we be without the world’s alphabets? What do you think it is? It’s a conceptual revolution in the meaning of a picture. NARRATOR: The turquoise mine workings are still dotted with inscriptions carved nearly 4,000 years ago, which mark the moment hieroglyphs became letters. The First Alphabet Leave a reply Premiering this Wednesday is a documentary on the history of writing that experts have been working on for sixteen years; twelve years to puzzle out a story and four to film and edit. It was a short, 22-character list with (1) names and (2) a fixed order for characters that could (3) easily be memorized. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/a-to-z-the-first-alphabet And once you start with the idea of reducing speech to any kind of symbol from which language can be retrieved, then the rebus thing hits you in the face, because when you’re casting around for the way to do it, it’s obvious. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yeah, they said it in their own language; what do they care? NARRATOR: At the moon dreaming site, Bill can sing to his ancestors, for these are not representations of them, these are the ancestors, gone into the rock. How Writing Changed the World: Follow the evolution of the written word, from millennia old carvings in an Egyptian turquoise mine to our modern-day alphabets. And to write something in this Canaanite dialect, you needed around 30 sounds, that’s all. Character. NARRATOR: This clay tablet is the distant ancestor of today’s spreadsheet: a grid of boxes with symbols that represent numbers and pictures that represent commodities. IRVING FINKEL: And this is the sign for barley, which is drawn quite recognizably as a pictographic sign. Then the Greeks make, again, rather more abstract representation of the head. ORLY GOLDWASSER: For me it’s worth all the gold of Egypt, this little piece that stays here in the basket. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: Yes, these are all magic spells, designed to resurrect the king so he could live forever in the afterlife. BILL HARNEY: When he sang out “koooooo” like this, the dog is the one whose sound made everything change, he changed the whole world. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: What is their word for head? NARRATOR: This individual clearly participated in more than one expedition, because he’s pictured on another stela, where the hieroglyphs give us his name. We are at the very beginning of democratization of writing, which began right here, at Serabit El-Khadim, in about 1850 B.C. NARRATOR: Turquoise was part of the magic that helped the dead rise to eternal life. NOVA: Beyond the Elements: Life. It’s a character. Writing has played a vital role in the development and expansion of cultures throughout history. NARRATOR: The rebus principle was the key that unlocked writing for the peoples of the Fertile Crescent. NARRATOR: In the Wardaman creation story, all the plants and animals of the world were once people, the Wardaman’s ancestors, wandering across a formless muddy land, until the creation dog let out a mighty howl. First, if my analysis is correct, then this epoch-making invention was borne of religious and emotional impulses, rather than administrative needs such as tax collection. "What Was the First Alphabet?" Both Egyptian people and Chinese people believe that it is the perfect method. Writing is a recent innovation. The Egyptian hieroglyph for water, “mayim” in the Canaanite tongue, became the Greek “mu” and the Latin M. There were two Egyptian signs which represented snakes. So, anybody who saw that in ancient Mesopotamia would say, “Ah, barley.”. What is the first letter of the arabic alphabet - Nehmen Sie dem Gewinner der Experten. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. YASMIN EL SHAZLY: Writing always starts with pictures, and then it becomes a little bit more complicated. NARRATOR: But what was it that made people want to represent words in visual form? These are the world’s alphabets. Something similar happened at Serabit, but on the plateau the cultural exchange between Canaanites and Egyptians seems to have had momentous consequences. Human footprints. The earliest recognizably Chinese characters are found incised on bones and turtle shells, which date back more than 3,000 years. This is the original Alphabet ABC Song by Have Fun Teaching. A to Z: The First Alphabet. She has been featured by NPR and National Geographic for her ancient history expertise. Greek Modification of the Phoenician Symbols, The Semitic Letters That Became Greek Vowels. ORLY GOLDWASSER: The great trick, the genius trick was to take a picture, to read it in its Canaanite name: the house is beït in a Canaanite dialect. They developed their own style and characters based on the Greek foundation. It is really a pun in some sense. There’s a word “shega” in Sumerian, which means “beautiful” or “pretty” or “nice” or something like that. The characters do not stand for the sound of the whole word, but only for the sound at the beginning of the word. And one panel shows travelers, in the distinctive patterned robes of Canaan, which contrast with the simple white loincloths of the Egyptians. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Thank you, Mark, really, thank you. YIDUMDUMA BILL HARNEY (Wardaman Elder): All these song line trails that were made, happening all the way right back from the beginning of everything, to people, to people, to people, all the way right back, billion years ago, to million years, come down to hundred years, and now, now come back, right up to us. It’s very slim, and it’s ruled into columns with boxes of information that go together. 0 /5000. ZAI YUHONG: (Translated from Chinese) It is “fish.” How do you know it is fish? This is how to write fish in the ancient oracle bone script. In the Beijing Huijia Private School, Sofia is teaching her six-year-old pupils to read and write. Review this Episode. Orly Goldwasser has made them a lifetime’s study. Sometimes the connection is far from obvious, but it’s still there. With his guide Salem, Pierre sets off to climb 1,300 feet from the desert floor. The reins are being held by someone leading the way. Egyptians are never pictured riding donkeys. Scripts like Hebrew, Armenian, Cyrillic, Tibetan, Devanagari, Gujarati. They can be used to distinguish “mu,” “tree,” from “mu,” “to wash” and so clarify the ambiguity inherent in rebus writing. Gill, N.S. Rebus writing is the written version of the pun in speech. It represents one of the earliest examples of writing Arabic in a calligraphic style. Stand at the gates that bar the common people! Do you see? Irving Finkel from the British Museum is an expert on Mesopotamia and the region’s first civilization, Sumer. Then there is all human footprints, all over, you can see it. What Are the Letters of the Greek Alphabet? They just turn it around, because they don’t care about the image. Some funders of NOVA also fund basic science research. Author: David Sington. NARRATOR: By conquering the Nile Delta, Narmer took control of the river, all the way to the sea, becoming the first pharaoh of a unified Egyptian state. A to Z: The First Alphabet. Now the connection between that and our A in English is quite obvious. The rebus is arguably the most consequential intellectual innovation of all time. Do you think I am drawing a picture or a character? PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) The brother of the Prince of Retenu, a certain Khebded, who joins the expedition to help the Egyptians. NARRATOR: Today, we take it for granted, but writing is arguably the most powerful idea we humans have ever come up with. NARRATOR: So, Gardiner guessed that this was what the last four symbols spelled out. DR. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER (Calligrapher): Writing is one of the few things all societies do. ZAI YUHONG: (Translated from Chinese) Which character do you think it is? * They based it on the idea developed by the Egyptians, but used their own specific symbols. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Yes, with an R at the beginning, and here they will reach the R. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: So, this is the Canaanite head. NARRATOR: As the mud hardened, some of the ancestors passed into the rock, leaving traces of that moment of creation. And what you have here is actually the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph of the bull, sleeping forever in the letter A, because this is just the bull turned on his horns. With pictures that spoke, rulers could write the history of their reigns, draw up legal codes, administer far-flung empires and build monuments that still impress us today. Ancient Egyptian life was largely confined to this narrow strip of green; the desert highlands on either side were where the dead were buried. It is the world's first complete alphabet in the sense that it has a letter to represent each unique vowel and consonant character. Original funding for this program was provided by Draper, the David H. Koch Fund for Science, the George D. Smith Fund, the NOVA Science Trust and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. ZAI YUHONG (English name “Sophia,” Chinese for “Teacher,”): (Translated from Chinese) I am going to draw a picture. BRODY NEUENSCHWANDER: So, they looked at this bull, but they would say “aluf” instead of the Egyptian word. ORLY GOLDWASSER: In the Bible, we know the god Baal, and he had a consort. Follow the evolution of the written word, from 4,000-year-old carvings in an Egyptian turquoise mine to modern-day alphabets. And that’s the headdress he used. Almost all the world’s alphabets share this same root. In both places, people had learnt how to irrigate the land to increase food production. NARRATOR: And yet, writing hasn’t always existed. NARRATOR: The name of the goddess was the key to understanding the mysterious Serabit script. DR. YONGSHENG CHEN (Philologist): Egyptian and Chinese writing are very comparable. GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) The big rectangle divided into small panels shows the irrigated land, and left and right of the Nile Valley are the mountains. N.S. Beginning in ancient Egypt, A TO Z: "The First Alphabet" explores some of the first known scribes, and how they discovered that by recording names and histories, it … Next to his defeated enemy is the symbol for a harpoon, “war” in Egyptian. It’s a repetitive formula, hundreds of times in Serabit El-Khadim, says “the beloved of the goddess Hathor.” And then he looks on the strange signs below. And that, I think, was first developed in Egypt. ORLY GOLDWASSER: The complete name of the Canaanite goddess that he presumes should play the role of Hathor here: Ba’alat. Zhuang Yimin, Flying Sparrow Films Co. Ltd, Courtesy of The Egypt Exploration Society, Griffiths Institute – University of Oxford, Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Ocean University of China, Foreign Affairs Office of the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality, China, UNITÉ DÉCOUVERTE ET CONNAISSANCE / SPECIALIST FACTUAL, A NOVA Production by DOX Productions/Films à Cinq for NOVA/WGBH Boston in association with Arté France and the BBC. It all links up. PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) This place is somewhat magical, not only probably one of the most beautiful sites in Egypt, it is also a place that is of fundamental importance to us all. Human there. If the vowels are dropped from English sentences, while the consonants remain in... Greek Modification of … The first complete alphabet in world history is the Greek alphabet, as it emerged around the start of Ancient Greece, roughly 800 BCE. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-the-first-alphabet-119394 (accessed April 11, 2021). This, however, is not the case. In Egypt, too, writing has been found that uses only consonants. They may not raise the dead, but, like all writing, they allow them to speak. All Episodes (914) Next. NARRATOR: Four-thousand years ago, a group of migrant workers were led here by a man riding on a donkey. If the vowels are dropped from English sentences, while the consonants remain in their correct position with respect to the other consonants, literate, native English speakers can usually still understand it. By comparison, the history of … GÜNTER DREYER: (Translated from German) It’s a long way to go until writing, but the simplified, iconic pictures that were used in such depictions will later be used as characters. ORLY GOLDWASSER: Many hundreds of years later, scribes in Phoenicia adopt this drawing of the bull. NARRATOR: At the edge of the plateau, Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda came across the ruins of an ancient Egyptian temple, dominated by dozens of stone markers, or “stelae.”, PIERRE TALLET: (Translated from French) These commemorative stelae are one of the features of the temple at Serabit El-Khadim. They are looking at the line of slayed enemies. There are too few signs here. So, for the “soh,” we have our dear duck. IRVING FINKEL: This material goes from near the beginning of writing, so this is what we call a “pictographic” tablet from 3000 B.C. ORLY GOLDWASSER: We don’t know exactly, but it was something like “tapt” or “topt,” but it’s of no interest for the Canaanites. Gill, N.S. Inside the tomb, Egyptologist Yasmin El Shazly brings historian Lydia Wilson to see something extraordinary. And it is probably during this time that this group had the idea to develop a new writing system by imitating the Egyptians, but adapting the writing to their own language. NARRATOR: But, next to the main characters in this grisly tale are seemingly random pairs of images, such as a catfish and a chisel. DR. YASMIN EL SHAZLY (Egyptologist): Writing always starts with pictures. But, when I look at it, I see, in these archaic letter shapes, the echoes of the alphabet at Serabit. BILL HARNEY: That was the mud, and people come along and put their foot there. Oh, there’s so much writing! And in each of the boxes, they have these things, which are added up at the end. Writing shaped our world and the rise of human knowledge, from the trading of goods to tales of ancient goddesses and kings. Below it is a rectangle, similar to the ones on the Abydos vase. IRVING FINKEL: And of course, there’s a bit of a squabble between Egyptologists and Assyriologists about who invented writing, and of course, we did. See? He wants the name of the goddess, because if his theory is correct, he has “the beloved of….” The beloved of whom? These wall paintings decorate a tomb above the Nile in Upper Egypt. Exploring a variety of writing systems. It was rich deposits of the gemstone that brought regular mining expeditions to Serabit.