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The first alphabet, made from pictures.
Also known as: Proto-Canaanite script, Early alphabetic script
The Bronze Age script of the Sinai from which the alphabetic tradition descends.
Writes a Semitic language using pictorial signs for the initial sound of each pictured object's name.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
The acrophonic principle — a picture standing for its own first sound — is the invention that made the alphabet possible, and it happened once: every alphabet in this catalogue descends from it.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
The ox head became A and the house plan became B, both surviving the journey through Phoenician, Greek and Latin with their shapes rotated but recognisable.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Simplified pictorial signs — an ox head, a house plan, a hand, water — each used for the first sound of the object's name.