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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription This is as important a discovery because it helped deciph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription This is as important a discovery because it helped decipher cuneiform, a language that existed in parallel to hieroglyphics. The Demotic language mentioned as a shorthand form of hieroglyphics... it's the script used to write what we now call "Arabic". That's right, written Arabic is a direct descendent of hieroglyphics.

wl 5y ago
Demotic looks like the Arabic script, sure. However, it doesn't work like Arabic. It's a cursive form of the more well-known hieroglyphic script using a later form of the Egyptian language. That means bi-/tri-literals, determinatives, and all that stuff. The modern Arabic script is only related to Demotic in the sense that it's probably derived from the Phoenician script, which in turn is probably derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  Aren't most European scripts derived from Phoenecian? Latin and Cyrillic at least.
  - spijdar 5y ago
    Apparently yes, although most indirectly. Latin and Cyrillic are effectively derivatives of the Greek alphabet (the second one, formed after the totally unrelated Linear-B was forgotten), itself a derivative of Phoenician script. Cyrillic also borrows some characters directly from Hebrew/Arabic IIRC, which are more directly descended from Phoenician, all in the same language family. The hard part, especially when talking about language artifacts this old, is distinguishing between "derived" and "ancestor of" compared to "influenced" and "contributed to". The difference between being the genetic offspring of something and just "borrowing" some genes. It's easy to guess some sort of shared lineage between the Semitic writing systems, the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic, and the European Latin/Greek offspring, but I bet it's not a nice tree so much as a directed graph with at least some borrowing and cross-pollination. :-)
    - adrian_b 5y ago
      In all such cases when a derived system of writing was created, the creator was familiar with one or more older writing systems, but different choices were made about how much to take from the old system and how many new features to add. The creator of the Greek alphabet knew the Phoenician alphabet and its adaptation to the Greek language preserved almost all Phoenician letters, with their names and their alphabetic order and their pronunciations, with just a few exceptions when some letters have been reassigned to other sounds (the most significant being the reassignment of ALEF, HE, AYIN to the sounds A, E, O) and a few letters were added at the end of the alphabet for sounds missing in Phoenician. On the other hand, the creator of the first Semitic alphabet (many hundreds of years before the creation of the Phoenician variant) knew the Egyptian hieratic writing system (not the Demotic, which is much more recent than even the Phoenician alphabet). However, the Semitic alphabet preserved much less from the hieratic script, mainly the principle of using a sign for each consonant, without marking the vowels, and the writing direction from right to left. Because we know very little of the early evolution of the Semitic alphabet (the few so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are very obscure), we do not even know for sure if any signs were taken directly from hieratic or all the Semitic signs were completely new. Also, it is not known which are the origins of the 2 traditional orders of the letters in the Semitic alphabets (the one used in Phoenician/Ugaritic, which was inherited by the European alphabets, and the different order used in the South-Arabic alphabet). So the ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet has taken much less from the hieratic script than the Greek alphabet has taken from the Phoenician, but it can be argued that a principle like using a sign per consonant is much more important than the graphic signs that are used (especially because this idea seems to have occurred only once in history, all the other not-derived-from-Egyptian writing systems have used signs for either syllables or words, not for simpler sounds).
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    The Phoenician script used a simplified alphabet (with only 22 letters) derived from an older Semitic alphabet (which had between 27 and 29 letters). The older alphabet has not been preserved, but we know some things about it because there have been a few other alphabets derived from it, besides the Phoenician (the Ugaritic and South-Arabic alphabets). Because the Phoenician merchants had activities all around the Mediterranean and through the Middle East, the Phoenician alphabet became known over a very large area, unlike the earlier alphabets. The consequence was that almost all alphabetic/abugida systems of writing are derived directly or indirectly from the Phoenician script. The Greek alphabet was derived directly from Phoenician, then the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets were derived from the Greek. Other Semitic alphabets were also derived from Phoenician, e.g Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic, but they had problems because the Phoenician alphabet had a reduced number of letters so they had to use various means to write the sounds that were missing in Phoenician. The Aramaic alphabet spread through Asia and generated various other writing systems, e.g. in India.
    - janandonly 5y ago
      This quote is wrong > "The older alphabet has not been preserved, but we know some things about it because there have been a few other alphabets derived from" The predecessor is preserved and seems to be based on an creative re-interpretation from some of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script > "According to common theory, Canaanites who spoke a Semitic language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The script is attested in a small corpus of inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, dating to the Middle Bronze Age (1900–1850BC)"
      - adrian_b 5y ago
        No, the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are not well understood and they give only partial information about the initial Semitic alphabet. From those inscriptions it was not possible to determine the complete list of signs, their phonetic values and their alphabetic order, things that we know only about later derived alphabets, e.g. the Ugaritic alphabet and the South-Arabic alphabet. Even if the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions would have never been found, starting from the derived alphabets we could have guessed about the original alphabet about the same things that we know now. The Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions have provided a confirmation for such guesses and they have also provided a more constrained time frame for the development of the original Semitic alphabet, but they did not add much other information. This might change in the future only if additional inscriptions would be found or if someone would be able to make an improved analysis of the existing inscriptions to better determine the meaning of the signs, as for now the exact correspondence with the later alphabets is not clear.
KoftaBob 5y ago
To add to this: while we lost the ability to decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs until the Rosetta stone, the Egyptian language itself (the words and their meanings) continued to be known/understood/spoken to this day, in the form of the Coptic language. The Coptic language is essentially Greek letters (plus 7 additional ones for sounds not covered by the Greek alphabet) used to write the Egyptian language. Coptic was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Muslim conquest of Egypt, although it remains in use today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Another fun fact: the Greek letters used to write the Coptic language were based on the Phoenician alphabet, which were based on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. So in essence, the alphabet brought over by the foreign Greeks and then used to write the Egyptian language, was itself based on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, bringing it full circle!

wl 5y ago

Demotic looks like the Arabic script, sure. However, it doesn't work like Arabic. It's a cursive form of the more well-known hieroglyphic script using a later form of the Egyptian language. That means bi-/tri-literals, determinatives, and all that stuff. The modern Arabic script is only related to Demotic in the sense that it's probably derived from the Phoenician script, which in turn is probably derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

idontwantthis 5y ago
Aren't most European scripts derived from Phoenecian? Latin and Cyrillic at least.
- spijdar 5y ago
  Apparently yes, although most indirectly. Latin and Cyrillic are effectively derivatives of the Greek alphabet (the second one, formed after the totally unrelated Linear-B was forgotten), itself a derivative of Phoenician script. Cyrillic also borrows some characters directly from Hebrew/Arabic IIRC, which are more directly descended from Phoenician, all in the same language family. The hard part, especially when talking about language artifacts this old, is distinguishing between "derived" and "ancestor of" compared to "influenced" and "contributed to". The difference between being the genetic offspring of something and just "borrowing" some genes. It's easy to guess some sort of shared lineage between the Semitic writing systems, the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic, and the European Latin/Greek offspring, but I bet it's not a nice tree so much as a directed graph with at least some borrowing and cross-pollination. :-)
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    In all such cases when a derived system of writing was created, the creator was familiar with one or more older writing systems, but different choices were made about how much to take from the old system and how many new features to add. The creator of the Greek alphabet knew the Phoenician alphabet and its adaptation to the Greek language preserved almost all Phoenician letters, with their names and their alphabetic order and their pronunciations, with just a few exceptions when some letters have been reassigned to other sounds (the most significant being the reassignment of ALEF, HE, AYIN to the sounds A, E, O) and a few letters were added at the end of the alphabet for sounds missing in Phoenician. On the other hand, the creator of the first Semitic alphabet (many hundreds of years before the creation of the Phoenician variant) knew the Egyptian hieratic writing system (not the Demotic, which is much more recent than even the Phoenician alphabet). However, the Semitic alphabet preserved much less from the hieratic script, mainly the principle of using a sign for each consonant, without marking the vowels, and the writing direction from right to left. Because we know very little of the early evolution of the Semitic alphabet (the few so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are very obscure), we do not even know for sure if any signs were taken directly from hieratic or all the Semitic signs were completely new. Also, it is not known which are the origins of the 2 traditional orders of the letters in the Semitic alphabets (the one used in Phoenician/Ugaritic, which was inherited by the European alphabets, and the different order used in the South-Arabic alphabet). So the ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet has taken much less from the hieratic script than the Greek alphabet has taken from the Phoenician, but it can be argued that a principle like using a sign per consonant is much more important than the graphic signs that are used (especially because this idea seems to have occurred only once in history, all the other not-derived-from-Egyptian writing systems have used signs for either syllables or words, not for simpler sounds).
- adrian_b 5y ago
  The Phoenician script used a simplified alphabet (with only 22 letters) derived from an older Semitic alphabet (which had between 27 and 29 letters). The older alphabet has not been preserved, but we know some things about it because there have been a few other alphabets derived from it, besides the Phoenician (the Ugaritic and South-Arabic alphabets). Because the Phoenician merchants had activities all around the Mediterranean and through the Middle East, the Phoenician alphabet became known over a very large area, unlike the earlier alphabets. The consequence was that almost all alphabetic/abugida systems of writing are derived directly or indirectly from the Phoenician script. The Greek alphabet was derived directly from Phoenician, then the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets were derived from the Greek. Other Semitic alphabets were also derived from Phoenician, e.g Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic, but they had problems because the Phoenician alphabet had a reduced number of letters so they had to use various means to write the sounds that were missing in Phoenician. The Aramaic alphabet spread through Asia and generated various other writing systems, e.g. in India.
  - janandonly 5y ago
    This quote is wrong > "The older alphabet has not been preserved, but we know some things about it because there have been a few other alphabets derived from" The predecessor is preserved and seems to be based on an creative re-interpretation from some of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script > "According to common theory, Canaanites who spoke a Semitic language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The script is attested in a small corpus of inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, dating to the Middle Bronze Age (1900–1850BC)"
    - adrian_b 5y ago
      No, the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are not well understood and they give only partial information about the initial Semitic alphabet. From those inscriptions it was not possible to determine the complete list of signs, their phonetic values and their alphabetic order, things that we know only about later derived alphabets, e.g. the Ugaritic alphabet and the South-Arabic alphabet. Even if the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions would have never been found, starting from the derived alphabets we could have guessed about the original alphabet about the same things that we know now. The Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions have provided a confirmation for such guesses and they have also provided a more constrained time frame for the development of the original Semitic alphabet, but they did not add much other information. This might change in the future only if additional inscriptions would be found or if someone would be able to make an improved analysis of the existing inscriptions to better determine the meaning of the signs, as for now the exact correspondence with the later alphabets is not clear.

KoftaBob 5y ago

To add to this: while we lost the ability to decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs until the Rosetta stone, the Egyptian language itself (the words and their meanings) continued to be known/understood/spoken to this day, in the form of the Coptic language. The Coptic language is essentially Greek letters (plus 7 additional ones for sounds not covered by the Greek alphabet) used to write the Egyptian language. Coptic was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Muslim conquest of Egypt, although it remains in use today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Another fun fact: the Greek letters used to write the Coptic language were based on the Phoenician alphabet, which were based on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. So in essence, the alphabet brought over by the foreign Greeks and then used to write the Egyptian language, was itself based on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, bringing it full circle!