> Do we know how the order ultimately came about, and what it was originally based on? I don’t mean “because earlier alphabets had that order”, I mean an explan

> Do we know how the order ultimately came about, and what it was originally based on? I don’t mean “because earlier alphabets had that order”, I mean an explanation in terms of the characters of the (earlier) alphabet themselves. I’m genuinely curious. I don’t remember having seen such an explanation. It is still a matter of debate, however the order in which Proto-Sinaic scripts and the Phoenician alphabets laid letters out is thought to have been based on the acrophonic principle, where the first sound of the word that represented the object or concept depicted by the letter determined its place in the alphabet. Later alphabetic and abiguda writing systems have followed an earlier lead. There have also been suggestions that it may have been influenced by the order of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs, whilst others propose that it could be based on a mnemonic sequence to make it easier to remember. The short answer is that… we may never find out why it happened to be that way.