The Serabit el-Khadim Sphinx

Proto-Sinaitic

This red sandstone sphinx, ca.1800 BC, was discovered in 1904–1905 by Sir William Flinders Petrie in the temple ruins at Serabit el-Khadim, a copper and turquoise mining area on the West coast on the Sinai peninsula. The sphinx appears to be a votive to the goddess Hathor, who was associated with turquoise. Hathor is inscribed in hieroglyphs (on the side you don’t see) and the phrase b’lt (or b’alat “to the Lady,” a title of Hathor) is inscribed in proto-sinaitic. This is as close to a Rosetta Stone of Proto-Sinaitic as you are going to get.

The origins of the present-day alphabet can be traced back to the hieroglyphs, but this first jump is admittedly somewhat speculative. Around 1900 BC the Proto-Sinaitic script began to appear in Egypt, the Sinai and the Levant. In 1916 Sir Alan Gardiner deciphered the single phrase b’lt¹ (from the sphinx above) and suggested that the script was an acrophonical “alphabet”² derived from hieratic or hieroglyphic signs. It was commonly believed that it was developed by the Semitic-speaking peoples of the Sinai and Levant.

The Wadi al-Hol inscriptions, ca.1900 BC.

In 1999 the Yale researchers, John and Deborah Darnell, found several Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions at Wadi al-Hol in Egypt. The discovery in a remote part of Egypt, in addition to causing a general stir in archeological circles, also allowed them to develop a different hypothesis on the script’s origin. They suggest that the language was not developed by the Semites (or Asiatics, as the Egyptians called them) but was invented by Egyptian scribes and bureaucrats to allow them to communicate with these Asiatics, who at times were slaves, mercenaries or trading partners with Egypt. A kind of pidgin Egyptian.

Proto-Sinaitic consists of roughly 19 or so signs that can be, at least theoretically, associated with hieroglyphic or hieratic signs. Whatever the mysterious origins the script, it eventually spread East throughout the Sinai and the Levant and was adopted by the Canaanites (hence it’s other names: Proto-Canaanite or Old Canaanite) and later by the Phoenicians.

1. Gardiner, Sir Alan H. The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 3: 1-16. 1916. After a century of research this single phrase is still the only one deciphered.

2. The language consisted of only consonants, vowels had to be supplied by the speaker, so the script is technically an abjad.

5 Jan 2009 ‧ Typographia Historia