01x02 - Who Invented the Alphabet?

[bunniefuu]

I'm going on an adventure.

[CHILD] Now I know my ABC's [record skipping]

Tell me what you think of me.

E VOICE] We think it's very nice to know your alphabet.

[SIMCHA] The alphabet. A small collection of...

...symbols that represent sounds of language.

In English, for example,

letters stand for some...

...five hundred thousand words.

It's arguably one of the...

...most powerful tools available to man.

Without it,

and without it's invention...

... hundred years ago,

...communication, knowledge,

some might say civilization as we know it,

would not exist.

[SIMCHA] And it was invented only once.

Every modern alphabet,

from Arabic to Spanish to French,

evolved from the original invention.

So, is there an archeological big bang?

A decisive time and place...

...where it can be shown to have been invented?

[MALE VOICE] Man has played many parts...

...during the years he has lived on Earth.

So let's make believe we're going back in time.

[SIMCHA] Before the alphabet,

our ancestors used pictures...

...to tell stories of battle or a hunt.

It was the Egyptians who advanced picture writing...

...into a complex system, called hieroglyphics.

Made up of more than symbols,

hieroglyphics took too long to learn...

...and could only be read by the elite;

a small group of kings, priests and scribes.

David Sacks is a writer and journalist from Ottawa.

In his book, Letter Perfect,

he traces the evolution of letters back...

...towards the roots of Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

I met with him in Toronto,

where he explained how the transition first began.

Hieroglyphics used pictures of objects...

...used in various ways.

And we believe the earliest alphabet...

...borrowed some of these pictures...

...and turned them into letters.

And the letters, in many cases, evolved.

Becoming the letter shapes we know today.

And here we have an eyeball.

An eye with an eyeball...

...as an Egyptian hieroglyph.

And later, in around BC,

it shows up in alphabetic writing...

...as much the same shape,

a little more roughly rendered.

But by about BC,

it shows up in alphabetic writing...

...like that.

Just the eyeball?

The letter 'O'.

[MALE VOICE] 'O' is for Orangutan...

...and that's what Andy is of course.

Now if there had been a guy like me...

..., years ago...

...he would have added to this,

and mixed up the entire course...

...of human history.

All the graffiti artists would be writing.

The tattoos would be totally different...

...everything would be different...

...because we have an 'O' that looked like an eyeball,

the 'O' looked like a fish.

Yeah.

Good thing you weren't there.

What does 'E' stand for?

Why, 'E' is for these playful...

...young African elephants.

So where are we? We're at 'D', 'E'.

It's striking in the earliest alphabetic writings...

...the 'E' shows up as the image of a stickman...

...holding his hands in the air and sort of jumping up.

It's actually striking. He's standing like...

...this is a stickman.

It looks like a Keith Haring cartoon.

He's standing like this jumping up in the air.

You just looked like an 'E' doing that.

You looked ver much like an 'E'.

[MALE VOICE] Talk it over with your...

...physical education instructor or doctor.

So this man with his hands up...

...rotated sideways...

...and you've got your modern 'E'.

That's exactly right.

[MALE VOICE] Like letters in a bowl...

...of alphabet soup or cereal...

...be a letter perfect pedestrian.

[SIMCHA] The evolution...

...of those particular letters...

...made it easy for language in the world...

...to adopt an alphabetic system.

Today, . billion people across the globe...

...use letters to express themselves,

and create written works of science,

imagination, and faith.

I hooked up with Skam a Toronto graffitti artist,

who tells me how he relies on the alphabet.

Graffiti's about lettering?

Graffiti's about lettering.

You have to know to do lettering...

...before you go on anywhere else.

You develop your own lettering style?

Exactly.

Everyone has their own style.

This your tag?

That's called throw up.

That's called what?

A throw up.

This is your throw up.

It's not a vomit kind of a thing.

Well, sort of you know what I mean?

Because essentially you're just throwing up fast...

It's in between a tag and a piece.

There's elements:

The first element is a tag,

obviously the signature.

Tag is just a signature?

Tag is a signature. This is how I tag my name.

Oh that's a tag.

Oh...

That's cool that's SKAM.

And then there's something like this...

...which is stylized bubble letters,

an example of my throw up,

and then you go on to the masterpiece.

Tag, throw up, masterpiece.

That's a piece of mine That's a masterpiece of mine.

That's your masterpiece?

It's a masterpiece. It's beautiful.

I love it.

It's all made up of letters.

It's all letters, it's stylized.

The letter has evolved.

It's totally evolved. It's personal style.

Everyone has their own style.

So the letters keep changing.

The letters keep changing...

...but there's also a foundation to it.

You can rotate it. You can inflate it.

You can do anything you want to it.

It's whatever you personally feel.

Do you know where the alphabet started?

I think Greek? -Greek.

That's what the Greeks would like you to know.

You know?

No. They added vowels.

OK. -Cool?

I learn something everyday.

[SIMCHA] The modern alphabet

has come down to us from the Greeks.

But they merely added the vowels.

Before the Greeks, the alphabet was...

...made up of only consonants,

with the vowel sounds implied by context.

Scholars say that the Greeks...

...got their alphabet from the ancient Phoenicians,

who got theirs from the Canaanites;

a Hebrew-speaking people who lived in...

...what is now modern Israel.

So who invented the alphabet?

The Greeks or the Semites?

[SIMCHA] I met up with John Darnell,

an archeologist from Yale University,

who tells me that the Greek...

...invention of the vowel has...

...caused misunderstandings about where...

...the alphabet actually came from.

Arguments with the classical world...

...usually revolve around the vowel.

The vowel?

And that's one of those things where...

...you can say OK,

we got the alphabet without the vowel,

you did the alphabet with the vowel,

so we can each claim something.

And leave it at that.

Personally, I think those vowels,

to me it's like people who can't...

...remember the vowels it's like, wait a minute.

Who needs the vowels...

...unless you've got a slow reader?

Yeah.

So I wouldn't be proud of my vowels.

I mean it's like saying...

...I count with my fingers.

Thank you very much.

Vowels is just like the icing...

...on the alphabet cake.

I don't even regard it as that.

I see it as a step backwards.

It's a big step backwards.

[SIMCHA] So you can't give...

...too much credit to the Greeks,

and personally, I also don't think it was the...

...Canaanites who invented the alphabet.

The Canaanites were big into phallic symbols...

...and fertility goddesses and used them everywhere.

If they invented our alphabet,

why do non of the letters look like sexual organs?

[SIMCHA] I asked author David Sacks...

...why Canaanites routinely get the credit...

...for inventing the alphabet given that our letters...

...are devoid of sexual symbolism.

Isn't significant...

...in the Canaanite world, phallic symbols.

It's true.

Phallic symbols, goddesses, fertility goddesses...

...they were everywhere.

How come they're not in the alphabet?

Well, I've seen French postcards where they are.

The French yes, the French yes...

...but the original alphabet no.

They're using, you know...

...fences, pegs, no fertility goddesses...

...no phallic symbols. how do you explain that?

I am not sure I can.

I'm just saying that I think it's significant...

...that they're not there.

Which would lead me to think that maybe...

...it wasn't a Canaanite thing...

...but it was an Israelite thing.

Oh, because the Israelites didn't like T&A?

No-

[SIMCHA] In fact...

...the latest archaeology suggests...

...that the alphabet was not invented in Canaan,

but in Egypt.

Not by Egyptians, but by Semites.

Maybe the biblical Israelites.

And what we think happened...

...is that someone from the outside...

...a member of the underclass...

...who was a Semite.

He might have been a mercenary soldier,

or a skilled labourer, or even a sl*ve,

perhaps, a prisoner of w*r.

He looked at this hieroglyphic system and he said:

Why don't we just use or so symbols...

...to mean precise sounds for our speech, Semitic.

[SIMCHA] The first Semitic inventors of the alphabet...

...had their own language different from Egyptian,

and when they saw an Egyptian picture...

...such as an Ox, they called it...

...the Semetic word for Ox, which is Aleph.

Later this Aleph became the letter Alpha,

and was assigned the sound 'ah'.

Over time, the shape of the Ox changed.

But eventually Aleph and Beth,

the Semetic word for house,

became Alpha and Beta.

The first letters in our modern alphabet.

The archeology suggests that the alphabet...

...travelled from Egypt into the Sinai desert,

and finally to the Biblical promised land,

modern Israel.

This route sounds extraordinarily familiar.

You'll remember, in the biblical story,

Moses leads a revolution,

a mass exodus of Israelite slaves...

...out of Egypt, and into the desert,

around or BC.

Is it possible that the spread of the alphabet...

...has something to do with the movement...

...of Israelites from Egypt...

...to the Promised Land, and beyond?

I find it very interesting...

...that if you look at the oldest alphabetic writings,

it's Semitic people inventing the alphabet in Egypt,

and if you trace it, you know like Hansel and Gretel,

to the oldest alphabetic writings...

...you go into the Sinai and end up in Canaan.

A kind of familiar route...

...to anybody who's studied the Exodus.

It's a heck of a coincidence.

You know the archaeology suggests that...

...the skill of writing radiated out from Egypt,

northward along the Levant,

starting off in what is now Southern Israel...

...and moving north to the Lebanon/Syria area.

And you know, that looks a little bit like...

...the path of the children of Israel.

[SIMCHA] So, if the alphabet...

...followed the path of Exodus where was it born...

...and who was the first to pack it up...

...and carry it on it's journey?

[MALE VOICE] The baby's name is Moses.

[SIMCHA] Well, the Bible says...

...Moses hiked up Mount Sinai...

...and was given the Ten Commandments.

Which were supposed to be carved in stone...

...by the finger of the biblical God, El.

According to the bible, the commandments...

...were written in the script of God.

This would explain how Moses...

...communicated with so many slaves.

He had access to a revolutionary...

...new form of communication, the alphabet.

So is there any archeological evidence...

...of Hebrew slaves using the alphabet...

...and praying to the biblical God, El?

In fact there is, In the Valley of Terror.

[SIMCHA] In John Darnell...

...and his wife were tracking ancient...

...Egyptian road systems through the Valley of Terror...

...when they stumbled upon a large wall...

...covered with inscriptions.

Among them he discovered...

...two sets of early alphabetic writings.

I asked him to describe his findings...

...when I spoke with him in Toronto.

These two are early alphabetic inscriptions.

So this is the great, great, great,

great grand dadd and mommy of our alphabet.

As far as we know at this point in time, yes.

Couldn't someone look at that and say wait a minute,

alphabetic writing was introduced by Moses?

Oh that was probably an older idea.

[SIMCHA] I don't understand...

...why Darnell is avoiding the obvious.

That the inscription he found corroborates...

...the bible, instead he concocts...

...a theory that the inscriptions were carved...

...not by Hebrew slaves, but by Semetic soldiers...

...who may have been part of a m*llitary...

...expedition lead by an Egyptian General,

named Bebi.

Bebi.

His name is Bebi?

Bebi. That's an Egyptian name.

Maybe it's his nickname?

It's probably just his name.

I think it sounds like a nickname.

A lot of people are named Bebi.

You're my Bebi. Bebi's the boss.

Bebi's the boss of these ah ... moves.

So he's kind of the overseer, over ...

... over these Western Semitic language speakers.

He's the general, bossing them around.

He doesn't like it if they sing...

..."yes sir, that's my Bebi."

Well, probably not.

Do you think there are force?

Well cause in your "mesha," mesha means force.

It can be a group, it can be an army of soldiers.

Labourers.

It can be an expeditionary force of miners.

Labourers.

Labourers, whatever.

Are you saying you're leaning towards...

.more it's a m*llitary expedition instead of a workforce?

Whatever it is, it's going to be organized along similar lines.

So it's going to have a commander...

...it's going to have scribes.

But couldn't an argument be made...

...that this is some kind of archaeological...

...confirmation of the biblical story,

and I'll tell you why.

Just as Mister layperson, just listening to what you're saying

The Bible tells us that there are West Semites...

...that eventually become called Israelites.

They're labourers.

They got these Egyptian overseers,

and what you're telling me is there's a guy named Bebi.

He's an Egyptian.

He's an overseer and he's got this workforce under him.

Isn't there some kind of synchronicity...

...between the two tales?

The tale that you find on these walls...

...and the tale that we read in the Bible...

...is that controversial?

Not controversial...

...but the development of the alphabet in m*llitary,

...or paramilitary situation makes sense.

Because this type of mixed hieratic hieroglyphic...

...writing is what we find m*llitary scribes writing...

...in these inscriptions.

[SIMCHA] But I wasn't convinced by Darnell's explanation.

The alphabet seems to be revolutionary almost...

...like a secret code designed for rebellion.

Like the Jamaican Patwa or the Brazilian Capoeria.

The alphabet could have been...

...born out of a fight for freedom.

It's very essence is a form of liberation...

...a kind of democratization of knowledge...

...that would take the art of writing...

...out of the hands of the elite...

...and put it into the hands of any child...

...who could remember symbols.

Historians as well as other scholars...

...have long recognized that literacy...

...is a democratic movement...

...that dictatorships, at least,

in ancient times, that dictatorships...

...often relied heavily on illiteracy...

...among the under class.

So that what the alphabet did was...

...it made reading and writing so simple...

...that non-scholars could master it.

So it was revolutionary?

It was revolutionary, yes.

It was one of these landmarks in history...

...that opens up power to a wider group of people.

[SIMCHA] Another interesting characteristic...

...of the first alphabetic writing is that...

...the world 'El' appears.

Although 'El' has different meanings,

it eventually becomes the one word for God...

...in the Bible.

Incredibly, the inscriptions Darnell found in Egypt...

...include the name of the biblical God,

and still Darnell sees no connection...

...with the Bible.

There's two inscriptions.

One of them says El,

again, as a layperson I would say:

Isn't that the Biblical God...

...or one of the names of the Biblical God?

That's probably a name for God...

...which relates to a general Semitic term.

It's not an Egyptian God.

Well, I wouldn't relate these at all to the Israelites.

I'm just saying it says El.

It's still say El in every synagogue.

here's a synagogue around the corner...

...they're still saying El.

Well, do we have El,

or so we have El in someone's name?

Even if you have El in someone's name,

like you know, Jachi-El,

it still means El.

Yeah, but then you get into the question of what El?

I wouldn't use these as anything more...

...than just to say that we see that there...

...are Semitic language speakers...

...who are functioning in the Paranoiac world.

The world of the Pharaohs.

The world of the Pharaohs in Egypt...

...who are integrated into that world,

and so who are not living as outsiders,

but who are in it,

and have developed this alphabetic way of writing.

And these guys are in essence...

...seeing the big bang of alphabetic writing?

I think you could say that, I think you could say that.

[SIMCAH] The more research I do...

...on the alphabet's development, the more I...

...see the connection to the story of Exodus.

So I've decided to travel to the Sinai desert...

...where I've heard there are several inscriptions...

...that may prove that Hebrew slaves,

not Semetic mercenaries,

invented the alphabet.

And that if I'm right, and Prof. Darnell is-

Well. Let's see.

[SIMCHA] Today,

most scholars follow Prof. Darnell's theory...

that the alphabetic inscriptions...

...from Egypt's Valley of Terror...

...were not made by Hebrew slaves...

...but by a m*llitary expedition...

...of Semetic mercenaries.

But everyone agrees...

...that the inscriptions at Serabit El-Khadim;

here in the Sinai desert were made by slaves.

Serabit is off the beaten path.

One hundred years ago, alphabetic...

...inscriptions were found in caves...

...that were in ancient turquoise mines...

...worked by slaves. I'm convinced that...

...if we take a second look at these inscriptions...

...what we'll find is archeological proof...

...for the biblical story and that it was...

...Hebrew slaves, praying to the biblical God...

...that first used the alphabet.

The temple is right here.

And where's the cave?

[speaks Arabic]

The cave's right here? Okay.

Let's go.

[SIMCHA] Finding the cave...

...wasn't the easiest task even with local guides...

...to direct us.

We made a gruelling trip through the...

...Egyptian desert only to wind up at the wrong cave.

We doubled back and eventually found the right cave.

Incredibly the inscriptions in this cave...

...do record the prayers of Hebrew speaking slaves...

...asking God to free them.

This is the writing of a sl*ve.

a sl*ve who worked in this mine.

You can still see the chisel marks.

And he wrote his cry to God, saying:

help me, don't forget me.

Here where he worked, and he slept,

and he probably d*ed.

re you see the inscription going this way and going this way.

In those days, you could write this way,

sideways, backwards, upwards,

it depends on which way you started.

You just picked a spot and just went in the other direction.

And it represents an incredible moment...

...in human history.

only is it the first inscription recording the name of God, El,

but it also records the oldest...

...or maybe the second oldest alphabetic inscription.

It's years old.

It's pretty incredible that after all these years...

...we would be here to record this man's cry.

[SIMCHA] Wether the alphabet's invention...

...has anything to do with the Exodus...

...is still uncertain.

But the inscriptions found here at Serabit...

...do confirm that Hebrew speaking people...

...who believed in one God, were responsible...

...for spreading the alphabet northward from Egypt,

into the desert and into Israel.

Ultimately, the Bible itself would be...

...written in the alphabetic script.

I was in a cave in the Sinai Desert.

Slaves tagged the walls and they were saying:

"hi I'm here. I exist."

I think that's what it was.

I think, I mean, as a graffiti artist too...

...I'm saying, you know what could I do in this world..

...that someone will know me eventually...

They're calling out to God.

-Exactly.

-What's my life about?

No one knows what we're about and where we're going...

...so I want to do something and be remembered.

I don't want to infringe on the rules of the game.

but do you think I could try my hand at this?

Would it be insulting the whole profession?

Sure.

If you want to. Don't spray yourself.

Do we need to watch? Do we need a guard?

You never know when those Egyptian overseers may come.

Maybe I should do an "N" and an "A"...

...cause the Naked Archaeologist.

How's that?

I gotta think now, what does my "N" look like?

Well everyone's gotta start somewhere.

I feel good about this.

I'm going to give a traditional bull's head.

And it says, "hey I'm here.