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Up to the beginning of this century, the Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone, a royal inscription of a king of Moab named Mesha, ca. 850 BCE) was the earliest known alphabetic inscription. Speculation on the origin of West Semitic alphabets was based largely on the Bible, or traditional attempts to reconstruct the past.
In the winter of 1904-1905 Sir Wm. Flinders Petrie discovered the inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim that became known as Proto-Sinaitic. Petrie reached the conclusion that the inscriptions were alphabetic but made no attempt to identify any related offshoots. An exhibition catalogue was published in 1905 and an expedition report in 1906. |
2003-04-06
20:13:56
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