History of the alphabet

The history of the alphabet traces how writing systems representing speech with letters originated, changed, and spread among languages and societies.

Egyptian hieroglyphs: The ancient Egyptian writing system combining logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic signs. Egyptian signs supplied models for early consonant letters used by Semitic-speaking writers.
Abjad: A writing system that primarily represents consonants, often leaving short vowels unwritten. Many early alphabets, including Phoenician, functioned principally as abjads.
Latin alphabet: The alphabet used to write Latin and now used by many languages worldwide. Roman expansion carried this alphabet across Europe, where later communities reshaped it.
Flinders Petrie: A British archaeologist whose excavations in Egypt and Sinai uncovered early alphabetic inscriptions. His Serabit el-Khadim discoveries brought Proto-Sinaitic writing into modern scholarship.
Wadi el-Hol inscriptions: Two early alphabetic inscriptions found near Wadi el-Hol in Egypt. Their dating and sign readings bear on whether alphabetic writing began earlier than once thought.
Proto-Sinaitic script: An early alphabetic script attested in inscriptions from Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. Its signs are among the earliest evidence for adapting hieroglyphic forms to represent consonants.
Acrophony: The principle of naming a sign after a word whose initial sound the sign represents. Acrophony helps explain how pictorial signs could become consonant letters.
Cyrillic script: A writing system used for many Slavic and other languages, developed in the medieval Balkans. Its history illustrates the alphabet's adaptation through Christian missions and Slavic literacy.
Alan Gardiner: A British Egyptologist who proposed an influential decipherment of Proto-Sinaitic signs. His acrophonic interpretation helped connect early letters with Semitic word names.
Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions: Early alphabetic inscriptions found at an Egyptian turquoise-mining site in the Sinai Peninsula. Their uncertain chronology and decipherment leave open how the first alphabetic signs developed.

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UgaritNarrower topic: Ugarit’s alphabet provides an early, unusually well-preserved example of alphabetic writing.