ABSTRACT
Hebrew is among the first alphabets to have been used intensely and extensively from the beginning of the first millennium BCE. The inception and development of the Canaanite alphabet as a unique writing system occurred in an area where writing was in fact a long-standing and well-established tradition. The cities of Canaan lay in the midst of (or near enough to) the traffic of goods, merchants, and armies among the superpowers of the time: Egypt to the southwest, Sumer and Babylon to the northeast. Under the influence of these powers, writing had already been used since 3100 BCE, a millennium and a half before the invention of the alphabet. In particular, those Hebrews who were in Egypt were bound to have observed the monumental writing of the Egyptians. In this way the metalanguage of literacy, and literacy as a state of mind, preceded and then accompanied the rise of alphabetic literacy. From this vantage point one may construe the invention of the alphabet as a local adaptation and simplification of well-known systems, as shown in chapter 6 on the Hebrew writing system.
