Talk:Proto-Sinaitic script

Article Rewrite: "Proto-Sinaitic script"

A rewrite for this article has been suggested. How should we go about it? INFIYNJTE (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it's impossible with the state of available material. What we should do is put together an alphabet discussion group, do some original research, and write our own papers. That way these articles about proto Sinaitic and Canaanite have something to refer to. Temerarius (talk) 21:29, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Onceinawhile already mentioned it, the problem with the article is the undefined scope. Right now, there's too much and too unfocused information. Personally, I think the page should just summarize what it is and the difference between it and Proto-Canaanite, summarize the discoveries, and summarize the popular hypotheses on the development. I think the "Inscriptions" section should be removed and just be links to their respective wiki pages under the "See also" section. The individual wikis should be like the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon page where it has the different translations from different researchers highlighted. Controversially, I think the "Synopsis" section should also be removed. With everything clumped together and no formal consensus between all the letters it gets really confusing and becomes somewhat difficult to manage. I feel like it's better for each inscriptions page to have tables for the letters found on them. If needed, we can link to the table on the History of the alphabet page instead of having to maintain it in two places. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 09:12, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

It's harder to manage getting all inscriptions pages up to a certain level, with detailed alphabet charts. Seems ambitious. We'd need a wikiproject inscriptions. Temerarius (talk) 14:11, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

What are wikiproject incriptions? Explain. INFIYNJTE (talk) 14:32, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I was saying it would be a big undertaking to bring each inscription page up to a certain standard. I'm a repeat editor of Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions and despite knowing the topic back and forth I don't have an alphabet up yet. Most individual inscriptions don't have editors willing to do hundreds of edits and so on. So to get this page, and all the others, up to reference-worthy would require a little planning. Hence a hypothetical Wiki-Project to organize it. Reifying alphabets is fun but it's carriage before horse. The inscriptions themselves need study, they're not well understood. Trying to pin down coherent ideas of what proto Sinaitic and proto Whateverelse is -- it's fine, it's not inappropriate, but it's trying to make too much out of too little. Too few papers. Too little knowledge. I'll state again I'm open to collaborating with a volunteer offsite on original research to serve the same goals. Does anybody want to volunteer to start Bet Shemesh ostracon or Izbet Sartah ostracon? From a quick look the latter seems genuine, quite important, almost not referred to. If there are more than one or two papers about these I'm looking in the wrong place. Temerarius (talk) 22:50, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

yeah, you're right. I'm being too ambitious. I think Onceinawhile just wants Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite to be more clearly defined. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 02:15, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

To fix the issue once and in for all, I decided to replace the current table with a table of selected symbols from the three sets of Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, Serabit El-Khadim, Wadi El-Hol, and Timna, and its correspondences to a reconstructed name, phonetic sounds (preserved), and the Phoenician abjad.

Feel free to revert to the old table if you feel this is too radical, although much of the old table's content was redundant and has already been transferred to "History of the Alphabet" (link to the article been embedded as a main article) since an alphabetic evolution is not wholly relevant to an article covering inscriptions. INFIYNJTE (talk) 01:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Where is there too much information? INFIYNJTE (talk) 14:32, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Currently, both "Serabit inscriptions" and "Wadi el-Hol inscriptions" sections have more information here than their respective main article pages. More than half the letters in the Synopsis need to have explainatory footnotes on them to make sense of why the letters are put where they are. The Reference section also has 52 items under it (ternary sources?), which is considerably a lot more than the primary and secondary sources listed in the Bibliography section. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 16:07, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

What l-Ba'alat? Spelling in infobox

I believe the key phrase was "beloved l-b'lt," not mt l b'lt. Where did this come from? It's in the infobox. I saw it on another page too. Temerarius (talk) 20:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

File:Ba`alat.jpg does appear to say mtlb'lt in the photo. It's not certain. 𐤁𐤏𐤕 is what I see on the upper right, with a partial house. Bat (goddess) maybe. If the eye isn't an eye, that mark there isn't makeup -- maybe a goose, and if the mark above it is a disk, then that could be son of Ra. Temerarius (talk) 20:35, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Under "discovery" it says beloved is spelled m ayin h. Hard to see in this one. Temerarius (talk) 20:37, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

For better pictures see https://www.jstor.org/stable/26732467. If you want to understand what is written in (modern) Hebrew, try to use Image Translation in Google Translate (or any other app because Google are evil...), and if you still don't understand you can ask me! פעמי-עליון (pʿmy-ʿlywn) - talk 12:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Probably meant Beloved of Ba'laat INFIYNJTE (talk) 03:37, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Śamš as ś?

Given how the Proto-Semitic word for sun is śamš [1] and not šamš, it is possible by acrophony that the sun glyph represents an ś sound instead of š.

However, the problems with this theory include:

- The reconstruction Śamš is likely based on Arabic šams (where ś > s and š are flipped), and it might not be known if other semitic languages followed the same pattern. However, Arabic is described as a very phonologically conservative Semitic language and hence, śamš could very well be the Proto-Semitic word.

- Akkadian, which is older than the Proto-Sinaitic script, renders sun as šamaš. However, it is possible this is a modification since Akkadian shifted various sounds including ṯ, so it is possible ś got somehow shifted to š.

- It is not known how Proto-Northwest Semitic would have rendered sun, though Ugaritic rendered it as šamšu. However, Ugaritic also lost the ś phoneme and is described as replacing ś with š, whereas Proto-Northwest Semitic still had it.

- The Proto-Canaanite lachish comb glyph for ś looked vastly different, having two dots and an open shape rather than anything resembling a sun.

Thus there is some possibility that śamš stood for ś instead of š, though this needs to be approached carefully. INFIYNJTE (talk) 16:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

UPDATE: I attempted to analyze Serabit 357 by transcribing it to Hebrew and altering between shin and sin; the best result I got is "נשמע" (to be heard), whereas sin never gave an actual result in any combination of letters.

Hence, my theory is incorrect and śamš (or even šamš) most likely represents š as initially believed. I also consider the possibility that the languages using Proto-Sinaitic lacked an ś sound, but I digress. INFIYNJTE (talk) 13:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Table

Complaints have been raised about the table of symbols, including too many explanatory footnotes and the confusing nature of it.

Hence I propose recreating the table with rows and columns based on the symbols found in each inscription as opposed to the Phoenician order, and using discretion to determine which sources are more accurate. INFIYNJTE (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

You know what I'll just go through with it since the article went inactive.

If you find the change too radical, feel free to revert. INFIYNJTE (talk) 01:28, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for all your hard work! I think it looks a lot better now. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 06:57, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

𐩸 is in which Serabit el-Khadim inscription?

The symbol is shown under the Table of Symbol's "Serabit el-Khadim" column, but I don't know if that is accurate. I can see the symbol in the izbet sartah ostracon's abecedary, but I don't see it in any of the Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, unless there's a source I am missing? 72.216.186.113 (talk) 15:29, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, you aren't missing anything. I have also been thinking about this matter. I have yet to see the "ziq" symbol in any of the inscriptions.

Therefore, the symbol will be removed from the article unless we find something else, like another inscription. INFIYNJTE (talk) 03:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

wsr

Fig I / 777 here looks like that shape. This is from Petrie, Lahun II. Macalister also references such a shape in Gezer, and disagrees with a colleague who had a hypothesis about it, I can't remember exactly what. I think they called it "Cypriote script" so if you search for that you might see their opinions on it. Macalister thought it wasn't "Cypriote."

Temerarius (talk) 20:17, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Dispute: Between old and new sources

Recently there has been a dispute primarily involving myself and Sinclarian regarding the sources.

The most prominent dispute involves the 𓊋-like glyph, where Sinclarian agrees with Colless it is Gimel while I, due to it lacking any semblance to gimel and looking strikingly similar to 𓊋 alongside the recently-added sources also concluding it is equivalent to Pe/Pi't.

As editors, we ought to resolve disputes, even if it means prioritizing accuracy over inclusion of all opinions. Hence, let us discuss this topic and present our arguments to prevent this from devolving into an edit war. INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:11, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@INFIYNJTE Sinclarian has noted Colless as a source. What source(s) are you relying on? —C.Fred (talk) 18:14, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

https://www.academia.edu/19066825/Two_Early_Alphabetic_Inscriptions_from_the_Wadi_el_H%C3%B4l_New_Evidence_for_the_Origin_of_the_Alphabet_from_the_Western_Desert_of_Egypt

https://www.academia.edu/40029675

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.136.2.247 INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:16, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll give you the sources in full to fully answer your inquiry.

Darnell, John Coleman; Lundberg, Marilyn J. "Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hôl: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt". C. Dobbs-Allsopp, P.K. McCarter, M.J. Lundberg, and B. Zuckerman, co-authors, with the assistance of C. Manassa Darnell, in Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59 (2005): 63-124.

Wilson-Wright, Aren Max (2016). "Sinai 357: A Northwest Semitic Votive Inscription to Teššob". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 136 (2): 247–263. doi:10.7817/jameroriesoci.136.2.247. ISSN 0003-0279.

Wimmer, Stefan Jakob (2010-01-01). "A Proto-Sinaitic Inscription in Timna/Israel: New Evidence on the Emergence of the Alphabet". Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections. ISSN 1944-2815. INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

First, I have my own opinion regarding Colless based on research.

Colless has made some breakthroughs, like connecting the snake-like glyphs with šamš and the ġ glyph with ġinab, although the connection could be dubious, but has also read too much into his own theories to the point of inaccuracy. He has also presented other unrelated glyphs like ziq and ẓil while comparing a glyph that resembles the egyptian corner glyph 𓊋 as gimel.

Overall, I think Colless is not an impeccable source for Proto-Sinaitic interpretation, and it is best to combine multiple sources to obtain the most accurate presentation of glyphs and their meaning. INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@INFIYNJTE You did not quite answer the question. Which sources are you using to support your edits, per WP:Verifiability? You should not be using your own original research when editing. —C.Fred (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

As far as I know, I did answer the question. I researched and found the sources I replied to you with, although I sent the links only.

These sources have been published in Academia.edu and one was even published in jstor.org.

The sources have been made by John Coleman Darnell, Stefan Jakob Wimmer, and Aren Max Wilson-Wright under the publishing of the American Oriental Society. Hence, it is not original research.

This begs the problem: we must research further into the reliability of these sources. INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of John Coleman Daniel's: Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions of Wadi el-Hôl: New Evidence for the origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt

Darnell, John Coleman; Lundberg, Marilyn J. "Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hôl: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt". C. Dobbs-Allsopp, P.K. McCarter, M.J. Lundberg, and B. Zuckerman, co-authors, with the assistance of C. Manassa Darnell, in Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 59 (2005): 63-124. INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I believe this discussion is of upmost importance due to it being the main basis for my recent edits, and hence, scrutinizing the reliability of said source is crucial for this article. INFIYNJTE (talk) 18:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Novel ideas

Hi, I've done some of that OR that I was saying needed to be done. Here I'm pasting from an email that I'm sending to some professors. (Unfortunately I can't link it here? I'm sure it'll be the first channel to come up if you search YouTube for Eunelos.)

I'm looking for some feedback on my work on the early development of the alphabet. I've made a few videos with introductory arguments on q, r, the esses, and w. My motivation has been the poor quality of proto-Sinaitic scholarship, and the Wikipedia page that reflects that quality.

My basic arguments filmed so far:

-Q is a pin, needle, or fibula

-R is a direct borrowing from a number of Egyptian glyphs that share that r shape and have the Egyptian sound value "rs"

-Egyptian djed > proto samek > Greek sigma > Hebrew square script samek

-š is "breasts" (Brian E Colless also argues this)

-W is from the egyptain wsr staff, AKA the was scepter. There are two Egyptian glyphs with the value wsr; one is used in Wadi el-Hol and the other at Kuntillet Ajrud.

I'm looking for a senior writer so I can get my ideas published. I know not all of you are in paleography, but maybe if you're not you know someone. Thanks.

Temerarius (talk) 20:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that scholarship regarding Proto-Sinaitic has been lacking, especially in the field of linguistics and linguistic context, leading to nonsense words such as "pu", "ṯann", and "digg" as well as the whole "samk as fish" theory.

- Q is a line based on the reconstruction from Hebrew קַו "qaw", although it could have been based on a cord of wool or needle. The shape for qaw is likely what ultimately gave rise to the Phoenician glyph for q based on graphical similarities.

- This is an interesting theory. Via acrophony, resh is related to rosh, which comes from ra'š "head", hence making the connection with head-shaped glyphs plausible. However, we can also consider this possibility.

- Colless never argued that "breasts" represents the š sound, but rather ṯ/θ, which resembles the Arabic (ثدي) and Aramaic (תַּדָּא) words for breasts as well as the Proto-Semitic reconstruction ṯdʾ. Unless the sound shifts already occurred (by which 𓎛, representing ẖ, could also be lost), the breast glyph will never represent š.

- The descendent of samk from Egyptian djed has already been established, further corroborated by both PSin and Proto-Canaanite developing in the west where "dag" and possibly "nun" were the words for fish, ruling out the samk as fish theory. The Samk glyph has been found in the Proto-Canaanite Izbet Satrah though not in the Serabit El-Khadim, Wadi El-Hol, and Timna inscriptions of Proto-Sinaitic. If there are any more Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, please list them below.

- We should weigh the evidence to discern the origin of waw. The open ends of the was glyph bear a striking resemblance to Proto-Canaanite and Phoenician Waw and even some instances in Proto-Sinaitic, making it plausible. However, most documents researching Proto-Sinaitic connect the waw glyphs (most accurately those without open ends) to the Egyptian mace hieroglyph.

Kuntillet Arjud is Paleo-Hebrew and dates to late 9th century BC, by which point Phoenician existed. INFIYNJTE (talk) 21:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

"plausible. However, most documents researching Proto-Sinaitic connect the waw glyphs (most accurately those without open ends) to the Egyptian mace hieroglyph." A source as wsr gives you that "mace" form P8 and the was sceptre F12. My hypothesis accounts for both parsimoniously. If you told somebody "It's the wsr symbol," they could turn around and draw either one. That's why it's a convincing argument, not merely an alternate explanation.

Temerarius (talk) 03:14, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Can you please provide a source? INFIYNJTE (talk) 03:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't have a source; that's what makes it novel. That's why it's a claim. Have you watched the videos? The one on w is less than two minutes long.

Temerarius (talk) 05:18, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean a source for the sound values? The easiest way to find glyphs by sound value is to use jsesh.

Temerarius (talk) 05:20, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Temerarius -- Any influence from Greek writing to Semitic would seem to be outside mainstream scholarship (the only such case I know of is small Greek vowel letters borrowed into Syriac as diacritics around 500 A.D.). In any case, the letters for sibilants were kind of scrambled when borrowed from Phoenician to Greek -- the letter Sigma takes its shape and alphabetic ordering from Phoenician Shin, but the name "sigma" seems to correspond most closely to Phoenician Samk. The Greek letter Xi would appear to correspond most closely in sound-value to Tsade, but takes its shape and alphabetic ordering from Samk, etc... AnonMoos (talk) 23:12, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Is the Izbet Sarteh ostracon from a dig or from the market? I know Jeanette Elayi's unprovenanced Phoenician arrowheads are fake because they... look fake (convictionless, confused, and modern), and have two very separated "teeth." If it were shin = tooth back then, somebody else would have done that at some point. (The shins that would have been illegible to an ancient person aren't merely Elayi's illustrations; I checked.) Be REALLY careful posting unprovenanced things, you can see how tenuous the scholarship is and how much damage it could do. "If there are any more Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, please list them below." As for other Proto Sinaitic inscriptions, I've seen a couple of candidates, (pottery makers' marks too) the best site being Har Karkom. I've just uploaded a video about that. Go to YouTube @ Antiques Chodeshow "More proto-Sinaitic inscriptions" How can I post the YouTube link here?

Temerarius (talk) 02:38, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

How could s and š be confused going between Greek and Semitic? Big sigma actually matches the development of the djed-to-samek glyph within the Semitic scripts. They draw the upper lines sloppier, and the secondary descender that's not the stem writ ever larger. I think this is the line that became Hebrew samek and greek minuscule sigma. I've done two videos about the esses so far.

Temerarius (talk) 03:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Pillars

https://postimg.cc/QBhMN1Bp

Interestingly, there's another Egyptian pillar (hieroglyph O30) that could be read acrophonically as s from sxnt. But visually, it's like w. My argument for the development of the djed-samek depends on the rope replacing the pillar itself as time goes on, watch my videos. Temerarius (talk) 02:50, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Hall of shame

As for this page itself, I think the most embarrassing errors are ginap grape, and the duck for tsade. Don't forget good sense for good sources. Temerarius (talk) 02:55, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

wsr staves

I posted this above for a different glyph. Pottery makers marks are another, I think, good place to look. I liked this page because it shows both forms of what might be my two wsr AKA was sceptres, indicated. The fact that such different staffs had the same name makes me wonder if the looped one is a catchpole / rabies pole to lasso the beast, and the animal-headed one is a later symbolic one "holding" merely an image of its head. (This more symbolic version certainly appears clearer in relief.) Might tie into the sa scarf that the Anubis animal often wore, too. Which looks sometimes like a heavy neck yoke or "cone of shame" to keep it caged.

sa scarf

Temerarius (talk) 05:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)