2711 AM · 1050 BCE · world history
The Phoenicians and the Alphabet
Merchants from Tyre and Sidon spread a script of just two dozen signs across the Mediterranean.
Cuneiform and hieroglyphs needed hundreds of signs and a caste of scribes. The Phoenician alphabet needs twenty-two letters and can be learned in days. Traders carry it across the Mediterranean along with purple dye and cedar. The Greeks add vowels, and from this root descend Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and Hebrew script.