“While the alphabet’s inventors are unknown, Northwest semitic peoples of the western Mediterranean region—early Canaanites, Hebrews, and Phoenicians—are widely believed to be the source. The term North Semitic writing is used for early alphabetic writing found theoughout this region. Because the earliest surviving examples are from ancient Phoenicia . . . these early scripts are often called the Phoenician alphabet. During the second millennium B.C. the Phoenicians became seafaring merchants. Their sailing ships, the fastest and best engineered in the ancient world, linked settlements throughout the Medterranean region. Influences and ideas were absorbed from other areas, including Egypt and Mesopotamia. . . .

The Phoenicians absorbed cuneiform from Mesopotamia in the west and Egyptian hieroglyphics and scripts from the south. Possibly they had knowledge of Cretan pictographs and scripts and may have been influenced by them. . . .

The writing exported by the Phoenicians, a totally abstract and alphabetical system of twenty-two characters was in use by 1500 B.C.

Although North Semitic writing is the historical beginning of the alphabet, it may have descended from an earlier, lost prototype. Early alphabets branched into multiple directions, including the Phoenician alphabet that evolved further in Greece and Rome, as well as the Aramaic alphabet, which gave rise to Hebrew and Arabic writing elsewhere in the region.”

—Phil Meggs & Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 2006.