“Sumerian cuneiform died and was buried. But the lines of hieroglyphs have survived until the present day. A later form of writing, which we call Protosinaitic . . . borrowed almost half of its signs from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Protosinaitic, in turn, appears to have lent a few of its letters to the Phoenicians, who used it in their alphabet. The Greeks then borrowed the Phoenician alphabet, turned it sideways, and passed it on to the Romans, and thence to us. . . .”

—Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, 2007.