Interactive Learning Module

Alphabets

• This unit will explore the history of the alphabet, looking at how various writing systems developed, from early pictograms to the Hebrew script used today.
• We will attempt to answer the following questions:
• What were some of the earliest scripts? How were they similar to and different from modern alphabets?
• What writing systems were in use in the Ancient Near East and how do these compare to Hebrew?
• Over the years, Hebrew has been written in two scripts, Paleo-Hebrew (כתב עברי) and the "square" script (כתב אשורי/מרובע) used today. What is the relationship between the two? How do Rabbinic sources view each?
• How did the alphabet come to be ordered as it is? Were there alternative possibilities?
• What is the reason that certain letters (מנצפ"כ) have two distinct forms, one when written at the end of the word and one when written in the middle?

• Writing systems fall into two general categories, being either morphographic scripts where symbols represent units of meaningThe term morphographic literally means "form writing". or phonographic scripts, where symbols represent units of sound.The term phonographic literally means "sound writing".
• Morphographic systems – These can be divided into two subgroups: pictographic scripts ("picture-writing") and logographic scripts ("word-writing"):
• Pictograms and ideograms – The earliest writing systems were comprised of pictorial representations of objects which could be understood somewhat universally. Pictograms refer to graphic symbols or pictures that resemble the physical object they signify, while ideograms (also called indicatives) represent abstract concepts. As such, these symbols were mostly limited to expressing nouns and did not generally include other parts of speech such as verbs, adjectives or prepositions.Technically, many do not consider these to be "scripts", for if one defines a script as the recording of language, these might not qualify. Though they are a means of communication, they cannot reproduce speech.
• Logograms – Logographic scriptsThe word logographic literally means "word writing". are those in which a symbol is used to represent a word or morpheme (the smallest meaningful unit of a word).The word stems from the Greek root "morphe" meaning to form. A morpheme can be either a full word (e.g. dog) or a part of a word that has distinct meaning, such as prefixes (e.g. re-, dis-, bi-,) suffixes (e.g. -ed, -er, -ment) or plural endings (-s, -es). For example, the word "worker" is made of two morphemes, "work" and "-er". Morphemes are not equivalent to a word's syllables, for not every syllable has inherent meaning. Thus, for example, though "table" has two syllables, it is only one morpheme. As with pictograms, the individual characters or symbols in pure logographic writing systems are semantic (representing meaning) rather than phonetic (representing sound), yet unlike pictograms, these are more language specific.As the symbols represent actual words or parts thereof, they must match the words and morphemes of a specific language. As each character represents a single unit of meaning, thousands are required to write all the words of a language. In modern times, Chinese characters are an example of a largely logographic script.

• Phonetic systems – At some point, the idea that written symbols might encode sound rather than meaning arose. The advantage of such systems is the potential to significantly reduce the number of symbols needed to convey thoughts. There are two main phonetic systems, syllaberies and alphabets:
• Syllabaries – A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables of the words of a language. Depending on the syllable structure of any given language this might still include a significant number of characters. Japanese is an example of a language that uses syllabic writing.
• Alphabets – In alphabets, each character represents a distinct sound. These scripts can be subdivided into:
• Abjads – Abjads are consonantal alphabets, scripts whose letters represent only the consonantal sounds of a language and do not contain vowels.In some abjads, like Hebrew, vowels can be indicated with the use of diacritical marks, but these are not part of the script itself. Many Semitic languages, including Hebrew, are abjads. The term derives from the traditional order of letters in the Arabic alphabet ('alif, bā', jīm, dāl).
• Abugidas – The characters of abugidas correspond to consonant–vowel pairs, with the consonant being the primary element, and the vowel secondary.As opposed to syllaberies where every syllable might be represented by a totally different character regardless of whether they share consonant or vowel sounds (the symbols for la, lo, and le might have nothing in common and bear no resemblance one to another), in abugidas the characters are typically based on the consonants which are consistent, and then a vowel sign is added to the consonant to modify the sound. For example, in the Indic Nāgarī script, an abugida, the characters for ka, ke, and ko are क के को respectively. Many of the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia are abugidas. The name stems from the first four characters, 'ä, bu, gi, and da, of the Geʽez script.
• Pure Alphabets – Alphabets are scripts which use letters to represent both consonant and vowel sounds. The word combines alpha and beta, the names of the first two letters in the Greek alphabet.

• Many writing systems combine semantic and phonetic elements, with two of the earliest systems found in the ancient near east, Cuneiform and Heiroglyphics, being prime examples.
• Cuneiform – The cuneiform system of writing can be traced back to the Sumerians in the fourth millennium BCE. The name cuneiform means "wedge shaped", with the script so called due to the wedge shaped stylus used to mark the clay upon which the script was written.
• Development –The script likely began for the purpose of commercial or Temple record keeping.See D. Schmandt–Besserat, "From Accounting to Writing" which traces the development of cuneiform from its beginnings as a system of accounting to a full-fledged script. Clay tokens and eventually tablets were marked with a stylus to represent numbers and commodities. The former were often rendered by the repetition of strokes or circles and the latter by representative pictograms. For two examples of early cuneiform writing see here and here . Over time, though, the pictographs were eventually simplified and stylized, as seen here and here.
• The "rebus principle" – When the need arose to convey more abstract and complicated concepts, phonetic elements were added to the system by what is known as the "rebus principle" where pictograms were used to signify a symbol's underlying sound rather than the object drawn. To illustrate the concept in English, one might draw a picture of a bee and a leaf to convey the word "belief".It appears that the original motivation to introduce phonetic elements into the system was the need to record people's names for transactions. Specific names could not be distinguished via pictograms alone and phonetic clues were needed. [See D. Schmandt–Besserat "From Accounting to Writing" mentioned above.]
• Eventually the script was sophisticated enough to express complex ideas and fully record language, with the script being adapted to record not only Sumerian but also Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite and more.
• Cuneiform texts – Thousands of cuneiform texts have been discovered including legal texts such as the Code of Hammurabi, works of literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and historical records such as Sancheriv's annals.

• Hieroglyphics are a system of writing that was developed in Egypt, with the name meaning "sacred writing". It is debated if the system developed independently or under the influence of Cuneiform.
• It consists almost entirely of pictorial signs that represent recognizable objects in the natural or constructed world rather than being a series of relatively abstract symbols. For example, see the hieroglyphs from the tomb of Seti I here.
• These combine logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elementsAs such, some hieroglyphs represent full words while others have uniconsonantal, biconsonantal or triconsonantal phonetic value. as well as determinatives, symbols used to help disambiguate interpretation, often by marking logograms as being included in some semantic category.Thus, a hieroglyph depicting a home can be used as a logogram to represent the word p-r, meaning house, as a phonogram to represent the p-r sound, or as a determinative added at the end of various words to mark them as “habitats” (either a palace, temple, prison, storehouse etc.) In this latter usage, the hieroglyph is not pronounced, but simply helps to clarify the meaning of the word it follows.
• There were, thus, hundreds of signs, many of which were intricate to draw, making the script inaccessible to many. For a table of heirogylyphics based on Egyptologist Alan Gardiner's sign list, with notes regarding each glyph's suggested phonetic, semantic or determinative value, see here.
• It is assumed by many that the Proto-Sinaitic script, the earliest known alphabet and ancestor to many of the world's modern alphabets, was inspired by and at least partially derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, as discussed on the next slide.

• A new script – In 1905, Sir Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda discovered a series of inscriptions during excavations in Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai peninsula, the site of an Egyptian temple and turquoise mines. [See examples here, here and here].The dating of the inscriptions is debated, with some suggesting that they are as early as the 19th century BCE (see O. Goldwasser, “How the Alphabet was Born from Hieroglyphs”) and others, including Petrie himself (Researches in Sinai, p.132), dating them to the 15 century BCE. See also the discussion in B. Haring, "Ancient Egypt and the earliest known stages of alphabetic writing". The inscriptions contained several symbols which resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics, but the style was different and the repertoire of signs was very small. This led Petrie to conclude that they were serving as an alphabet, with the signs representing consonantal sounds rather than words or syllables.See his description of the find and his conclusions here (pages 130-132).
• From picture to sound – About a decade later Sir Alan GardinerSee his article, "The Egyptian Origin of the Semitic Alphabet" noted that the glyphs appeared to be early versions of the characters later used in Semitic alphabets. He theorized that Semitic speaking peoples had appropriated and adapted Egyptian hieroglyphs to represent the sounds of their own Semitic language, creating a consonantal alphabet through a process called acrophony, where each picture stands not for the depicted word but only for its initial sound.The prefix "acro" relates to that which is at the tip or height of something, while "phony" relates to sound. The term acrophony thus means "initial sound".
• According to the theory, various hieroglyphs were assigned consonantal values based on the initial sound of the Semitic name of the objects depicted by the hieroglyph. For example, the hieroglyph for 'house' (p-r in Egyptian) was adopted to write the "b" sound in the Semitic script, because "b" is the first sound in the Semitic word for house, bayt (similar to the Hebrew בית). Similarly, the glyph for a human head (tp in Egyptian) was assigned the consonantal value of "r" after the Semitic word for head, "ra'ash" (similar to the Hebrew "ראש").
• The Proto-Sinaitic alphabet – It is assumed that, in this way, eventually the creators produced a unique sign for each consonant of their language. The various "letters" of the resulting alphabet (now referred to as the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet)When inscriptions written in this script are found in Canaan, it is referred to as the Proto-Canaanite script. assumed the names of their pictorial inspiration, with aleph (or similar) being the name of the ox-head sign, bet the house sign, kaf a palm etc.The precise names underlying the Proto-Sinaitic characters cannot be known with certainty, however it is logical to assume that many were similar to the names preserved in later alphabets, from Phoenician to Greek, which stemmed from this script. As many (though by no means all) of the later names can describe some of the early pictograms, while they do not describe the character in the contemporary alphabet, it seems that these scripts kept a good number of the earlier letter names even after the original pictographic letters were simplified and they no longer bore any resemblance to the object for which the letter was originally named. For further discussion of the origins of each letter name and for other theories about their derivation, see M. Garsiel, "מדרשי שמות אותיות האל"ף-בי"ת ביחידות ספרותיות אקרוסטיכוניות במקרא", N. Tur-Sinai, The Origin of the Alphabet (Continued) and A. Demsky, The Interface of Oral and Written Traditions in Ancient Israel: The Case of the Abecedaries. For a table comparing several Proto Sinaitic signs with both the hieroglyphs which might have inspired them and other alphabetic scripts which might have descended from them, see here.
• Scholars have used these Sinaitic inscriptions and others discovered in Canaanite and Egyptian sites such as Wadi el-Hol to try to reconstruct the early alphabet. Many, but not all, of the signs found can be matched with a hieroglyphic counterpart. Others might have been derived from Hieratic, the related Egyptian cursive script, while yet others might have been pure Semitic inventions. [It is possible that once inspired by the iconic writing of hieroglyphs, the Semitic peoples created some icons of their own.]See B. Haring, "Ancient Egypt and the earliest known stages of alphabetic writing". See this chart for a reconstruction of the early alphabet.
• Scholars assume that this Proto-Sinatic script is the common ancestor of the Phoenician / Hebrew alphabet from which many modern alphabets, including the Greek and Latin, derive.

• Two scripts – Over the years Hebrew has been written in two different scripts, both being consonantal alphabets of 22 letters:It should be noted that the alphabets are not fundamentally different, for each contains the same letters and phonetic values; it is simply the "font", i.e. the form of the individual characters, that differs.
• כתב עברי, also called: כתב דַעַץ/רעץ or כתב ליבונאה, known in English as the Paleo-Hebrew script.
• כתב אשורי (the "Assyrian" script, though see the next slide for other understandings of the term), also referred to as כתב מרובע, the "square" script used today.
• For a table comparing the two, see here.
• Development – Many scholars assume that the Paleo-Hebrew script derived from the Proto-Sinaitic script, and might be seen as a descendant or regional variant of the Phoenician script, itself having developed from the original pictorial Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Compare the scripts here.
• Simplification – They suggest that over time the original Proto-Sinaitic characters were simplified, with schematic renderings replacing the originals. Thus, for example, the original head which stood for the "ר" sound was sketched as simply a triangle with a neck, and the eye for the "ע" sound became simply a circle.Despite the stylizing and changes, it seems that at least some of the names of the letters still reflect the original logograms, as per the note on the previous slide. Paleographers refer to the derived scripts in the Canaanite region as Proto-Canaanite, Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew depending on the dating and locale.See Y. Naveh "Some Considerations on the Ostracon from 'Izbet Ṣarṭah" that paleographers refer to such scripts until about 1050 as Proto-Canaanite and from then on as Phoenician. Though Israelites might have adopted the script in the 12th century or so, it was not until about the ninth century that they developed an independent and distinct enough branch of the writing to be called "Paleo-Hebrew".
• Early "Hebrew" inscriptions – Several inscriptions from the 13th-10th centuries BCE reflect this development of the alphabet and contend for being the earliest "Hebrew" inscriptions yet discovered.However, see the previous bullet that it is questionable whether in this period Paleo-Hebrew was as of yet distinct enough to really be so called, and it is similarly debated whether the inscriptions represent the late Canaanite, Phoenician or Hebrew language. See C. Rollston, "What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?" for discussion. Regardless, each of the finds are important representatives of the alphabet's development in this era.
  • The Izbet Sartah ostracon (see here)An ostracon (a pottery shard with writing) from Izbet Sartah, dated to the 12th century BCE, was found in 1976. It includes an abecedary (an alphabet primer), listing 22 letters of the alphabet. [For further discussion of the find, see slide 11.]
  • The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon (see here and here)The ostracon was found in Khirbet Qeiyafa near Beit Shemesh in 2008 and has been dated to the early 11th or late 10th century BCE. The five lines of writing are badly preserved and thus many debate both what language they are written in (Hebrew, Phoenician, or Canaanite) and how they are to be deciphered.
  • The Tel Zayit abecedary (see here and here)The tenth century BCE Zayit stone, found in 2005, like the Izbet Sartah inscription, also contains an abecedary. [Read more about it on slide 11.]
  • The Gezer CalendarThe calendar was discovered in 1908 and has been dated to the 10th century BCE. It speaks of different agricultural seasons.
• Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions – Archaeological finds attest to usage of a distinct Paleo-Hebrew alphabet by the ninth century which is found in various inscriptions throughout the rest of the period of the Monarchy. See, for example, the Shiloach inscription which describes the building of Chizkiyahu's tunnel mentioned in Melakhim II 20:20, the Ketef Hinnom inscription, containing the priestly benediction, the earliest copy of a Biblical text yet known, the Lachish Ostraca, dating to and dealing with the final years of the Judean kingdom, and many seals.
• The move to the square script – By the sixth century, however, Paleo-Hebrew begins to be displaced by the Aramaic script, itself separately derived from the Phoenician alphabet. During the Persian period, Aramaic was the dominant language of the empire, used throughout the region. As such, its script was borrowed by many nations, including Jews, to write their own languages. By about the third century, through a process of simplification, this evolved into what is known as the Hebrew "Assyrian"See R. Steiner "Why the Aramaic Script was called "Assyrian"?" that successors of the Assyrian empire, including the Seleucid empire based in Syria (i.e. Aram) might have continued to be known as Assyria, leading to the name. Others suggest that the Aramaic script was so called because it was during the period of Assyrian domination that the Aramaic script and language received official status. or "square" script (so called because the letters are more box-shaped than the somewhat cursive Aramaic). Compare the scripts here. This square script is still used today.
• The Paleo-Hebrew script nonetheless continued to be in use in some religious and nationalist contexts for several more centuries. Several of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written completely in this script (like the Leviticus scroll), while others are written in the square script, but contain the name of Hashem rendered in Paleo-Hebrew (as in the Psalms scroll). Paleo-Hebrew is also found on coinage from the Hasmonean period, the Great Revolt and the Bar Kokhba Rebellion.
• Samaritans – The Samaritan community uses a variation of the Paleo-Hebrew script until today. It is possible that their preference for and adoption of the script as sacred contributed to the Jewish preference for the Assyrian script.
• For a graphic comparing the Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic and "square" scripts, see here.

• Sacred Status? – Rabbinic sources discuss the relationship between כתב עברי (Paleo-Hebrew) and כתב אשורי (the "Assyrian/square" script). The sages debate the antiquity and status of each, questioning in which script the Tablets and the original Torah of Moshe were written. As there is a concept that once the Torah was given "אֵין הַנָּבִיא רַשַּׁאי לְחַדֵּשׁ דָּבָר" (Sifra Vayikra 27:34), the idea that the alphabet in which the Decalogue was written could change becomes theologically problematic. Several Talmudic passages are pertinent to the issue:For discussion of the issue and sources, see: ש. רוזנברג, "לא בשמים היא" (אלון שבות, תשנ"ז): 28-39.
• Bavli Sanhedrin 21b (and similarly Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9:4) brings 3 opinions:
• According to R. Yose the script changed over time from כתב עברי (Paleo-Hebrew) to the square script. Mar Zutra / Mar Ukva, thus, maintain that the Torah was written in כתב עברי , and it was Ezra who changed the script to כתב אשורי, so called because it was from Assyria. R. Yose explains that this was a legitimate change because it was sanctioned by Hashem from the very beginning.He points to the term "משנה תורה", which he suggests means: "כתב הראוי להשתנות".
• R. Yehuda HaNasi opines that the Torah was originally written in כתב אשורי, but after the people sinned it was changed to כתב עברי; however, when they returned it was again written in כתב אשורי, so called because it is "מאושרת בכתב", written beautifully, or perhaps "straight".In line with this and the previous opinion that there was a change in script, the gemara suggests that the "writing on the wall" in the book of Daniel was not readable by any except Daniel because it was written in the new (or renewed) square script and not the one people had been used to.
• R. Elazar HaModai maintains that the Hebrew script never changed and its letters were always written in כתב אשורי.
• In Bavli Shabbat 104aSee also Bavli Megillah 2b Rav Chisda states that on the Tablets the letters samech and mem sofit were held in place miraculously.Even though they are closed letters and were totally chiseled through to the other side of the tablets, the inner piece of these letters stayed in place. As it is only in כתב אשורי that these are closed letters (see here), this source must be assuming that the Tablets were written in כתב אשורי.
• Cf.Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9:4, though, that according to the opinion that the Tablets were written in כתב עברי, it was the letter ayin (represented as O in that script) which was held in place miraculously.

• Rishonim discuss the above sources and the theological question of how a change in script is allowed.
• Some take compromise positions, suggesting that both scripts might have existed from ancient times, but one was hidden and the other widespread.
• Thus, Ritva (ד"ה ותסברא והא כתיב) and others suggest that the Tablets and the original Torah scroll were written in כתב אשורי, but as this script was considered sacred, everything else was written in the common script of the time, כתב עברי.See Rambam responsum 268 similarly: "וממה שחייבים אתם לדעתו, שזה הכתב ר"ל כתב אשורי, הואיל ובו ניתנה תורה, כמו שנתברר, ובו נכתבו לוחות הברית, מגונה להשתמש בו חוץ מאשר בכתבי הקודש. ולא פסקו ישראל מלהשמר בזה, והיו אגרותיהם וחיבורי חכמותיהם וכתבי חול שלהם בכתב עברי לבד, ולכן תמצא חרות תמיד על שקלי הקודש דברים של חול בכתב עברי, ולא תמצא כלל אות אחת מזה (ב)⁠כתב אשורי בדבר משאריות ישראל, לא בחריתת מטבע ולא בחריתת אבן, אלא כל זה בכתב עברי, ובגלל זה הענין שינו הספרדיים כתבם ונתנו לאותיות צורות אחרות, עד שנעשה כאלו כתב אחר, כדי שיהיה מותר להשתמש בו בדברי חול."
• Radbaz offers a variation, suggesting that the original Tablets were written in the Holy square script (כתב אשורי), but the second ones were written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, familiar to people of the time.
• Other Rishonim follow the opinion of R. Yose, that there was indeed a change to a new script in the time of Ezra.
• R"Y Albo explains that the people adopted the Assyrian script, not with any negative intent to negate the Torah of Moshe, but in order to commemorate the redemption from exile.
• Rashba similarly claims that such changes should not be viewed as theologically problematic, explaining that changing a "font" is not a fundamental change. Only if one were to actually change the alphabet by adding letters or the like would there be a problem.
• All of these opinions can align with the archaeological record.

• Several theories have been raised as to how the order of the alphabet came into being. Two follow:
• Poetic mnenomic – N. Tur-Sinaisee his article, The Origin of the Alphabet (Continued) suggests that the order was created out of the need for a mnenomic to aid students in memorization of the letters.
• He assumes (unlike the theory proposed in previous slides) that in early Jewish tradition the letters did not yet have namesAccording to him these were only adopted later under influence of the Greek. and were known only by the sounds they made. As such, letters were taught by thinking of representative words beginning with those sounds, leading to the creation of some poetic mnemonic with words for each letter, which itself created the order of the alphabet.
• He bases his theory on the homiletic discussion of the letter names in Bavli Shabbat 104b, "אל״ף בי״ת אלף בינה גימ״ל דל״ת גמול דלים" (learn wisdom, give to the poor) etc., suggesting that such a poem might have been written as a learning aid.
• Categories of objects – A. Demsky,See his article, The Interface of Oral and Written Traditions in Ancient Israel: The Case of the Abecedaries. also suggests that the letters were ordered in a way which would ease their memorization.
• However, he assumes that letter names originated in the period when the characters were still pictographs, and as such were ordered and grouped by categories of objects: homestead (א-ו), field (ז-ט), hand (י-ל), water (מ-ס), head (ע-ת).
• This theory does not account for the exact order, but only distinct groupings.

• There is evidence from both Tanakh and archaeology that the order of the alphabet might have evolved and was not always ordered as it is today.
• Alphabetic acrostics in Tanakh – In Tanakh, there are several chapters which are arranged based on an alphabetic acrostic, including Tehillim 9-10,The acrostic spans both chapters, with the letters א-כ (missing ד) found in the first chapter, and the second chapter picking up with "ל" but then veering from the acrostic and only continuing with "ק" towards the end of the chapter. 34, 37, 111-112, 119In this acrostic, the letters each appear eight times. and 145, Mishlei 31 and Eikhah 1-4.
• The vast majority of these follow the alphabetical order known to us today (though some are missing letters).See above that Tehillim 10 is missing many letters. Others are missing just one: Tehillim 25 is missing "ק" (and it places the letters "ב" and "ו" mid-verse), Tehillim 137 is missing "ע" (but since the acrostic is not neat and many of the stanzas are of different lengths, it is hard to follow), and Tehillim 145 is missing "נ".
• However, the acrostics of Eikhah 2,3, and 4 each switch the order of "ע" and "פ" (having the latter precede the former), raising the possibility that these chapters preserve an earlier ordering of the alphabet.Cf. R. Yochanan in Bavli Sanhedrin 104b who gives a homiletical explanation of the aberration, suggesting that this teaches that the spies said with their mouths "פיהם" what they did not see with their eyes (עיניהם).
• Archaeological finds – Among the many inscriptions found with alphabetic writing are several abecedaries (alphabetic primers which simply list the letters of the alphabet). Several of these also have a different order than the standard of today:
  • The Izbet Sartah ostracon – The ostracon (a pottery shard with writing) was found in 1976 in Izbet Sartah, perhaps the site of Even Ha'Ezer, and is dated to the 12th century BCE. It lists the 22 letters of the alphabet, but from left to right, and with the order of both zayin and chet and ayin and peh reversed. Some assume it is the work of a student just learning to write, and thus question whether the reversals are just a mistake or evidence of a different alphabetical order in use at the time.See discussion of the find by Y. Naveh in "Some Considerations on the Ostracon from 'Izbet Ṣarṭah".
  • The Tel Zayit abecedary – The tenth century BCE Zayit stone (see also here), found in 2005, lists the alphabet on two lines, The first line reads: "א ב ג ד ו ה ח ז ט י ל כ מ נ ס ע פ צ‎", and the second: "ק ר ש ת". Thus, the order of heh and vav, zayin and chet, and peh and ayin are all reversed.For discussion of the find, see R. Tappy, "An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century B.C.E. from the Judaean Shephelah".
  • The Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions – In 1975-76 archaeologists found a jar fragment that included a couple of Hebrew abecedaries. Here, too, the peh precedes the ayin.
• The above allows for the possibility that at some point the alphabetical order differed from that found today, especially with regards to the order of peh and ayin.

• Five of the letters of the alphabet (כ.מ,נ,פ,צ), when written in the "square script" (but not in כתב עברי), have two distinct forms, one when written in the middle of the word and a different one when written at the end. These are referred to by the acronym "מנצפ"ך". Why do these specific letters have two forms and how did they evolve?
• Talmudic sources – Talmudic sources (see Bavli Shabbat 104a, Bavli Megillah 2b) discuss the two forms, suggesting that both are antique.
• They attribute them to the "צופים" (prophets)See Tosafot Bavli Shabbat that the acronym "מנצפ"ך" (which is not in alphabetical order) was coined to recall that the final letters are "מן צופים". who "reestablished them" after they had been forgotten.Yerushalmi Megillah 1:9 presents them as being "הלכה למשה מסיני" and that the "צופים", insightful children, derived from them homiletic messages.
• The gemara explains that both forms of the letters are early, but with time it was forgotten where each was to be positioned and the prophets re-established their proper places. [This matches the opinion that the final letter mem was miraculously held in place on the Tablets, which similarly assumes the letter's antiquity.]
• Paleography – Some scholars suggest that the two forms are the result of a natural progression within the development of the "square" alphabet.See N. Tur-Sinai "מנצפ"ך צופים אמרום: תולדות האותיות מנצפ"ך וחשיבותן לקורות נוסח המקרא".
• They suggest that the four letters נצפ"ך originally had only one form (as they do in the Paleo-Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets) used whether the letters appeared in the middle or at the end of the word. The original form was the "straight form" of these letters, those used as final letters today (ן,ץ,ף,ך). [It is this form which is more similar to the Aramaic letters from which the alphabet is believed by paleographers to have derived, as seen here.] Since these four letters are elongated, they slow the writing process, and so gradually they were naturally written curved to the left to make writing flow more easily. Only at the end of the word, where one pauses regardless, were the original forms maintained.
• The final mem likely underwent a different process. It appears to have developed from the open form of the mem and coexisted with it, with both used interchangeably mid-word. Only later was the closed mem relegated to the end of words. Vestiges of the original dual usage might be found in Yeshayahu 9:6 where "למרבה" is spelled "לםרבה" and perhaps in Nechemyah 2:13, where the written form of the word "הֵם פְּרוּצִים" is spelled "המפרוצים". See also the Uzziyahu inscription which reads "...לכה התית טםי עוזיה", with a final mem found mid-word.

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