The Art of Writing 2 – The Phoenician Alphabet

(The Phoenician Alphabet, Documentary heritage submitted by Lebanon and recommended for inclusion in the
Memory of the World Register in 2005.)

by Dr Martin Porter
Coordinator, Working Group Schools
Sub-Committee on Education and Research (SCEaR) IAC, UNESCO Memory of the World Programme

AGE

This series of lessons is aimed at students aged 11 (Grade 7).

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The main objective of this exercise is to open students onto the joys of practicing the art of
calligraphy and understand something about the universality of language.

SKILLS

Students will hone their skills of observation and transcription and writing.
The visual material should be used to help students develop their mnemonic skills.

CONTENT

The students will learn some ancient history – in particular something about the birth of
Phoenician civilization -, and an essential element of its natural environment.

The students will learn something about the nature of the métier of the archaeologist.
They will also learn something about the arrival of modernity in that area of the world in the
form of Western Powers.

They will also learn about the impact a new technology – a new alphabet – can have on society.
TEACHER´S NOTE

The emphasis of Sections A and B is on the writing. These could be extended, and students given
time to explore the shape of the alphabet, practice writing out words or phrases using them, and
their productions could be used as installations to decorate the classroom. Whilst they are doing
this, their imaginations can be stimulated with lots of other visual materials, or complemented
with literature relating to the ancient Phoenicians.

Sections C and E are there in order to bring the students face to face with two different aspects
of the mythology surrounding the métier of the archaeologist – the first being what might be
referred to as the ‘Indiana Jones’ syndrome – at which point clips from one of those films (or
other films about archaeologists) could be used and shown. (They certainly bring out the magic
of the métier). The second being the disagreements that they have over the knowledge they share.
Section E, would ideally involve an actual or a virtual visit to the museum to experience the tomb
in three dimensions.

Moreover, Section C, involving the literary genre known as ‘the curse’ might also be elaborated
upon and linked to our psychological relationship to the past.

Section D on Byblos is content heavy, perhaps too much so for the majority of students’ tastes.
They can/should be read out allowed, together, allowing time for questions, observations,
discussions and clarifications. At this point MoW and World Cultural Heritage are inextricably
interlinked. The chronology of Empires in antiquity is notoriously difficult to absorb without any
sense of discomfort and confusion.

All sections are illustrated, in particular Section D. But these illustrations should be seen as more
than just illustrations. They should be used as documents giving rise to other observations and
interpretations. Above all, they can later be used in revision quizzes. The art of memory is based
upon visual symbols, and these sorts of images can help root the basic factual information in the
memories of the students. Not only does this get them extra points, it allows them to consolidate
their knowledge immediately by anchoring it in a particular part of the temporal spectrum.

Further down the line with these lessons, those temporal anchors will enable them to orientate
themselves in a wider temporal spectrum and be able to map out the relationships of one
MoW/World Cultural Heritage expression to one another. This is not only important for giving
students a sense of Chronology but also provides a vital basis for their ability to contextualize.
The extension activities explicitly highlighted here – the reading of original letters (available
through clicking on the hyperlink embedded in the text) written by the archaeologist Pierre
Montet, relating to his 1923 discovery of this tomb - might be the sort of thing that only the
most motivated of the students will pursue. However, they too could be the sort of thing that
could be read in class together. For they give such a unique insight into the métier of the
archaeologist embedded in quite an exciting modernistic narrative of ‘discovery’.

Perhaps the most obvious extension activity not mentioned would be ask students to make
presentations on those ‘city states’ of the Phoenician civilization mentioned but not illustrated in
this section : Sidon, Arwad, Berytus and Carthage. At this point one might link this to a
unit on the history of towns or urban development.

Similarly, one might use this material to take it in the direction of a unit on the history of
religion. Thus a student might be curious to find out more about the Temple of Jupiter in
Baalbek, or the Gods of nature behind the creation of Byblos - Uranus - the sky - and
Gaia - the earth, the leader of ‘the Titans’ Cronus, and his son Zeus. Or, use this material
to introduce students from countries in the world not at all familiar with these particular
mythologies to their content.

In order to emphasize the environmental thematic element in these stories, perhaps the
most obvious thing to do would be to encourage more in-depth presentations on the
Forest of the Cedars of God (Horsh Arz el-Rab) and the Ouadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley).
THE ART OF WRITING 2 – THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET

PART 1: THE STORY OF THE ORIGINS OF YOUR ALPHABET?

Imagine you are an archeologist currently digging away in some hole in some desert somewhere.
One night a storm causes a landslide on your site. You awake to discover this thing is now
protruding through the sand and mud. You dig it out and carefully clean it up.

Sarcophagus of Ahiram, King of Biblos (Phoenicia) in XIII-X c. BC. Kept in Beirut National Museum.
Sarcophagus made in around 1000 BC. © the Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph collection, Library
of Congress.

If you have access to a high-quality photograph, describe four things which you think you can see
from this one photograph. If not, use all of the photographs at the end of this unit (4 points)

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If not, what do you think this is? Justify your answer with reference to its form (from what you
can see of its form in this photograph). (4 points)

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Whatever you think it is, what do you think you could use it for? (2 points & 1 bonus point for
the most original answer)

After some careful cleaning, you notice, on the rim of the lid of the sarcophagus, an inscription

© Rana Tanissa

1) Write out the part of the inscription which is represented in the photograph (20 points).

This inscription is the oldest remains of the entire Phoenician alphabet so far discovered.
PART 2: THE PHOENICIAN SCRIPT

Photo: Luca, © Creative Commons

In the left-hand column, write out each letter of the Phoenician alphabet that you can recognise
in the approximately 167 characters that make up this inscription. In the right-hand column write
out its Roman alphabet equivalent.
PHOENICIAN LETTER NAME ROMAN LETTER
PART 3: THE STORY OF THE ANCIENT CURSE

One translation of the sarcophagus inscription reads:

“This is the coffin Ittobaal, son of Ahirom, King of Byblos, made for Ahirom, his father,
in order to lay him peacefully in the seclusion of his death.
If any King among Kings, or Governor among Governors, and the Commander of any
Army who overcomes Byblos, then, when he uncovers this coffin, may the scepter of his
justice be broken, let his Royal throne be overthrown, and may peace and quiet flee from
Byblos; may any vagabond that stains the purity of this sacrificial memory be wiped from
the face of the earth and its memory.”

The archaeologist who found this tomb was named Pierre Montet. He found it in 1923. 1

© http://histoire-et-civilisations-anciennes.com

Montet began excavating this site in 1921, just as Gertrude Bell was in Cairo and Joseph Rock
was in China. Montet discovered this tomb in 1923, just as Joseph Rock was discovering the Naxi
language, just as Gertrude Bell was opening the very first museum of Iraq in the lands of what
used to be ancient Mesopotamia, and just as Alice Paul, one of the leaders of the American
Women’s movement in 1923, had revised the proposed amendment to alter the U.S Constitution
to read:

“Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

If you were the archeologist, male or female, who discovered this tomb, how would you
react on reading this inscription? Explain your answer.
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EXTENSION ACTIVITY: Read Monet’s letters reporting this discovery

https://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1923_num_4_4_8105

1Letters from the archaeologist

https://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1923_num_4_4_8105
PART 4: THE STORY OF THE PLACE OF THE ALPHABET

READ THIS BRIEF STORY AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW
Pierre Montet found this sarcophagus at a place known around the world as Byblos.

Photo: Véronique Dauge © UNESCO

Byblos is known locally as Jbeil (Arabic: ‫)جبيل‬. It is the largest city in the Mount Lebanon
region of Lebanon. Byblos has been continuously inhabited since 5000 BCE. From about
1000 BCE, roughly the same date of the inscription about King Ahiram found by Montet
in 1923, Byblos’s name appears in Phoenician as Gebal, “The well of God” – the letters
GB meaning “well” and the letter L “God”. Gebal is located about 40 km north of the
contemporary capital of Lebanon, Beirut.

Photo : Raheel Mohammad © UNESCO

The stories of its orgins are based on the gods of the environment. Legend say that
Byblos/Gebal was founded by Cronus, the leader of ‘the Titans’, the divine descendants of
Uranus - the sky - and Gaia - the earth. Cronus overthrew his father before then being
overthrown by his own son Zeus.

Photo: Rodrigo Varas © UNESCO

From about 3,000 B.C.E, it became one of the major trading seaport centres.

Photo: Ko Hon Chiu Vincent © UNESCO

Photo : Véronique Dauge © UNESCO

The inscription Montet discovered represents the oldest known example of the most
complete Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was the most influential
alphabet in the entire history of writing. In that sense its shapes are the most widely
spread in the universal phenomenon of writing.

Successive layers of ruins in the area of Byblos discovered by Montet and others show
that, over time, many ancient empires such as the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and the
Persian have come and conquered this place. They all exploited their different rules over
Lebanon iun at least one similar way: by exporting lumber from the great cedar forests of
Lebanon, much of it through Byblos.

So important was the Cedar tree to the history of this part of the world that, even today, one of
the most venerated places in Lebanon is the Forest of the Cedars of God (Horsh Arz el-Rab)
located in the Ouadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley).

Photo : Tim Schnarr © UNESCO

Byblos ceased being a colony of Egypt in the 11th century BCE when the Egyptian New
Kingdom collapsed, and thus became the main city of Phoenicia. This was also roughly
around the same time as the date of this inscription. So the inscription is also
symbolically linked with the moment Phoenicia stops being dominated by another power
and becomes a major world power in and of itself. As a world power Phoenicia itself
became part of a ‘civilization’ organized around a series of city-states. The most famous
of that series of Phoenician city-states were (a) Tyre,

Photo: Véronique Dauge © UNESCO

the place where, according to legend, the famous Tyrolian purple dye was invented, and
from where the Phoenicians set sail to create the famous colonies of Cadiz and Carthage.

Another was Baalbek, which the Romans went on to use themselves for worshipping
their God Jupiter.

Véronique Dauge © UNESCO

Others were Sidon, Arwad, Berytus and Carthage.

Thus the inscription Montet discovered, containing the earliest known complete example
of the Phoenician alphabet, is seen in some stories as a symbol of that independence of
Phoenicia. Other stories see this alphabet as the symbolic beginning of the period when
the Phoenician merchants prospered. For just as they exported their Cedar trees and
Tyrian purple cloth, in doing all of this business using this alphabet, the alphabet itself
became very influential and many other civilisations began using it for their own
languages. So in that sense these merchants can be said to have exported this alphabet
all over the Mediterranean world, even if, unlike the Cedar trees and the Tyrian purple
cloth, they did not make people pay for it!

To this day, even though most people are unaware of the influence of the Phoenician alphabet
on the shape of the alphabet of their maternal language, Lebanese Cedar trees are much sought
after. This photograph, taken by Gertrude Bell in 1900, is a picture of what she called the
‘guardian of the Lebanese Cedar trees.’

The guardian of the Cedars [Man standing]: June 1900. Photo: Gertrude Bell © University Library,
Newcastle University.

It shows how the Lebanese environment had by 1900 undergone massive deforestation under the
rule of centuries of these different conquering Empires, just as Lebanon was about to be
liberated from the Ottoman Empire and, as Montet’s presence demonstrated, just as Lebanon
was about to be taken over by the French Empire.
NOW ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS

1) WHAT is this story mainly about? (4 points)

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2) WHERE does this story mainly take place? (2 points)

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3) WHEN does this story mainly happen? (2 points)

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4) WHO are the main characters in this story? (4 points)

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5) WHY did this story happen? Why do we still tell this story? (4 points)

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READ THIS STATEMENT AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW

“Owing to their cultural and economic links with the two major powers at the time, Egypt and Mesopotamia,
Phoenicians used both of these nations' writing systems (hieroglyphs and cuneiforms) at the same time; around the
twelfth century (1100) B.C., they proceeded by analogy to invent their own alphabet, which then spread quickly
throughout both the western and eastern worlds. Phoenician then went on to become one of the most widely used
writing systems. This was mainly because it was spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world,
where it was then eventually assimilated by many other cultures and evolved as a system of writing. Many of the
modern writing systems of much of the world are thought to have descended from Phoenician.

© Robert R. Cargill

For example, the Aramaic alphabet is a modified form of Phoenician, and began to replace it around 8 th century
B.C. Aramaic became the main language of the Middle East. It was also the ancestor of the modern Arabic and
Hebrew scripts, as well as the Brāhmī script, the parent writing system of most modern abugidas in India,
Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia. The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants such as the Latin,
the Cyrillic and the Coptic), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to
represent vowels.”

QUESTIONS (10 points)

6) What two modern scripts are derived from a version of the Phoenician alphabet? (2
points)

7) From what version of the Phoenician alphabet are they descended? (2 points)

8) What modern script, found today in India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia is also
descended from it? (2 points)

9) Name three alphabets that are descendants of the Greek alphabet (4 points)

READ THIS STATEMENT THE ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW

“Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations which came in contact with it. As
mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script – that means the letters are visual
representations of the speech sounds, unlike hieroglyphs. The simplicity of the Phoenician alphabet not only allowed
it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common population to learn how to write. This affected
the social system around the technology of writing. Before this, writing was learnt and used by members of the royal
and religious groups of society. They used writing as an instrument of power to control the access of information by
the larger population. The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these class divisions, although many
Middle Eastern kingdoms continued to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into the common era
(CE).”

QUESTIONS (3 points)

10) Give 2 social effects of the spread of the use this script

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11) What form of writing did the ruling classes in many Middle Eastern kingdoms continue
to use for legal and religious documents?

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QUESTIONS ON THE PHOENICIANS

12) When did the Phoenician civilisation begin to flourish? (2 points)

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13) What is the phrase used to describe how its civilization was organized politically? (2
points)

14) Name 6 units which made up that political structure (6 points).

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PART 5: AHIROM – A REAL KING OR A MISTAKEN IMAGINARY KING?
© Karen Karam https://365daysoflebanon.com

One of the world’s top expert Phoenician archaeologists wrote to me to tell me what he thought
about the name ‘Ahirom’ in the inscription:
“I seriously doubt that Ahirom really was a king of Byblos, or a king of whatsoever at all. However, many
scholars are inclined not to believe me, because it leaves them alone with the since many decades well-established
(re)constructed history of the early 1st millennium king list of Byblos. But since the name of Ahiroms son, as I
have proven, was not Ittobaal, rather Pulsibaal, the traditional (re)constructed genealogy of the kings of Byblos
seems baseless.

Anyway I am convinced that Ahirom must have been some priestly master of a guild, a famous master craftsman
or the like, similar to the famous Hiram of the Old Testament (see 1 Kings 7 and 2 Chr 2). Most interesting,
from a philological point of view, the names Ahirom and Hiram are definitely the same. Granted, the Biblical
master craftsman Hiram is from Tyre, but maybe both Phoenician cities were confused, because Byblos was already
out of horizon in Old Testament Biblical times.
Just my thoughts.
Kind regards,
Reinhard G. Lehmann

QUESTION: What do you think about his statement? What does it show you about the
profession of the archaeologist/historian? (2 points)

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ANSWER SHEET for 3.2.2. THE ART OF WRITING 2 – THE PHOENICIAN
ALPHABET

(The Phoenician Alphabet, Documentary heritage submitted by Lebanon and recommended for inclusion in the
Memory of the World Register in 2005.)

PART 1: THE STORY OF THE ORIGINS OF YOUR ALPHABET?

1) Line 2, from the right hand 0 to +

PART 2: THE PHOENICIAN SCRIPT

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PART 3: THE STORY OF THE ANCIENT CURSE
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PART 4: THE STORY OF THE PLACE OF THE ALPHABET

1) The story is mainly about the discovery of a sarcophagus with an inscription written using
the Phoenician alphabet.
2) The story mainly takes place in Byblos/Gabel.
3) The story mainly happens around 1000 B.C.E., as well as in 1923.
4) The main characters are Pierre Montet, the French archaeologist, and King ‘Ahirom’ of
Byblos.
5) This story happened because the French Empire was about to take over Lebanon from
the Ottoman Empire. We still tell this story because the inscription which Pierre Monet
found is the earliest known example of the complete Phoenician alphabet – the most
influential alphabet in linguistic history.
6) Arabic and Hebrew.
7) The Aramaic alphabet
8) The Brāhmī script
9) the Latin, the Cyrillic and the Coptic
10) It was used in many different languages. Writing was no longer the preserve of the royal
and religious social elite because ordinary people could learn it.
11) Cuneiform
12) C. 1300/1000 BCE.
13) A series of ‘city states’.
14) Byblos, Sidon, Tyre, Baalbek, Arwad, Berytus, Carthage.

PART 5: AHIROM – A REAL KING OR A MISTAKEN IMAGINARY KING?

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