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55-563: The letter is based on a glyph of the Proto-Sinaitic script , probably called dalt "door" ( door in Modern Hebrew is delet ), ultimately based on a hieroglyph depicting a door: The letter is named dāl دَالْ, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: The letter represents a /d/ sound. The Phoenician dālet gave rise to the Greek delta (Δ), Latin D , and

110-447: A [ ɡ ] , except in coastal Yemen and southern Oman where ⟨ ج ⟩ represents a [ ɡ ] and ⟨ ق ⟩ represents a [ q ] , which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ⟨ ج ⟩ to [ d͡ʒ ] and the pronunciation of the ⟨ ق ⟩ as a [ ɡ ] as shown in the table below: Notes: Note: In Kazakh ⟨ ج ⟩

165-544: A geresh ) is used when transcribing foreign names to denote /ð/ . In gematria , dalet symbolizes the number four. The letter dalet, along with the He (and very rarely Gimel ) is used to represent the Names of God in Judaism . The letter He is used commonly, and the dalet is rarer. A good example is the keter (crown) of a tallit , which has the blessing for donning the tallit , and has

220-506: A child [Gardiner A17] or of dancing [Gardiner A32]. If the latter, h 1 and h 2 may be graphic variants (such as two hieroglyphs both used to write the Canaanite word hillul "jubilation") rather than different consonants. Brian Colless has published a translation of the text, in which some of the signs are treated as logograms (representing a whole word, not just a single consonant) or rebuses : Here, aleph , whose glyph depicts

275-411: A dagesh qal are bet , gimel, daled , kaph , pe , and taf . Three of them (bet, kaph, and pe) have their sound value changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive by adding a dagesh. The other three represent the same pronunciation in modern Hebrew, but have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places. They are essentially pronounced in the fricative as ג gh غ, dh ذ and th ث. In

330-458: A hard pronunciation ( qûššāyâ ) it is a [ d ] . When it has a soft pronunciation ( rûkkāḵâ ) it is traditionally pronounced as a [ ð ] . The letter is very common in Syriac as it is often attached to the beginning of words as the relative pronoun . Daled/dolath is always written with a point below it to distinguish it from the letter resh ( ܪ ), which is identical apart from having

385-625: A hard pronunciation ( qûššāyâ  ) it represents [ ɡ ] , like " g oat". When Gamal/Gomal has a soft pronunciation ( rûkkāḵâ  ) it traditionally represents [ ɣ ] ( ܓ݂ܵܡܵܠ ), or Ghamal/Ghomal . The letter, renamed Jamal/Jomal , is written with a tilde /tie either below or within it to represent the borrowed phoneme [ d͡ʒ ] ( ܓ̰ܡܵܠ ), which is used in Garshuni and some Neo-Aramaic languages to write loan and foreign words from Arabic or Persian. The serif form ℷ {\displaystyle \gimel } of

440-567: A person in motion; symbolically, a rich man running after a poor man to give him charity. In the Hebrew alphabet gimel directly precedes dalet , which signifies a poor or lowly man, given its similarity to the Hebrew word dal (b. Shabbat , 104a). Gimel is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called tagin ) when written in a Sefer Torah . See shin , ayin , teth , nun , zayin , and tsadi . The letter gimel

495-609: A point above. As a numeral, dalad/dolath stands for the number four. With various systems of dots and dashes, it can also stand for 4,000 and 40,000. In set theory , the dalet symbol U+2138 ℸ DALET SYMBOL is sometimes used to reference the fourth transfinite cardinal number . ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r š t Proto-Sinaitic script The Proto-Sinaitic script

550-636: A prefix in many phrases (as in Mitzvah D oraitah ; a mitzvah from the Torah .) In modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of dalet, out of all the letters, is 2.59%. [REDACTED] In the Syriac alphabet , the fourth letter is ܕ — dolath in western pronunciation, dalath and daled in eastern pronunciation ( ܕܵܠܵܬ ). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are bet , gimel , kaph , pe and taw ). When daled/dolath has

605-515: A religious nature, as his model allowed an often recurring word to be reconstructed as l bʿl t , meaning "to Ba'alat" or more accurately, "to (the) Lady" – that is, the "lady" Hathor . Likewise, this allowed another recurring word m ʿ h bʿlt to be translated as "Beloved of (the) Lady", a reading which became very acceptable after the lemma was found carved underneath a hieroglyphic inscription which read "Beloved of Hathor, Lady of Turquoise". Gardiner's hypothesis allowed researchers to connect

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660-481: A script which other Semitic peoples of this region must be credited with knowing." Flinders Petrie , 1906, Researches in Sinai O my god, 「rescue」 [me] 「from」 the interior of the mine. ’l「ḫlṣ」[n]「b」t「k」nqb Text 350 Steliform rock panel column ii, left column gives a picture of the situation of the miners. According to William Albright, in his book "The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions And Their Decipherment",

715-634: A series of archaeological excavations in the Sinai Peninsula . During a dig at Serabit el-Khadim , an extremely lucrative turquoise mine used between the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasty and again between the Eighteenth and mid- Twentieth Dynasty , Petrie discovered a series of inscriptions at the site's massive invocative temple to Hathor , as well as some fragmentary inscriptions in the mines themselves. Petrie immediately recognized hieroglyphic characters in

770-646: Is Egypt, where in the Cairene ( Egyptian ) Arabic both colloquial and literary the ج jīm is realized as a velar plosive [ ɡ ] , but as [ d͡ʒ ] when reciting the Qur’an. However, ج (also written چ ) may be used in Egypt to transcribe / d͡ʒ ~ ʒ / (normally pronounced [ ʒ ] ) in loanwords, for example جيبة or چيبة [ ʒiːba ] “skirt” from French “jupe”. While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic , Hebrew , Ge'ez , Old South Arabian

825-465: Is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about 30-40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula , as well as two inscriptions from Wadi el-Hol in Middle Egypt . Together with about 20 known Proto-Canaanite inscriptions, it is also known as Early Alphabetic , i.e. the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both

880-609: Is also found in Southern Arabian Peninsula . Differences in pronunciation occur because readers of Modern Standard Arabic pronounce words following their native dialects. For most speakes the standard pronunciation of the letter in literary (MSA) and everday colloquial speech are the same ( [ d͡ʒ ] or [ ʒ ] ) except for speakers in parts of Yemen and Oman where ج is [ d͡ʒ ] or [ ɟ ] when speaking Modern Standard Arabic but [ g ] in their everday dialectal speech. Another exception

935-471: Is between an early date, around 1850 BC, and a late date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, and by extension locates the invention of the alphabet in Egypt or Canaan respectively. However, the discovery of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions near the Nile River suggests that the script originated in Egypt. The evolution of Proto-Sinaitic and

990-461: Is pronounced [ g ] . It is not well known when palatalization occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Qāf ⟨ ق ⟩ as a [ ɡ ] , but in most of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and parts of Yemen and Oman), the ⟨ ج ⟩ represents a [ d͡ʒ ] and ⟨ ق ⟩ represents

1045-526: Is pronounced / d͡ʒ / in some dialects, such as in the south and east. A variant letter named che is used in Persian, with three dots below instead having just one dot below. However, it is not included on one of the 28 letters on the Arabic alphabet. It is thus written as: Hebrew spelling: גִּימֶל Bertrand Russell posits that the letter's form is a conventionalized image of a camel. The letter may be

1100-546: Is the electoral symbol for the United Torah Judaism party, and the party is often nicknamed Gimmel . In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of usage of gimel, out of all the letters, is 1.26%. [REDACTED] In the Syriac alphabet , the third letter is ܓ — Gamal in eastern pronunciation, Gomal in western pronunciation ( ܓܵܡܵܠ ). It is one of six letters that represent two associated sounds (the others are Bet , Dalet , Kaph , Pe and Taw ). When Gamal/Gomal has

1155-466: Is very important – namely, that common Syrian workmen, who could not command the skill of an Egyptian sculptor, were familiar with writing at 1500 B.C., and this a writing independent of hieroglyphics and cuneiform. It finally disproves the hypothesis that the Israelites, who came through this region into Egypt and passed back again, could not have used writing. Here we have common Syrian labourers possessing

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1210-403: Is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: The similarity to ḥāʼ ح   is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred to zāy and rāʾ . In all varieties of Arabic , cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of

1265-612: The Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet , which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet . According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Canaanite language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and the mid-16th (late date) century BC. The principal debate

1320-543: The Canaanite languages of the Late Bronze Age) who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta. Most of the forty or so inscriptions have been found among much more numerous hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions, scratched on rocks near and in the turquoise mines and along the roads leading to the temple. The date of the inscriptions is mostly placed in the 17th or 16th century BC. An alternative view dates most of

1375-537: The Cypriot syllabary , and Anatolian hieroglyphs . Then the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were studied by Alan Gardiner who identified the word bʿlt "Lady" occurring several times in inscriptions, and also attempted to decipher other words. In the 1950s and 1960s, William Albright published interpretations of Proto-Sinaitic as the key to show the derivation of the Canaanite alphabet from hieratic . According to

1430-594: The Cyrillic letter Д . Hebrew spelling: דָּלֶת The letter is dalet in the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation (see Tav (letter) ). Dales is still used by many Ashkenazi Jews and daleth by some Jews of Middle-Eastern background, especially in the Jewish diaspora . In some academic circles, it is called daleth , following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation. It is also called daled . The ד ‎ like

1485-507: The English D represents a voiced alveolar stop . Just as in English, there may be subtle varieties of the sound that are created when it is spoken. Dalet can receive a dagesh , being one of the six letters that can receive Dagesh Kal (see Gimel). There are minor variations to this letter's pronunciation, such as In addition, in modern Hebrew, the combination ד׳ ‎ (dalet followed by

1540-633: The Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions , carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor ( ḥwt-ḥr ). The mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years. Many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta , and included large numbers of Canaanites (i.e. speakers of an early form of Northwest Semitic ancestral to

1595-467: The Temani pronunciation, gimel represents /ɡ/ , /ʒ/ , or /d͡ʒ/ when with a dagesh, and /ɣ/ without a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the combination ג׳ ‎ (gimel followed by a geresh ) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote [ d͡ʒ ] . In gematria , gimel represents the number three. It is written like a vav with a yud as a "foot", and is traditionally believed to resemble

1650-594: The "alphabet theory", the early Semitic proto-alphabet reflected in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions would have given rise to both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Proto-Canaanite alphabet by the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–1150 BC). For example, the hieroglyph for pr "house" (a rectangle partially open along one side, "O1" in Gardiner's sign list ) was adopted to write Semitic /b/ , after

1705-757: The Phoenicians. A mass of signs was used continuously from 6,000 or 7,000 B.C., until out of it was crystallized the alphabets of the Mediterranean – the Karians and Celtiberians preserving the greatest number of signs, the Semites and Phoenicans keeping fewer... The two systems of writing, pictorial and linear, which Dr. Evans has found to have been used in Crete, long before the Phoenician age, show how several systems were in use. Some of

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1760-399: The discovery in 1999 of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, found in Middle Egypt by John and Deborah Darnell . The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of Proto-Sinaitic writing from the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC. "I am disposed to see in this one of the many alphabets which were in use in the Mediterranean lands long before the fixed alphabet selected by

1815-537: The equivalent letter represents a [ ɡ ] , Arabic is considered unique among them where the Jīm ⟨ ج ⟩ was palatalized to an affricate [ d͡ʒ ] or a fricative [ ʒ ] in most dialects from classical times. While there is variation in Modern Arabic varieties, most of them reflect this palatalized pronunciation except in coastal Yemeni and Omani dialects as well as in Egypt, where it

1870-543: The first consonant of baytu , the Semitic word for "house". A transitional stage between Proto-Canaanite and Old Phoenician (1000–800 BC) has been proposed by authors such as Werner Pichler as the origin of the Libyco-Berber script used among Ancient Libyans (i.e. Proto-Berbers ) – citing common similarities to both Proto-Canaanite proper and its early North Arabian descendants. The Sinai inscriptions are best known from

1925-466: The first inscriptions in the category now known as Proto-Sinaitic were discovered and copied by E.H Palmer in Wadi Magharah during the winter of 1868–1869. His text was not published until 1904. However, E.H. Palmer notes that he was not the first, others had done work before him and as such his work was more of a "Re-discovery". In the winter of 1905, Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda were conducting

1980-461: The goddess Hathor involving inebriation. Archaeological excavations at the site of Umm el-Marra have uncovered four inscribed clay cylinders dating to ca. 2300 BC and whose incisions have been hypothesized to be Early Alphabetic Semitic writing, which would make them the oldest such examples. In 2009, Stephanie Dalley published a number of tablets from the Schøyen Collection dating to

2035-438: The head of an ox, is a logogram used to represent the word "ox" ( * ʾa lp ), he , whose glyph depicts a man in celebration, is a logogram for the words "celebration" ( * h illul ) and "she/her" ( h iʾ‎ ‍ ), and resh , whose glyph depicts a man's head, is a logogram for the word "utmost/greatest" ( * r aʾš ). This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, with celebrations for

2090-514: The inscriptions to the reign of Amenemhat III or his successor circa 1800 BC. It has been suggested that the dating period includes the reign of pharaoh Senwosret III . Four inscriptions have been found in the temple, on two small human statues and on either side of a small stone sphinx . They are crudely done, suggesting that the workers who made them were illiterate apart from this script. The two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions ( Arabic : وادي الهول Wādī al-Hawl 'Ravine of Terror') were carved on

2145-473: The inscriptions, but upon closer inspection realized the script was not the combination of logograms and syllabics as in Egyptian script proper. He thus assumed that the inscriptions showed a script that the turquoise miners had devised themselves, using linear signs that they had borrowed from hieroglyphics. He published his findings in London the following year. Ten years later, in 1916, Alan Gardiner , one of

2200-511: The letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick (spear thrower), ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on the hieroglyph below: The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek gamma (Γ), the Latin C , G , Ɣ and Ȝ , and the Cyrillic Г , Ґ , and Ғ . The Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm / jīm [d͡ʒiːm, ʒiːm, ɡiːm, ɟiːm] . It has four forms, and

2255-539: The letter. The standard pronunciation taught outside the Arabic speaking world is an affricate [ d͡ʒ ] , which was the agreed-upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an . It is pronounced as a fricative [ ʒ ] in most of Northern Africa and the Levant , and [ ɡ ] is the prestigious and most common pronunciation in Egypt , which

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2310-453: The letters of the inscriptions to modern Semitic alphabets, and resulted in the inscriptions becoming much more readable, leading to the immediate acceptance of his hypothesis. The letters of the earliest script used for Semitic languages were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. In the 19th century, the theory of Egyptian origin competed alongside other theories that the Phoenician script developed from Akkadian cuneiform , Cretan hieroglyphs ,

2365-503: The name of God usually represented by a dalet. A reason for this is that He is used as an abbreviation for HaShem "The Name" and the dalet is used as a non-sacred way of referring to God. Dalet as a prefix in Aramaic (the language of the Talmud ) is a preposition meaning "that", or "which", or also "from" or "of"; since many Talmudic terms have found their way into Hebrew, one can hear dalet as

2420-463: The original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive [ ɡ ] . In Modern Standard Arabic , it represents either a /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ for most Arabic speakers except in Northern Egypt , the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive [ ɡ ] ( see below ). In its Proto-Canaanite form,

2475-419: The premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century, published his own interpretation of Petrie's findings, arguing that the glyphs appeared to be early versions of the signs used for later Semitic languages such as Phoenician , and was able to assign sound values and reconstructed names to some of the letters by assuming they represented what would later become the common Semitic abjad . One example

2530-418: The proto-Sinaitic writing, although he also noted that its authenticity is not certain. Below is a table synoptically showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the proposed correspondences with Phoenician letters and Egyptian hieroglyphs. A full repertoire of the currently known letterforms can be found on pages 8 and 9 here: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19299-revisiting-proto-sinaitic.pdf . Also shown are

2585-618: The reconstructed sound values and names. 𓃻 /ɬ/? ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r š Gimel Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads , including Arabic ǧīm ج ‎, Aramaic gāmal 𐡂, Hebrew gīmel ג ‎, Phoenician gīml 𐤂, and Syriac gāmal ܓ. Its sound value in

2640-448: The shape of the walking animal's head, neck, and forelegs. Barry B. Powell , a specialist in the history of writing, states “It is hard to imagine how gimel = ‘camel’ can be derived from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)”. Gimel is one of the six letters which can receive a dagesh qal. The two functions of dagesh are distinguished as either qal (light) or hazaq (strong). The six letters that can receive

2695-595: The small number of Proto-Canaanite inscriptions from the Bronze Age is based on rather scant epigraphic evidence; it is only with the Bronze Age collapse and the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the Levant that Proto-Canaanite is clearly attested ( Byblos inscriptions 10th–8th century BC, Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription c.  10th century BC ). The first published group of Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in

2750-522: The stone sides of an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos , in the heart of literate Egypt. They have been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 BC. They are in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, at approx. 25°57′N 32°25′E  /  25.950°N 32.417°E  / 25.950; 32.417 , among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Rock inscriptions in

2805-482: The times of the First Sealand dynasty , four of which have been identified as examples of Early Alphabetic inscriptions. Other probable examples of Early Alphabetic inscriptions include an ostracon from a tomb in western Thebes and a inscribed sherd from Lachish , both dating to the 15th century BC. In 2010, Stefan Wimmer published an inscription discovered at Timna Valley which he also identified as written in

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2860-460: The valley appear to show the oldest examples of phonetic alphabetic writing discovered to date. The inscriptions are graphically very similar to the Serabit inscriptions, but show a greater hieroglyphic influence, such as a glyph for a man that was apparently not read alphabetically: The first of these ( h 1 ) is a figure of celebration [Gardiner A28], whereas the second ( h 2 ) is either that of

2915-525: The winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie . These ten inscriptions, plus an eleventh published by Raymond Weill in 1904 from the 1868 notes of Edward Henry Palmer , were reviewed in detail, and numbered (as 345–355), by Alan Gardiner in 1916. To this were added a number of short Proto-Canaanite inscriptions found in Canaan and dated to between the 17th and 15th centuries BC, and more recently,

2970-560: The workmen employed by the Egyptians, probably the Aamu or Retennu – Syrians – who are often named, had this system of linear signs which we have found; they naturally mixed many hieroglyphs with it, borrowed from their masters. And here we have the result, at a date some five centuries before the oldest Phoenician writing that is known. Such seems to be the conclusion that we must reach from the external evidence that we can trace. The ulterior conclusion

3025-404: Was the character [REDACTED] , to which Gardiner assigned the ⟨b⟩ sound, on the grounds that it derived from the Egyptian glyph for 'house' [REDACTED] , and was very similar to the Phoenician letter [REDACTED] bet , whose name derives from the Semitic word for “house”, bayt . Using his hypothesis, Gardiner was able to affirm Petrie's hypothesis that the mystery inscriptions were of

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