Ruspina was a Phoenician , Carthaginian and Roman town located in Monastir , Tunisia , situated in Roman times in Africa propria , and mentioned by Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy .
56-524: The Phoenician and Punic name ršpn ( 𐤓𐤔𐤐𐤍 ) or ršpnt ( 𐤓𐤔𐤐𐤍𐤕 ) seems to mean " Angle Cape ". It was used for the cape and hills at the south end of the Bay of Hammamet and for the main settlement near the cape. The Punic name was variously hellenized as Rhouspînon ( Ancient Greek : Ῥουσπῖνον ), Rhouspino , ( Ῥουσπίνῳ ), Rhouspína ( Ῥουσπίνα ), or Rhoúspina ( Ῥούσπινα ) but consistently latinized as Ruspina. The exact location of
112-555: A prestige language , the rest of Anatolia. Phoenician was also spoken in the Phoenician colonies along the coasts of the southwestern Mediterranean Sea , including those of modern Tunisia , Morocco , Libya and Algeria as well as Malta , the west of Sicily , southwest Sardinia , the Balearic Islands and southernmost Spain . In modern times, the language was first decoded by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy in 1758, who noted that
168-680: A zoological treatise on the animals of the Bible was more than a Christianized Pliny's Natural History nor just an expansion of Conrad Gesner's Historiae animalium . Bochart instanced the Arabic naturalists, like al-Damîrî and al-Qazwini , none of whose work had appeared in European print before. His etymologies follow the fanciful tradition inherited from Classical Antiquity and passed to medieval culture through Isidore of Seville . In 1652 Christina of Sweden invited him to Stockholm , where he studied
224-617: A noun in the dual and the rest are nouns in the singular. They all distinguish gender: 𐤀𐤇𐤃 ʼḥd , 𐤀𐤔𐤍𐤌/𐤔𐤍𐤌 (ʼ)šnm (construct state 𐤀𐤔𐤍/𐤔𐤍 (ʼ)šn ), 𐤔𐤋𐤔 šlš , 𐤀𐤓𐤁𐤏 ʼrbʻ , 𐤇𐤌𐤔 ḥmš , 𐤔𐤔 šš , 𐤔𐤁𐤏 šbʻ , 𐤔𐤌𐤍/𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤄 šmn(h) , 𐤕𐤔𐤏 tšʻ , 𐤏𐤔𐤓/𐤏𐤎𐤓 ʻšr/ʻsr vs 𐤀𐤇𐤕 ʼḥt , 𐤔𐤕𐤌 štm , 𐤔𐤋𐤔𐤕 šlšt , 𐤀𐤓𐤁𐤏𐤕 ʼrbʻt , 𐤇𐤌𐤔𐤕 ḥmšt , 𐤔𐤔𐤕 ššt , 𐤔𐤁𐤏𐤕 šbʻt , 𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤕 šmnt , unattested, 𐤏𐤔𐤓𐤕 ʻšrt . The tens are morphologically masculine plurals of
280-468: A reduced schwa vowel that occurred in pre-stress syllables in verbs and two syllables before stress in nouns and adjectives, while other instances of Y as in chyl/χυλ and even chil/χιλ for 𐤊𐤋 /kull/ "all" in Poenulus can be interpreted as a further stage in the vowel shift resulting in fronting ( [y] ) and even subsequent delabialization of /u/ and /uː/ . Short /*i/ in originally-open syllables
336-711: A separate and united dialect or was merely a superficially defined part of a broader language continuum . Through their maritime trade, the Phoenicians spread the use of the alphabet to the Maghreb and Europe, where it was adopted by the Greeks . Later, the Etruscans adopted a modified version for their own use, which, in turn, was modified and adopted by the Romans and became the Latin alphabet. In
392-477: Is an extinct Canaanite Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon . Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age . The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts . Phoenician belongs to
448-650: Is clearly distinct from the preposition את ʼt (/ ʼitt /). The most common negative marker is 𐤁𐤋 bl (/ bal /), negating verbs but sometimes also nouns; another one is 𐤀𐤉 ʼy (/ ʼī /), expressing both nonexistence and the negation of verbs. Negative commands or prohibitions are expressed with 𐤀𐤋 ʼl (/ ʼal /). "Lest" is 𐤋𐤌 lm . Some common conjunctions are 𐤅 w (originally perhaps / wa-? /, but certainly / u- / in Late Punic), "and" 𐤀𐤌 ʼm ( /ʼim/ ), "when", and 𐤊 k ( /kī/ ), "that; because; when". There
504-466: Is some evidence for remains of the Proto-Semitic genitive grammatical case as well. While many of the endings coalesce in the standard orthography, inscriptions in the Latin and Greek alphabet permit the reconstruction of the noun endings, which are also the adjective endings, as follows: In late Punic, the final /-t/ of the feminine was apparently dropped: 𐤇𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤕 ḥmlkt "son of
560-756: Is the so-called Canaanite shift , shared by Biblical Hebrew, but going further in Phoenician. The Proto-Northwest Semitic /aː/ and /aw/ became not merely /oː/ as in Tiberian Hebrew , but /uː/ . Stressed Proto-Semitic /a/ became Tiberian Hebrew /ɔː/ ( /aː/ in other traditions), but Phoenician /oː/ . The shift is proved by Latin and Greek transcriptions like rūs/ρους for "head, cape" 𐤓𐤀𐤔 /ruːʃ/ (Tiberian Hebrew rōš /roːʃ/, ראש ); similarly notice stressed /o/ (corresponding to Tiberian Hebrew /a/ ) samō/σαμω for "he heard" 𐤔𐤌𐤏 /ʃaˈmoʕ/ (Tiberian Hebrew šāmaʻ /ʃɔːˈmaʕ/, שָׁמַע ); similarly
616-558: Is thought that Phoenician had the short vowels /a/ , /i/ , /u/ and the long vowels /aː/ , /iː/ , /uː/ , /eː/ , /oː/ . The Proto-Semitic diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ are realized as /eː/ and /oː/ . That must have happened earlier than in Biblical Hebrew since the resultant long vowels are not marked with the semivowel letters ( bēt "house" was written 𐤁𐤕 bt , in contrast to Biblical Hebrew בית byt ). The most conspicuous vocalic development in Phoenician
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#1733085812817672-516: Is usually / -im / 𐤌 m . The same enclitic pronouns are also attached to verbs to denote direct objects. In that function, some of them have slightly divergent forms: first singular / -nī / 𐤍 n and probably first plural / -nu(ː) /. The near demonstrative pronouns ("this") are written, in standard Phoenician, 𐤆 z [za] for the singular and 𐤀𐤋 ʼl [ʔilːa] for the plural. Cypriot Phoenician displays 𐤀𐤆 ʼz [ʔizːa] instead of 𐤆 z [za]. Byblian still distinguishes, in
728-569: Is written 𐤌𐤍𐤌 mnm (possibly pronounced [miːnumːa], similar to Akkadian [miːnumːeː]) and 𐤌𐤍𐤊 mnk (possibly pronounced [miːnukːa]). The relative pronoun is a 𐤔 š [ʃi], either followed or preceded by a vowel. The definite article was /ha-/ , and the first consonant of the following word was doubled. It was written 𐤄 h but in late Punic also 𐤀 [ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) and 𐤏 [ʻ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) because of
784-584: The Arabic manuscripts in the queen's possession. He was accompanied by Pierre Daniel Huet , afterwards Bishop of Avranches . On his return to Caen he was received into the academy of that city. Bochart was a man of profound erudition; he possessed a thorough knowledge of the principal Oriental languages , including Hebrew , Syriac , and Arabic ; and at an advanced age he wished to learn Ethiopic . Bochart's examples and quotations provided challenges to London typographers , who created typefaces to reproduce them. He
840-1346: The Byblian and the late Punic varieties). They appear in a slightly different form depending on whether or not they follow plural-form masculine nouns (and so are added after a vowel). The former is given in brackets with the abbreviation a.V. Singular: 1st: / -ī / [∅] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) , also 𐤉 y (a.V. / -ayy / y ) 2nd masc. / -ka(ː) / 𐤊 k 2nd fem. / -ki(ː) / 𐤊 k 3rd masc. / -oː / [∅] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) , Punic 𐤀 [ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) , (a.V. / -ēyu(ː) / y ) 3rd fem. / -aː / [∅] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) , Punic 𐤀 [ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) (a.V. / -ēya(ː) / y ) Plural: 1st: / -on / 𐤍 n 2nd masc. / -kum / 𐤊𐤌 km 2nd fem. unattested, perhaps / -kin / 𐤊𐤍 kn 3rd masc. / -om / 𐤌 m (a.V. / -nom / 𐤍𐤌 nm ) 3rd fem. / -am / 𐤌 m (a.V. / -nam / 𐤍𐤌 nm ) In addition, according to some research,
896-560: The Canaanite languages and as such is quite similar to Biblical Hebrew and other languages of the group, at least in its early stages, and is therefore mutually intelligible with them. The area in which Phoenician was spoken, which the Phoenicians called Pūt , includes the northern Levant , specifically the areas now including Syria , Lebanon , the Western Galilee , parts of Cyprus , some adjacent areas of Anatolia , and, at least as
952-741: The International Phonetic Alphabet : The system reflected in the abjad above is the product of several mergers. From Proto-Northwest Semitic to Canaanite, *š and *ṯ have merged into *š , *ḏ and *z have merged into *z , and *ṯ̣ , *ṣ́ and *ṣ have merged into *ṣ . Next, from Canaanite to Phoenician, the sibilants *ś and *š were merged as *š , *ḫ and *ḥ were merged as ḥ , and *[ʻ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) and * ġ were merged as *[ʻ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) . For
1008-548: The lenition of stop consonants that happened in most other Northwest Semitic languages such as Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic (cf. Hackett vs Segert and Lyavdansky). The consonant /p/ may have been generally transformed into /f/ in Punic and in late Phoenician, as it was in Proto-Arabic. Certainly, Latin-script renditions of late Punic include many spirantized transcriptions with ph , th and kh in various positions (although
1064-607: The 3rd century BC appeared the practice of using final 'ālep [REDACTED] to mark the presence of any final vowel and, occasionally, of yōd [REDACTED] to mark a final long [iː] . Later, mostly after the destruction of Carthage in the so-called "Neo-Punic" inscriptions, that was supplemented by a system in which wāw [REDACTED] denoted [u] , yōd [REDACTED] denoted [i] , 'ālep [REDACTED] denoted [e] and [o] , ʿayin [REDACTED] denoted [a] and hē [REDACTED] and ḥēt [REDACTED] could also be used to signify [a] . This latter system
1120-577: The G-stem, the following forms: The missing forms above can be inferred from the correspondences between the Proto-Northwest Semitic ancestral forms and the attested Phoenician counterparts: the PNWS participle forms are * /pāʻil-, pāʻilīma, pāʻil(a)t, pāʻilāt, paʻūl, paʻūlīm, paʻult or paʻūlat, paʻūlāt/ . The derived stems are: Most of the stems apparently also had passive and reflexive counterparts,
1176-524: The Latin alphabet, which also indicated the vowels. Those later inscriptions, in addition with some inscriptions in Greek letters and transcriptions of Phoenician names into other languages, represent the main source of knowledge about Phoenician vowels. The following table presents the consonant phonemes of the Phoenician language as represented in the Phoenician alphabet, alongside their standard Semiticist transliteration and reconstructed phonetic values in
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#17330858128171232-543: The Phoenician orthography, also eventually merged at some point, either in Classical Phoenician or in Late Punic. In later Punic, the laryngeals and pharyngeals seem to have been entirely lost. Neither these nor the emphatics could be adequately represented by the Latin alphabet, but there is also evidence to that effect from Punic script transcriptions. There is no consensus on whether Phoenician-Punic ever underwent
1288-516: The Tyro-Sidonian dialect, from which the Punic language eventually emerged, spread across the Mediterranean through trade and colonization, whereas the ancient dialect of Byblos , known from a corpus of only a few dozen extant inscriptions, played no expansionary role. However, the very slight differences in language and the insufficient records of the time make it unclear whether Phoenician formed
1344-409: The addition of *iy 𐤉 -y . Composite numerals are formed with w- 𐤅 "and", e.g. 𐤏𐤔𐤓 𐤅𐤔𐤍𐤌 ʻšr w šnm for "twelve". The verb inflects for person, number, gender, tense and mood. Like for other Semitic languages, Phoenician verbs have different "verbal patterns" or "stems", expressing manner of action, level of transitivity and voice. The perfect or suffix-conjugation, which expresses
1400-435: The addition of 𐤍 -n or 𐤕 -t . Other prepositions are not like that: 𐤀𐤋 ʻl "upon", .𐤏𐤃 ʻd "until", 𐤀𐤇𐤓 ʼḥr "after", 𐤕𐤇𐤕 tḥt "under", 𐤁𐤉𐤍, 𐤁𐤍 b(y)n "between". New prepositions are formed with nouns: 𐤋𐤐𐤍 lpn "in front of", from 𐤋 l- "to" and 𐤐𐤍 pn "face". There is a special preposited marker of a definite object 𐤀𐤉𐤕 ʼyt (/ ʼiyyūt /?), which, unlike Hebrew,
1456-715: The case endings -u and -i , was written ma-ta-an-ba[ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) a-al (likely Phoenician spelling *𐤌𐤕𐤍𐤁𐤏𐤋) two centuries later. However, evidence has been found for a retention of the genitive case in the form of the first-singular possessive suffix: 𐤀𐤁𐤉 ʼby /[ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) abiya/ "of my father" vs 𐤀𐤁 ʼb /[ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) abī/ "my father". If true, this may suggest that cases were still distinguished to some degree in other forms as well. The written forms and
1512-555: The city is uncertain. Nathan Davis believes it was located at modern day Monastir . Multiple tombs and ruins have been discovered in this city that may have been part of Ruspina. The Carthaginian town came under Roman hegemony after the Punic Wars . In 46 BC, the town was the first in Africa to ally itself with Julius Caesar during his civil war . The same year, the Battle of Ruspina
1568-652: The cultural contexts of Greek and Roman societies, without understanding of which they could never be fully understood. Thus Bochart stands at the beginning of a discipline of the history of ideas that provides the modern context for all textual studies. Bochart was born in Rouen . He was for many years a pastor of a Protestant church at Caen , and also studied in Oxford , where he was tutor to Wentworth Dillon, later Earl of Roscommon . Bochart's Hierozoicon sive bipartitum opus de animalibus sacrae scripturae (2 vols., London 1663),
1624-406: The east of the Mediterranean region, the language was in use as late as the 1st century BC, when it seems to have gone extinct there. Punic colonisation spread Phoenician to the western Mediterranean, where the distinct Punic language developed. Punic also died out, but it seems to have survived far longer than Phoenician, until the sixth century, perhaps even into the ninth century. Phoenician
1680-527: The former differing through vowels, the latter also through the infix 𐤕 -t- . The G stem passive is attested as 𐤐𐤉𐤏𐤋 pyʻl , /pyʻal/ < * /puʻal/ ; t-stems can be reconstructed as 𐤉𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 ytpʻl /yitpaʻil/ (tG) and 𐤉𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 yptʻʻl /yiptaʻʻil/ (Dt). Some prepositions are always prefixed to nouns, deleting, if present, the initial /h/ of the definite article: such are 𐤁 b- "in", 𐤋 l- "to, for", 𐤊 k- "as" and 𐤌 m- / min / "from". They are sometimes found in forms extended through
1736-646: The interpretation of these spellings is not entirely clear) as well as the letter f for the original *p. However, in Neo-Punic, *b lenited to /v/ contiguous to a following consonant, as in the Latin transcription lifnim for 𐤋𐤁𐤍𐤌 *lbnm "for his son". Knowledge of the vowel system is very imperfect because of the characteristics of the writing system. During most of its existence, Phoenician writing showed no vowels at all, and even as vowel notation systems did eventually arise late in its history, they never came to be applied consistently to native vocabulary. It
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1792-460: The mid-11th century BC, when it is first attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads , and as "Phoenician" only after 1050 BC. The Phoenician phonetic alphabet is generally believed to be at least the partial ancestor of almost all modern alphabets. From a traditional linguistic perspective, Phoenician was composed of a variety of dialects. According to some sources, Phoenician developed into distinct Tyro-Sidonian and Byblian dialects. By this account,
1848-450: The name "Phoenician" was first given to the language by Samuel Bochart in his Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan . The Phoenicians were the first state-level society to make extensive use of the Semitic alphabet . The Phoenician alphabet is one of the oldest verified consonantal alphabet, or abjad . It has become conventional to refer to the script as "Proto-Canaanite" until
1904-434: The ones: 𐤏𐤔𐤓𐤌/𐤏𐤎𐤓𐤌 ʻsrm/ʻšrm , 𐤔𐤋𐤔𐤌 šlšm , 𐤀𐤓𐤁𐤏𐤌 ʼrbʻm , 𐤇𐤌𐤔𐤌 ḥmšm , 𐤔𐤔𐤌 ššm , 𐤔𐤁𐤏𐤌 šbʻm , 𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤌 šmnm , 𐤕𐤔𐤏𐤌 tšʻm . "One hundred" is 𐤌𐤀𐤕 mʼt , two hundred is its dual form 𐤌𐤀𐤕𐤌 mʼtm , whereas the rest are formed as in 𐤔𐤋𐤔 𐤌𐤀𐤕 šlš mʼt (three hundred). One thousand is 𐤀𐤋𐤐 ʼlp . Ordinal numerals are formed by
1960-451: The past tense, is exemplified below with the root 𐤐𐤏𐤋 p-ʻ-l "to do" (a "neutral", G-stem). Singular: Plural: The imperfect or prefix-conjugation, which expresses the present and future tense (and which is not distinguishable from the descendant of the Proto-Semitic jussive expressing wishes), is exemplified below, again with the root p-ʻ-l . Plural: The imperative endings were presumably /-∅/ , /-ī/ and /-ū/ for
2016-505: The phonetic values of the sibilants, see below. These latter developments also occurred in Biblical Hebrew at one point or another, except that *ś merged into *s there. The original value of the Proto-Semitic sibilants, and accordingly of their Phoenician counterparts, is disputed. While the traditional sound values are [ʃ] for š , [s] for s , [z] for z , and [sˤ] for ṣ , recent scholarship argues that š
2072-566: The present data. The non-finite forms are the infinitive construct, the infinitive absolute and the active and passive participles. In the G-stem, the infinitive construct is usually combined with the preposition 𐤋 l- "to", as in 𐤋𐤐𐤏𐤋 /lipʻul/ "to do"; in contrast, the infinitive absolute 𐤐𐤏𐤋 (paʻōl) is mostly used to strengthen the meaning of a subsequent finite verb with the same root: 𐤐𐤕𐤇 𐤕𐤐𐤕𐤇 ptḥ tptḥ "you will indeed open!", accordingly /𐤐𐤏𐤋 𐤕𐤐𐤏𐤋 *paʻōl tipʻul / "you will indeed do!". The participles had, in
2128-545: The queen" or 𐤀𐤇𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤕 ʼḥmlkt "brother of the queen" rendered in Latin as HIMILCO. /n/ was also assimilated to following consonants: e.g. 𐤔𐤕 št "year" for earlier 𐤔𐤍𐤕 */sant/ . The case endings in general must have been lost between the 9th century BC and the 7th century BC: the personal name rendered in Akkadian as ma-ti-nu-ba-[ʼ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) ( help ) a-li "Gift of Baal ", with
2184-824: The reconstructed pronunciations of the personal pronouns are as follows: Singular: 1st: / ʼanōkī / 𐤀𐤍𐤊 ʼnk (Punic sometimes 𐤀𐤍𐤊𐤉 ʼnky ), also attested as / ʼanek / 2nd masc. / ʼatta(ː) / 𐤀𐤕 ʼt 2nd fem. / ʼatti(ː) / 𐤀𐤕 ʼt 3rd masc. / huʼa / 𐤄𐤀 hʼ , also [ hy ] (?) 𐤄𐤉 hy and / huʼat / 𐤄𐤀𐤕 hʼt 3rd fem. / hiʼa / 𐤄𐤀 hʼ Plural: 1st: / ʼanaḥnū / 𐤀𐤍𐤇𐤍 ʼnḥn 2nd masc. / ʾattim / 𐤀𐤕𐤌 ʼtm 2nd fem. unattested, perhaps / ʾattin / 𐤀𐤕𐤍 ʼtn 3rd masc. and feminine / himūt / 𐤄𐤌𐤕 hmt Enclitic personal pronouns were added to nouns (to encode possession) and to prepositions, as shown below for "Standard Phoenician" (the predominant dialect, as distinct from
2240-425: The same in both cases, i.e. / -nōm / 𐤍𐤌 nm and / -nēm / 𐤍𐤌 nm . These enclitic forms vary between the dialects. In the archaic Byblian dialect, the third person forms are 𐤄 h and 𐤅 w / -ō / for the masculine singular (a.V. 𐤅 w / -ēw /), 𐤄 h / -aha(ː) / for the feminine singular and 𐤅𐤌 hm / -hum(ma) / for the masculine plural. In late Punic, the 3rd masculine singular
2296-506: The same written forms of the enclitics that are attested after vowels are also found after a singular noun in what must have been the genitive case (which ended in /-i/ , whereas the plural version ended in /-ē/ ). Their pronunciation can then be reconstructed somewhat differently: first-person singular / -iya(ː) / 𐤉 y , third-person singular masculine and feminine / -iyu(ː) / 𐤉 y and / -iya(ː) / 𐤉 y . The third-person plural singular and feminine must have pronounced
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2352-443: The second-person singular masculine, second-person singular feminine and second-person plural masculine respectively, but all three forms surface in the orthography as / puʻul / 𐤐𐤏𐤋 pʻl : [-∅] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 2) ( help ) . The old Semitic jussive, which originally differed slightly from the prefix conjugation, is no longer possible to separate from it in Phoenician with
2408-484: The singular, a masculine zn [zan] / z [za] from a feminine 𐤆𐤕 zt [zuːt] / 𐤆𐤀 zʼ [zuː]. There are also many variations in Punic, including 𐤎𐤕 st [suːt] and 𐤆𐤕 zt [zuːt] for both genders in the singular. The far demonstrative pronouns ("that") are identical to the independent third-person pronouns. The interrogative pronouns are /miya/ or perhaps /mi/ 𐤌𐤉 my "who" and /muː/ 𐤌 m "what". Indefinite pronouns are "anything"
2464-407: The teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet . His two-volume Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan ( Caen 1646) exerted a profound influence on seventeenth-century Biblical exegesis . Bochart was one of the several generations of antiquaries who expanded upon the basis Renaissance humanists had laid down, complementing their revolutionary hermeneutics by setting classical texts more firmly within
2520-546: The time of the Second Punic War , an even more cursive form began to develop, which gave rise to a variety referred to as Neo-Punic and existed alongside the more conservative form and became predominant some time after the destruction of Carthage (c. 149 BC) . Neo-Punic, in turn, tended to designate vowels with matres lectionis ("consonantal letters") more frequently than the previous systems had and also began to systematically use different letters for different vowels, in
2576-401: The verbs 𐤊𐤍 kn "to be" vs Arabic كون kwn , 𐤌𐤕 mt "to die" vs Hebrew and Arabic מות/موت mwt and 𐤎𐤓 sr "to remove" vs Hebrew סרר srr . Nouns are marked for gender (masculine and feminine), number (singular, plural and vestiges of the dual) and state (absolute and construct, the latter being nouns that are followed by their possessors) and also have the category definiteness. There
2632-724: The way explained in more detail below. Finally, a number of late inscriptions from what is now Constantine, Algeria dated to the first century BC make use of the Greek alphabet to write Punic, and many inscriptions from Tripolitania , in the third and fourth centuries AD use the Latin alphabet for that purpose. In Phoenician writing, unlike that of abjads such as those of Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew and Arabic, even long vowels remained generally unexpressed, regardless of their origin (even if they originated from diphthongs, as in bt /beːt/ 'house', for earlier *bayt- ; Hebrew spelling has byt ). Eventually, Punic writers began to implement systems of marking of vowels by means of matres lectionis . In
2688-405: The weakening and coalescence of the gutturals. Much as in Biblical Hebrew, the initial consonant of the article is dropped after the prepositions 𐤁 b- , 𐤋 l- and 𐤊 k- ; it could also be lost after various other particles and function words, such the direct object marker 𐤀𐤉𐤕 ʼyt and the conjunction 𐤅 w- "and". Of the cardinal numerals from 1 to 10, 1 is an adjective, 2 is formally
2744-469: The word for "eternity" is known from Greek transcriptions to have been ūlōm/ουλομ 𐤏𐤋𐤌 /ʕuːˈloːm/, corresponding to Biblical Hebrew ʻōlām עולם /ʕoːlɔːm/ and Proto-Semitic ʻālam /ˈʕaːlam/ (in Arabic: ʻālam عالم /ˈʕaːlam/). The letter Y used for words such as 𐤀𐤔 /ʔəʃ/ ys/υς "which" and 𐤀𐤕 /ʔət/ yth/υθ (definite accusative marker) in Greek and Latin alphabet inscriptions can be interpreted as denoting
2800-417: Was [s] , s was [ts] , z was [dz] , and ṣ was [tsʼ] , as transcribed in the consonant table above. Krahmalkov, too, suggests that Phoenician *z may have been [dz] or even [zd] based on Latin transcriptions such as esde for the demonstrative 𐤅 z. On the other hand, it is debated whether šīn [REDACTED] and sāmek [REDACTED] , which are mostly well distinguished by
2856-427: Was a victory for Pompey 's ally T. Labienus . 35°46′10″N 10°49′31″E / 35.7694°N 10.8253°E / 35.7694; 10.8253 This Ancient Rome –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Phoenician language Phoenician ( / f ə ˈ n iː ʃ ən / fə- NEE -shən ; Phoenician: śpt knʿn lit. ' language of Canaan ' )
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#17330858128172912-427: Was also a conjunction 𐤀𐤐/𐤐 ( ʼ ) p ( /ʼap/ "also". 𐤋 l- (/ lū, li /) could (rarely) be used to introduce desiderative constructions ("may he do X!"). 𐤋 l- could also introduce vocatives. Both prepositions and conjunctions could form compounds. Samuel Bochart Samuel Bochart (30 May 1599 – 16 May 1667) was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and
2968-695: Was lowered to [e] and was also lengthened if it was accented. Stress-dependent vowel changes indicate that stress was probably mostly final, as in Biblical Hebrew. Long vowels probably occurred only in open syllables. As is typical for the Semitic languages, Phoenician words are usually built around consonantal roots and vowel changes are used extensively to express morphological distinctions. However, unlike most Semitic languages, Phoenician preserved (or, possibly, re-introduced) numerous uniconsonantal and biconsonantal roots seen in Proto-Afro-Asiatic : compare
3024-506: Was so absorbed in his favorite study, that he saw Phoenician origins even in Celtic words, and hence the number of chimerical etymologies which swarm in his works. His correspondence on theological subjects, carried on with Cappellus , Salmasius and Vossius was included in his posthumous collected works, and so achieved a wide distribution. He died of apoplexy , aged 67, in the academy of Caen during an impassioned debate with Huet on
3080-463: Was used first with foreign words and was then extended to many native words as well. A third practice reported in the literature is the use of the consonantal letters for vowels in the same way as had occurred in the original adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet to Greek and Latin, which was apparently still transparent to Punic writers: hē [REDACTED] for [e] and 'ālep [REDACTED] for [a] . Later, Punic inscriptions began to be written in
3136-647: Was written with the Phoenician script, an abjad (consonantary) originating from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet that also became the basis for the Greek alphabet and, via an Etruscan adaptation, the Latin alphabet . The Punic form of the script gradually developed somewhat different and more cursive letter shapes; in the 3rd century BC, it also began to exhibit a tendency to mark the presence of vowels, especially final vowels, with an aleph or sometimes an ayin . Furthermore, around
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