• DOI:10.1086/372069
• Corpus ID: 161870047

The Accidental Invention of the Phonemic Alphabet

@article{Gordon1970TheAI,
  title={The Accidental Invention of the Phonemic Alphabet},
  author={Cyrus Herzl Gordon},
  journal={Journal of Near Eastern Studies},
  year={1970},
  volume={29},
  pages={193 - 197}
}

• C. Gordon
• Published 1 July 1970
• Geology
• Journal of Near Eastern Studies

THE standard body of knowledge and opinion concerning the Phoenician alphabet and its offshoots is summed up by David Diringer, The Alphabet (3d ed., 2 vols., [Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1968]). A new factor, however, is emerging from the lists of signs designating days of the month in Mesoamerica and Eurasia.' In such lists, the days are each represented by a logographic glyph designating animals,2 parts of the body,3 elements of nature,4 and stars and constellations.5 A connection between such lists and the alphabet was suggested by the fact that in the Mesoamerican lists we find the direct sequence HAND-lamat-WATER.6 Since in the Phoenician-Hebrew alphabet the name of kc is kaf, "hand," which is directly followed by 1 called lamed, which is in turn directly followed by m called mom, "water," David H. Kelley (op. cit.) surmised a relationship between the alphabet and the list of the days of the month and suggested that the origin and transmission of both the alphabet and the lists are the achievement of intercontinental mariners. We must explain the varying length of the "months" in the material under discussion. Among the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks, and many others the month was strictly lunar, from new moon to new moon. Since a lunation approximates 29days, a lunar month has either 29 or 30 days.' The Egyptians, however, adopted a solar calendar of "months" independent of the phases of the moon; with 12 months of 30 days each (= 360 days) plus five intercalary days, bringing the total to 365 days (which is only a little less than a quarter of a day shorter than the true solar year). The Maya calendar like the Egyptian has 360 plus 5 intercalary days. However,