Online resources

Web sites of general interest

1. PROEL - escritura proto-sinaítica
   Institutional web-gate of the Promotora Española de Lingüística, acknowledged by the Spanish Ministerio del Interior, dedicated to information on languages and writing systems. The section devoted to the Protosinaitic alphabet contains brief information on Protosinaitic scripture and some illustrations of the inscriptions.
   

Online documents

1. M. Sprengling, The Alphabet, Its Rise and Development from the Sinai Inscriptions, Chicago 1931
   A tentative reading of the "Proto-sinaitic" alphabetic inscriptions, nowadays out-of-date.
   
2. F. Höflmayer et al., Early Alphabetic Writing in the Ancient Near East: the 'missing link' from Tel Lachish, Antiquity 2021
   Article on a brief inscription discovered in 2018 near Tel Lachish dating back to the fifteenth century BC and related to Proto-Sinaitic script.
   

Images

1. Wadi el-Hol inscription 1
   Very good photo of the Proto-sinaitic inscription n.1 from Wadi el-Hol, provided by the West Semitic research project.
   
2. Wadi el-Hol inscription 2
   Very good photo of the Proto-sinaitic inscription n.2 from Wadi el-Hol, provided by the West Semitic research project.
   

Texts

1. The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment
   W.F. Albright (1966) The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge MA
   Albright's important research in which he maintained he had identified 23 of the 27 signs considered to be the entire inventory of this alphabetic script.
   
2. From the Iconic to the Linear. The Egyptian Scribes of Lachish and the Modification of the Early Alphabet in the Late Bronze Age
   O. Goldwasser (2016) From the Iconic to the Linear. The Egyptian Scribes of Lachish and the Modification of the Early Alphabet in the Late Bronze Age in I. Finkelstein – C. Robin – T. Römer, (eds), Alphabets, Texts and Artifacts in the Ancient Near East. Studies presented to Benjamin Sass, Van Dieren, Paris, pp. 118-160
   An article by the Egyptologist O. Goldwasser who suggests that the iconic phase of the Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite scripts preceded the linear phase of the Proto-Canaanite script.
   
3. Ancient Egypt and the Earliest Known Stages of Alphabetic Writing
   B. Haring (2020), Ancient Egypt and the Earliest Known Stages of Alphabetic Writing, in P.J. Boyes - P.M. Steele (eds), Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets, Oxbow, Oxford, pp. 53-67.
   In this contribution Haring argues that, despite some dating difficulties, Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions represent the earliest stage of Levantine linear alphabets. This writing system was created by Canaanite people who adapted ideas and signs from Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic repertoires.
   
4. Early Alphabetic Writing in the Ancient Near East: the 'missing link' from Tel Lachish
   F. Höflmayer et al. (2021), Early Alphabetic Writing in the Ancient Near East: the 'missing link' from Tel Lachish, in Antiquity vol. 95/381, pp. 705-719
   An article which reports about a newly discovered alphabetic inscription from Tel Lachish, dating to the fifteenth century BC and that could be considered the ‘missing link’ from the earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions and the Proto-Canaanite inscriptions of Palestine.