Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing

by Marc-Alain Ouaknin

Book Overview

Why is A the first letter of the alphabet? Why is O round? This work tells how Protosinaic pictograms - derived from Egyptian heiroglyphics and discovered in the Sinai only at the beginning of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789205211
• ISBN13: 9780789205216
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Not bad at all for casual reading (and the illustrations are beautiful)

This is a wonderfully illustrated book on the evolution of the alphabetic writing, translated from French. The author is a professor in comparative literature at Bar-Ilan U in Tel Aviv and director of the Aleph Center for Jewish Studies in Paris, an author of academic, fictional, and children's literature. The book is not as rigorous as I had hoped, but the superior artistic style of the illustrations and the very accessible writing (consider it's a translation, and from French!) more than make up the disappointment I initially had. The book focused on the proto-Saini script, a critical transition from the Egypitian cuniforms to phonographic writing. Being a Jewish scholar, the author took full advantage of the Semitic languages these earlest forms of alphabetic writing intented to transcribe. Connections between various forms of alphebet and their kinships were clearly laid out, supported with illustrations and pictures of artifacts. The author was successful in striking a balance between readability and making references to original research work. References were given at the end of each chapter with incredibly small print, although researchers' names were prominately cited in the main text, which is in a comfortably large font. The first part of the book is a historic review of the orgin of the alphebetic writing, with interesting personal remarks on various topics. The section on Chinese (p. 31-36, with several pages of illustrations in between) was simplistic and outdated, reflecting popular writings on Chinese from 20+ years ago. I hope this is not an indication of the quality of other parts of the book, though, because the author appears to be an expert on Hebrew and other languages/cultures of the region in which alphabetic writing rose. About 2/3 of the pages were devoted to an A-Z dictionary of letters. The author kept to his focus on the early transition from cuniforms to proto-Saini to other scripts. Again, various froms of the letters are illustrated with pictures, tables, and occasionally caligraphies. An interesting touch is the summary table at the end of each letter chapter, summarizing the historic changes, and the Hebrew roots of words starting with the letter. It's informative, but I don't know how useful they are to other languages. Part III of the book, titled "The Archeographic Revolution", should probably be renamed to "fun ways to teach you and your kids proto-Saini writing". The author gave some interesting ideas and examples of how to write one's name with the pictoric-phonographic alphabet. It's neither a revolution of the study of old scripts nor a ground-breaking way to teach reading (by using dead pictograms?). It's nonetheless a cute idea and reflects the author's interests in children's literature. Overall the book is an engaging introduction to the evolution of alphabetic writing, particularly the early transition from ideographic writing. The rich illustrations in the book are of high artistic styles.

Highly interseting, but needs more detail!

I found the ideas presented in this book very interesting, however I was dissappointed to see too many "decorative" images more than details. It provides very general information about the roots of each letter and how they evovled in time, but it does not go into too much detail. I believe those who have done some reading on the subject of alphabet and its roots may find this book elementary. I also thought that there were too many graphics that did not relate to the book.

Very illuminating and informative

This is a very interesting and aha!-producing discussion of how the alphabet was invented and the history and development of each letter, from the very first hebrew-adapted egyptian hieroglyphics, through the Canaanite/Phoenecian to the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans down to current letter sounds and shapes. I found this book exceptionally interesting.