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32-500: The flat side of the boulder is inscribed with a complete abecedary , although in a different order to the traditional version. The first line contains eighteen letters ( aleph through tsadi ), while the second contains the remaining four letters ( qoph through tav ) followed by two enigmatic zigzag symbols. One side of the stone carries the Northwest Semitic (Phoenician) abecedary extending over two lines: Rendered in

64-528: A Unicode font specific to that language. Missing from the above table: Various Indo-European languages belonging to the Italic branch ( Faliscan and members of the Sabellian group, including Oscan , Umbrian , and South Picene , and other Indo-European branches such as Venetic ) originally used the alphabet. Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, North Picene , and South Picene all derive from an Etruscan form of

96-682: A family of ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet , which was the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet used by more than 100 languages today, including English . The runic alphabets used in Northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of these alphabets by

128-597: Is a reduced ⟨o⟩ and ⟨:⟩ is a reduced ⟨8⟩ , used for /f/ . The Old Italic alphabets were unified and added to the Unicode Standard in March 2001 with the release of version 3.1. The Unicode block for Old Italic is U+10300–U+1032F without specification of a particular alphabet (i.e. the Old Italic alphabets are considered equivalent, and the font used will determine

160-465: Is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet , almost always listed in order . Typically, abecedaria (or abecedaries) are practice exercises. Some abecedaria include obsolete letters which are not otherwise attested in inscriptions. For example, abecedaria in the Etruscan alphabet from Marsiliana (the Tuscan town) include the letters B, D, and O, which indicate sounds not present in

192-529: Is supported by the 1957–58 excavations of Veii by the British School at Rome , which found pieces of Greek pottery indicating that contacts between the Etruscan city of Veii and the Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia have existed ever since the second half of the 8th century. Other scholars posit a different hypothetical Western Greek alphabet that was even older than those attested to have given rise to

224-425: Is the given name Ezer ( Hebrew : עֵזֶר , romanized :  ‘ēzer , lit.   'help, helper'). The side opposite this inscription has a bowl-shaped depression measuring 18.5 by 14.5 by 6.7 centimetres (7.3 in × 5.7 in × 2.6 in), a volume of approximately 1.8 litres (110 cu in). Other similar ground stone objects have been recovered at Tel Zayit. Their function

256-410: Is uncertain, but "they may have served as mortars, door sockets, or basins of some kind." The stone was discovered on July 15, 2005, by volunteer excavator, Dan Rypma, during excavations under the direction of Ron E. Tappy of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary at Tel Zayit as part of the archeological excavations which took place during the 1999–2001, 2005, 2007, and 2009–2011 seasons. The inscription

288-492: Is widely accepted that they spread their alphabet across the peninsula, and the other Old Italic scripts were derived from theirs. Scholars provide three reasons: Etruscans and non-Etruscans had strong contacts in the 8th and 7th centuries, surviving inscriptions from other languages appear later (after the end of the 8th century) than the earliest Etruscan ones (first amongst the Umbrians , Faliscans , Latins , and Sabines to

320-624: The Akathist hymn in Greek, in which distinct stanzas or verses commence with successive letters of the alphabet. The New England Primer , a schoolbook first printed in 17th-century Boston , includes an abecedary of rhyming couplets in iambic dimeter , beginning with: [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). " Abecedaria ". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. Old Italic alphabet The Old Italic scripts are

352-518: The Etruscan language and are therefore not found in Etruscan inscriptions. Others, such as those known from Safaitic inscriptions, list the letters of the alphabet in different orders, suggesting that the script was casually rather than formally learned. Some abecedaria found in the Athenian Agora appear to be deliberately incomplete, consisting of only the first three to six letters of

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384-463: The Italic branch, but also in Gaulish and probably in inscriptions interpreted as Proto-Germanic ) and some non-Indo-European ones (such as Etruscan itself). The following table shows the ancient Italic scripts that are presumed to be related to the Etruscan alphabet. Symbols that are assumed to be correspondent are placed on the same column. Many symbols occur with two or more variant forms in

416-593: The Trentino and South Tyrol regions of Northern Italy, and North Tyrol (Austria) in two distinct alphabets: the alphabet of Sanzeno , and the alphabet of Magrè (near Schio ). It was used to write the Rhaetic language. Alphabet of Este: Similar but not identical to that of Magrè, Venetic inscriptions. Inscribed abecedaria and other short inscriptions found on rock drawings in Valcamonica . 21 of

448-590: The illiterate . The alphabet may have been thought to possess supernatural powers along the lines of the runic alphabet . Each letter would have had a symbolic meaning to the devout. An example, the first seven letters or so of which were found in 1967, is from the long demolished Church of St Mary of the Grey Friars in Dumfries , Scotland. In this case, the letters are inscribed in the Lombardic script of

480-603: The 1260s and the complete structure would probably have stood near the high altar . One of the oldest examples is now in use as a gravestone in Kilmalkedar , near Dingle , Ireland. It has the appearance of a standing stone and is known as the Alphabet Stone, displaying as it does an alphabet dating from early Christian times. Abecedarian psalms and hymns exist, these are compositions like Psalm 119 in Hebrew, and

512-483: The 26 archaic Etruscan letters were adopted for Old Latin from the 7th century BC, either directly from the Cumae alphabet , or via archaic Etruscan forms, compared to the classical Etruscan alphabet retaining B, D, K, O, Q, X but dropping Θ, Ξ, Ϻ, Φ, and Ψ. The South Picene alphabet, known from the 6th century BC, is most like the southern Etruscan alphabet in that it uses Q for /k/ and K for /g/. ⟨.⟩

544-608: The 2nd century AD. The Old Italic alphabets ultimately derive from the Phoenician alphabet , but the general consensus is that the Etruscan alphabet was imported from the Euboean Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia (Pithekoūsai) situated in the Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC; this Euboean alphabet is also called 'Cumaean' (after Cumae), or 'Chalcidian' (after its metropolis Chalcis ). The Cumaean hypothesis

576-422: The 4th century. The majority of objects bearing the abecedaria are not of Christian origin, with the exception of two vases found at Carthage . These objects included tablets used by stone-cutters' apprentices while learning their trade. Stones have also been found in the catacombs , bearing the symbols A, B, C, etc. These are arranged, sometimes, in combinations which have puzzled scholars. One such stone, found in

608-405: The 6th or 7th century, seems to have been used in a school , as a model for learning the alphabet, and points to the continuance of old methods of teaching. An Abecedary , a full alphabet carved in stone or written in book form, was historically found in churches , monasteries and other ecclesiastical buildings. Abecedaries are generally considered to be medieval teaching aids, particularly for

640-685: The Etruscan letters. Whatever the case, the Etruscans added the c , the q and the combination of vh or hv (for /f/) in order to spell sounds that did not exist in Ancient Greek. The development and usage of their own Greek-derived alphabet arguably marked the end of the Villanovan culture and ushered in the Etruscan Orientalising period . As the Etruscans were the leading civilization of Italy in that period, it

672-583: The Greek alphabet, and these may have had a magical or ritual significance. A deliberately incomplete abecedarium found at Hymettos in Attica may have been a votive offering . Near the beginning of the Christian era, the Latin alphabet had already undergone its principal changes, and had become a definite system. The Greek alphabet was growing closer to the Latin alphabet. Towards the 8th century of Rome,

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704-484: The above broad historical concerns, the inscription is significant primarily due to the light it sheds on the development of letter forms in the southern Canaanite interior of the early Iron Age. Because the stratigraphy of the site and the date of the inscription itself are still debated, it is difficult to come to any definite historical or chronologically absolute conclusions. Abecedarium An abecedarium (also known as an abecedary or ABCs or simply an ABC )

736-407: The alphabet. [REDACTED] The Nucerian alphabet is based on inscriptions found in southern Italy ( Nocera Superiore , Sorrento , Vico Equense and other places). It is attested only between the 6th and the 5th century BC. The most important sign is the /S/, shaped like a fir tree, and possibly a derivation from the Phoenician alphabet . Attested in almost 400 inscriptions from mainly

768-519: The cemetery of St. Alexander, in the Via Nomentana, is inscribed as follows: This can be compared with a denarius of L. Cassius Caecinianus, which has the following inscription: Jerome explained this similarity. Children were made to learn the alphabet in pairs of letters, joining the first letter of the alphabet with the last letter (AX), the second letter with the second to last (BV), and so on. A stone found at Rome in 1877, and dating from

800-473: The inscription preserves an ordered sequence of letters, though this differs at points from those of other abecedaries from the Late Bronze and Iron Age Levant. Particularly, waw is placed before he , het is placed before zayin , and lamed is placed before kaph . In this last instance, a large X appears to mark a mistake realized by the scribe himself. There has been some disagreement as to whether

832-437: The inscription should be associated with the coastal (Phoenician) or highland (Hebrew) cultural sphere. Consequently, there has been debate on whether the letters should be described as "Phoenician", "Hebrew", or more broadly as "South Canaanite." Tappy et al. (2006) associated the inscription with the early Kingdom of Judah . This interpretation has been challenged on both palaeographic and archaeological grounds. In addition to

864-431: The letters assumed their artistic forms and lost their older, narrower ones. The three letters added by Emperor Claudius have never been found in use in Christian inscriptions. The letters fell into disuse after Claudius's death. The alphabet used for monumental inscriptions was very different from the cursive . The uncial , occurring very rarely on sculptured monuments, and reserved for writing, did not appear until

896-514: The modern Hebrew alphabet , this corresponds to the sequence: In other words, the Zayit abecedary has the order ו ה ח ז ט י ל כ ‎ compared to the standard Semitic abjad order of ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל ‎, switching the positions of he and waw, of zayin and heth, and of kaph and lamedh. The very top line of the inscription contain the letters: In the modern Hebrew alphabet this translates to עזר ‎, transliterated ʿzr . This

928-451: The region during this period. While claiming a certain "level" of literacy on the basis of this and similar inscriptions is notoriously difficult, Carr (2008) argued that because "Tel Zayit is... small enough and distant enough from Jerusalem... the presence of this inscription there might be taken as testimony of more widespread writing across more far-flung and minor administrative centers of Judah." In addition to preserving writing as such,

960-597: The same script; only one variant is shown here. The notations [←] and [→] indicate that the shapes shown were used when writing right-to-left and left-to-right, respectively. Warning: For the languages marked [?] the appearance of the "Letters" in the table is whatever one's browser's Unicode font shows for the corresponding code points in the Old Italic Unicode block . The same code point represents different symbol shapes in different languages; therefore, to display those glyph images properly one needs to use

992-697: The south, in the 6th century also in the Po Valley and amongst the Cisalpine Celtic , Venetic and Raetic tribes ), and the letters used in these texts are evidently based on the Etruscan version of the Western Greek alphabet. However, some of them, including the Latin alphabet, retained certain Greek letters that the Etruscans themselves dropped at a rather early stage. The Old Italic alphabets were used for various different languages, which included some Indo-European ones (predominantly from

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1024-506: Was discovered in situ in what appears to be a tertiary usage as part of wall 2307/2389 in square O19. Like the Gezer calendar , the abecedary is an important witness to the letter forms in use in the Levant in the early Iron Age. The Tel Zayit abecedary adds to the corpus of inland Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions from the early Iron Age and thus provides additional evidence for literacy in

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