What is the name of the writing system in Phoenicia?

Answer 1

The Phoenicians developed a writing system in roughly 1200 B.C.E. It was developed in order to facilitate trade throughout the eastern Mediterranean, particularily with the pre-Dark Age (or Mycenaean) Greeks and the Egyptions.

Answer 2

The Phoenicians were great traders, using their huge fleet of sailing ships to travel around the Mediterranean and beyond from their city-states of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre.

Their frequent travels exposed them to various forms of script, including the earliest known alphabetic writing which is today called Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite, dating to the period 17th - 16th centuries BC; the Phoenician alphabet is much later (around 11th century BC) but they must have been aware of such writing systems elsewhere.

The Phoencian alphabet is very well understood today - it has only 22 consonants, no vowels, as in many early writing systems, and the letters had the same names as the later Hebrew script (aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, he, waw, zayin, heth, teth, yod, kaph, lamed, mem, nun, samekh, ayin, pe, sade, qoph, resh, shin, taw).

From the Phoenician alphabet developed the Arabic, Greek, Latin and Hebrew alphabets.

Answer 3

They invented an alphabet based on symbols.

Answer 4

They developed an alphabet, which is the origin of today's alphabetic writing.