History
According to contemporary scholars, the original Hebrew script developed alongside others used in the region during the late second and first millennia BCE. It is closely related to the Phoenician script, which itself probably gave rise to the use of alphabetic writing in Greece (Greek alphabet). A distinct Hebrew variant, called the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, emerged by the 10th century BCE, an example of which is represented in the Gezer calendar. It was commonly used in the ancient Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Following the fall of the Kingdom of Judah in the 6th century BCE, in the Babylonian exile, Jews adopted the Aramaic script, which was another offshoot of the same family of scripts, evolved into the Jewish, or "square" script, that is still in use today and known as the "Hebrew alphabet". The Samaritan script, used in writing Samaritan Hebrew, is descended directly from the paleo-Hebrew script.
The Hebrew alphabet was later adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora - such as Karaim, Judæo-Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish, etc. The Hebrew alphabet came again into everyday use with the rebirth of the Hebrew language as a spoken language in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Read more about this topic: Hebrew Alphabet
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)