The Hieroglyph A Myth / Meme

 #heiroglyphs #A #letterA #meme #myth 

The Hieroglyph A Myth !!!

A statement I frequently see repeated is that A comes from an "Egyptian heiroglyph"

Well Yes and No 

That kinda over simplifies the process of how the letter form evolved.

Now #Alp is akkadian for cattle and Hebrew has #aleph and Arabic #alif 

however the actual Egyptian hieroglyph that is a bovine head was probably pronounced /k3/ 

I'm using the 3 to symbolize the "A" sound which was actually a GLOTTAL STOP Consonant and written as a vulture symbol however the vulture symbol seems to have had an Allophonic function being used to represent vowels as well as consonants?  Allo + phone other sound !

Now the cow or bull head symbol is actually an abbreviation for a glyph showing a whole bovine.

An abbreviation or short cut ? 

Berfore the Phoenicians adopted an alphabetic system of allotting one symbol to one consonant sound they had a pictographic symbol. Their system and the Sinai alphabet and related Canaanite systems used forms strongly influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs and it seems from various inscriptions before hieratic evolved people across the Near East were using a kind of shorthand based on Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

Protocanannite had a symbol for aleph of two or three strokes but hwy a cows head with a different sound.

I suspect someone was teaching symbols to beginners speaking West Semitic languages saying something like :

"Just as a herd of cows have a lead bull or cow so these signs for sounds have a leading letter!"

Greek however did not have a glottal stop sound so Greek speakers changed this to A

Our alpha but thats a topic for a whole separate  post next time !