Writing in Ancient Canaan

The maintenance of armies and the defense of cities were of the highest concern for the Canaanites and Israelites. Over the course of time, styles of warfare and weaponry evolved in the southern Levant. The alphabet is the singlemost important and enduring contribution the Canaanite culture has given to later civilization. The simple phonetic alphabet enabled the spread of literacy to the masses, rather than keeping it in the hands of the educated scribes. The earliest writing, dating to the end of the 4th millennium BCE, has been found in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Writing involves the use of a system of signs or symbols to represent the spoken language. In Mesopotamia, scribes recorded commercial transactions on clay tablets. In Egypt, hieroglyphics were inscribed in stone and written on papyrus. The earliest writing took the form of pictographic signs in which pictures were used to represent words and objects. [Manners and Customs] [University of Pennsylvania Museum]