The inscriptions of Wadi el-Hol: The answer for historical questions
The interpretation is not yet finished; the multifaceted materials have quite deeper meaning than as they seem. The inscriptions are not only a simple alphabetic expression displaying simple ideas, rather intellectually composed masterpieces involving range of writing applications beside textual role to display multi-ideas. Firstly the author seems to systematically integrate the ideas of the two inscriptions. Secondly, he authenticated his idea in simultaneous accounts of especial signs at the opening and ending of both inscriptions, i.e. to serve for an added purpose. Thus he had to be bothered to find special words where their constituent letters must satisfy the desired pictographic or ideogrammatic implication (i.e. functioning as logogram).
Let’s look what happened; the notion of seven times sowing of the vertical reading might be connected to the laboring of Egyptians on the Israelites in the Biblical notion. In general the seventh period usually is fixed for Israelites for cessation from any secular activities, but more specifically it might be written directly in contrast to Exodus23:10 “six years thou shalt sow thy land”. In oppose to this, the second inscription which involves the elements “six” and “gift”, altogether seem to signify the Divine Providence of the regulation of Sabbatical: laboring during the six preceding periods, and to rest in the sabbatical. Clearly, the gift here would be assumed the fruit of the Divine Providence.
These implications resounded again from first and last signs of both cases. The two signs that packed the vertical inscription, the water and ox-goad, may be connected to the sea, to which Moses stretched his hands for dividing, and his rod respectively. In similar manner, the two symbols of cessation gesture (Shabath) appeared at the extremes of the second inscription may mark, being portraying the Sabbatical regulation, the preceding and next Shabaths that enfold the six weekly days. Enclosing an inscription by especial signs is very common composition in early writing, see the limestone inscription in Fig. 9 which contains monograms on the left and right of South Arabian text.
Fig. 9 An inscription (from the 4th century CE),
taken from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna
From all angles everything evidently drives to limit ourselves within the circle of Israelite history. There are two further points that make us to think that the inscriptions as a description of the event during which the Israelites about to cross the Red Sea. For one, the “gift” may link to Exodus12:36, says “And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians”. Secondly, from allegorical understanding of the compiled ideas of these two inscriptions reveals that, the crossing of the Egyptian brutal way of ruling which made life striving, by means of obedience of God’s commandment, which they begin to experience by getting everything in their request and spoiling them.
The contribution of North Eastern Africa to
the origin of Semitic alphabets
The intriguing discovery and deciphering results of Wadi el-Hol inscriptions would open a new door of perspective, for the possible place of invention of the earliest alphabets, i.e. from the unexpected North Eastern Africa. It may look absurd to suppose a fundamental contribution to the origin and development of Semitic alphabets from this region. By far it was proved that the Wadi el-Hol script largely marks as South Semitic dialect. The Semitic languages spoken in Eritrea or Ethiopia has strong candidate in this aspect. Several names and terms were mentioned in this paper from Tigrigna lexicon, and the inscriptions themselves are closer to Tigrigna than any other South Semitic members, the preposition N in the “N-lbesh” is purely confirming as Tigrigna dialect unlike Sabaeans or Geez which use like most Semitics ‘la’ or ‘le’, which for these cases it would have been “le-lbesh”. Again the word “Meriet” with rendering of “land” is attested neither in Geez nor in Sabaean. The term was present in these vocabularies but with the meaning “dust” & “clayey soil” resp., the slight shifts in meaning reflect loanword to these languages (As we are going to see it below it is associated its origin with god of earth ruler).
It is often thought that both the language Geez and the script Old Geez was developed from Sabaean, and Geez in turn became the ancestor for the modern languages Tigrigna, Amharic and Tigre (note: due to Ethiopian colonialism on Eritrea, the script Geez before 1991, the Independence Day, was known by classical Ethiopic). The old Geez itself modified to a modern version, which is also wrongly accredited as modern Ethiopic. If the language for these oldest inscriptions (Wadi el-Hol) is attested as Tigrigna, the above evolutionary relation in both cases in script and linguistic suffer controversiality. It seems the major factor for the confusion to think Geez as a precedent is from its dominancy as an official written language. Because of lack of adequate and thorough archaeological and linguistic research works it seemingly becoming the only ancient textual source. Geez as an official language would probably be dominant only on the later eras. The restriction of priests to speak in only Geez in Orthodox religious service regardless of the people’s inability to understand the language can be taken as a vestige of such dominating influence. Comparison with Tegre reveals nothing but Tegre as independent of Geez emergence. Robert Hetzron (1972) encounters with some archaic Tigre grammar which are not explicable in terms of genetic derivation from Ge‘ez that leads him to come to a conclusion of an independent Semitic dialect spoken in Eritrea well before the Sabaean expansion. Presumably Geez would be simply a product of the mixture of Sabaean and Tigrigna.
It seems such assertions have been forwarded from premature accounts or hegemonic theory of western schools. Ayale Bekerie (1996) wrote, “attributing the art of writing to the South Arabians solely based on the “multitude of epigraphic inscriptions found in the Yemen, as compared to the relatively scarce inscriptions in Ethiopia” …., a large number of archaeological explorations were undertaken in South Arabia in the 19th century”. The scarcity of such relevant works is even disappointing for Eritrea. From appearance, it is difficult to ascertain as a forerunner whether Old Geez or South Arabian script, which exist perfect resemblance between the counterpart letters. If there are no paleographic features between them that cause chronological relation, both sides should have equal claim of precedence. After all we know from Wadi el-Hol material that Tigrigna as writing language far predates to both of them; proving the knowledge of alphabetic system of writing in the region outside foreign influence. The symbolic models from which some alphabets of these scripts evolved are available in Eritrean rock paintings. For instance, the prototype of the South Arabian (or Old Geez) letter A’ might be identified from a standing man on horse (Fig. 10); a figure among the Danga’s astronomical paintings. An archaic version of the letter in an inscription carved in an extant sculpture, found in National Museum (the 4th letter from left in the inscription “TSWE’”, 
), would be pleasantly compared to this painting. Other several alphabets from these alphabetic systems (South Arabian or Old Geez) would seem to place their roots in the same figures of constellational paintings of Danga (See Table 2).
Fig. 10 A figure of a man standing on a horse
Further, there are very old inscriptions in Eritrea comprising some archaic letters carrying characteristics that do not go back further to the known parents, rather the corpus themselves looks as parentage. Their alphabetic concern is hitherto unknown to scholars, and nothing is so far said about them (see Fig. 11 an example of such inscriptions). They don’t seem local barbarism since inscriptions with same forms, both in single and composed forms, are attested in other sites within the country. It simply shows that there should be some standard implications that made them to receive widespread recognition. All these evidently would avoid the unfair ascriptions “South Arabian script” and “Old Geez script”, to actually describe the creative invention of these people, Sabaeans and Geez speakers respectively.
Repeated sequence of signs (
), can be read as Ţwb. The 1st two signs would be the characters (Ţ) & (W), and the 3rd sign would be an inverted South Arabian (B). Ţwb is translated as “Breast”, “To fall” or “Hard building block”. From the latter two ideas and other reasons the word originally might mean “Tower”, but “breast” would be the result from figurative implication; see the passage in Solomon’s Song (Song8:10)“…my breasts like towers…”. In the same astronomical paintings there is another figure, formed from two connected towers like shape, which bear resemblance with the South Semitic letter ‘ Ţ ’ (
or 
). Presumably the incised two words (Ţwb) represent the letter names for corresponding each sign of Ţ which appeared on the middle top.
Fig. 11 An inscription from Car Sagla,
By Vincenzo Franchini, 1968
Without being confined to South Semitic ancestral line, it can also be identified some relationships between the North Semitic alphabets and this new corpus. I would like to demonstrate the influence by showing some examples. There seems some morphology existing for the Phoenician alphabet ‘He’ that initiate its graphic form among same astronomical paintings. Observe the figure which depicts a side view of triple camels having common body, with distinctive foreparts (See in Fig. 13 the first from left). Consider the 2nd sign from top left in the inscription of Fig.12, it is observable that to see it as a later stage of this painting of tipple-camels. Here the sign is in simplified form in which the foreparts of the camels are lined up. The symbol after passing further reduction it seems to arrive to the Phoenician ‘He’. The way the Greeks labeled their alphabet Digamma (
) was clearly on the basis of the number of camel head shapes, since the name for the alphabetic sign with one head (
) is Gama (the non-existent in Modern Greek script “Digamma” would probably conventionally emerged in the set). By the same systematic labeling, I am quite convinced to attribute the Phoenician letter He (
) as highly stylized trigamma. However, unlike the digamma this would be the result of morphological refinement of the historical tripled camels. This is not the only one sign that makes analogy with the inscription of Haro‘m in the Phoenician alphabets, there are also two signs which somehow look like Gamel and Res, () & (
) resp., but comparison with Yod is already notified earlier. But I looked the signs (
) and (
) in contrast to the South Semitic “Ph or P” and “Ch” (the middle leg for Old Geez character Ch, same like this sign, found to be longer in some versions; see Garbini 1979, Fig.10). The crook like alphabet (Gamel) is also present in South Semitic alphabets.
Fig. 12 Unknown corpus from Haro‘m, By Vincenzo Franchini, 1958
(Note: the exaggerated scatter of the signs in Fig. 12 probably because they had been governed by the frame of dot-to-dot of night-sky stars)
Fig. 13 The morphology of the 5th Phoenician alphabet (He)
Table 2 Comparisons of the Danga Astronomical paintings (constellations on the path of the moon) with Semitic alphabets
The implication of the North Eastern African Script
in Egypt
In the light of this new perspective, Wadi el-Hol inscriptions as Tigrigna texts, there may have two major premises to accept a fundamental contributions in the origin and development of Semitic alphabets from the region of North Eastern Africa (more specifically “Eritrea”).
1. The early commercial contact of Egyptians: Regarding Egyptian commercial contacts to the land of Punt, R. Pankhurst (1984) puts the historical segments by Chronology, “The origins of long distance commercial activity in the region later known as Ethiopia & horn of Africa are to be seen, in the effort of Pharaon’s to obtain the riches of the area, principally incense, gold & ivory. The first contact was as early as the 1st dynasty and 2nd dynasty (3546-3190 B.C). Until the 5th dynasty (2958-2946 BC) when a new breakthrough of a direct sailings was begun by king Sahura, all the activities were in overland route. The trade with land of Punt seems to have grown after the rise of the Southerly Egyptian capital of Thebes during the 11th dynasty, under king Mentuhotep II, (2375-2212 BC). But it came to decline with invasion of Hyksos and the resultant period of disturbances. It didn’t remain collapsed permanently, but resumption accompanied by greater expedition was taken place during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut (1501-1479 BC)”.
Scholars for a long time had vacillated for the location of Punt among different countries. However, currently based on experimental results and social studies it became more suitable to place Eritrea as right location. The author of Locating the Land of Punt—the Case for Eritrea, 2009, presented Eritrea’s fulfillment for all the key factors in determining the location of punt – the consideration of the land and sea trade routes taken by the trading expeditions, the flora and fauna correspondence, and epigraphic and archaeological supports. Especially the examinations on baboons are of great importance in deciding the location; “A research team from Egyptian and American scientists has investigated Egyptian mummies of baboons known to have been imported from Punt, in comparison to baboons from countries supposed to be as the land of Punt, Somalia, Yemen, Mozambique, and Eritrea. And they came with conclusive results. The isotope values in baboons from Somalia, Yemen and Mozambique did not match, but those in baboons from Eritrea and neighboring Ethiopia found to be closely matched”.
2. The theory of Mesopotamian origin for the African Semites: it is thought, according to certain scholars, that the Mesopotamian Semite race itself along with its civilized customs came from the place, believed to be the cradle of civilization, to Eritrea and its vicinity; among those in favor is Sergew H. Selassie (1972). Alongside this view I want to add some facts that there are several pictorial sources in Eritrean archaeological sites, with some of them, are very parallel to the well-known Babylonian astronomical sources “Mul.Apin”; the Danga paintings is one among these. Furthermore, another from linguistic point of view would seem to support the view. In Tigrigna there are many words which retain some Mesopotamian historical features. I can mention some, for instance Dumuzi (the Hired Man) the Mesopotamian famous god can be traced in the Tigrignian word ‘Domoz’ meaning wage. Cygnus the constellation Swan, and from the stars found near this constellation, known by “Al thalimain” the Ostriches according to the Arab astronomy, we can establish etymological link for the Latin word Cygnus with “Cegen”, the term exclusively traced in Eritro-Ethiopian Semitic languages, meaning ostrich; but here is also the view requires the assumption of Pre-Greek origin. The Greek constellation Auriga some scholars identified it with Babylonian Old Man (shugi), here is also the Latin word ‘Auriga’ had its origin from Semitic and would be compared to Tigrignian ‘Aregi-t’, meaning Old. Once more, the term ‘Meriet’ (land) I want to associate with Mesopotamian god Martu, the weather god, the youngest son of the divine ruler of the earth Enlil. These instances are few out of the immense, if we make etymological studies particularly with Tigrignian words we will come across with many wondering results. There wouldn’t have any likely explanations, for the attestation of indigenous Babylonian or Samarian elements peculiarly in this region, other than supposing the parallelism as happened by migration.
What do these premises imply? The first one made things clear that expectation of Tigrigna text in Egyptian territory may not be a shock any longer, but simply the consequence of the significant commercial contact between the two regions. And the second theory simplifies the strangeness of accounting remarkable knowledge of art of writing from this unexpected area, North East Africa. In addition, the contact with Egyptian also may have some impact on this aspect. But I don’t agree with the invention of Semitic alphabet to entirely dependency of Egyptian writing system.
In general, the set of pictographs from which the Semitic alphabets developed I argue that they couldn’t be limited to the influence of specific source. Neither Gardiner point of view “Egyptian hieroglyphic based”, nor Moran’s “constellational origin for alphabets” has significant credit when they are taken separately. However, it seems that the symbols are collections from different categories, thinking a literate person in those times who is required to know wide range of subjects, at least concise ideas in each; among the well-known: Astronomy, mathematics and science of measurements, art of writing, moral literature (like the Mosaic law), and else. His preference of borrowing pictographs expectedly would be in accordance to this range. That is why the dependence on hieroglyphics confirmed to be partial. More sufficiently this was proved in this article by the attestation of gestural symbols of Mosaic Law which can’t be at any time native or parallel to the Egyptians. On the other hand, it should never be forgotten the fact that some of these gestures to have been evidently modeled on Egyptian hieroglyphics or hieratic, but the systematic composition of this set of symbolism that requires intelligent designing could only be in connection to the ten Mosaic Law.
The conclusion seems unavoidable, there wouldn’t any other cultural aspect than astronomy which have a great significance in ancient societies, which is widely shared and having a profound role in the human aspects: in calendrical and astrological purposes, astral religion, to represent mythological heroes and creatures, and familiar creatures and objects of everyday life. History proves beyond doubt that the knowledge of astronomy is closer to Mesopotamians than to Egyptians. For Eritrea it would be concluded as only an extension to Mesopotamian culture. Compared to hieroglyph, astronomy has a great deal that the symbols of alphabetic systems to be adopted from. The role of Hieroglyphic inspiration would be as secondary, conceivably its wealth in symbols had made access for preference of desired symbols. Therefore, it is scarcely explained as coincidence for the following counterparts: Aleph, Taurus; Gimel, Gamlu; Daleth (fish), Pisces; He (Triple camels), Charioteer; Mem, Aquarius; Yod, Archer; Heth or Teth, Gemini; Taw (feminine word), Virgo; Zain (figuratively “to agree”), Hercules (or Libra)…etc.
Conclusion: In all probability this paper leaned its favor to North Eastern Africa, the region where alphabetic system of writing was invented. Since all Semitic alphabets are the continuation of either the Tigrignian Wadi el-Hol corpus or Proto-Sinaitic alphabets. And it is not difficult to categorize the two within a single line of evolution, and having the former developed first, as it was mentioned earlier. Moreover the attestation of unknown indigenous signs, which seem to be Proto-the old alphabets, are worthy of adding strength to this support. For many of them it has been shown their pictographic archetypes identified from indigenous astronomical figures. More interestingly some of the signs in this corpus exhibit similarity with both South and North Semitic alphabets. Bearing into account the South Arabian type of letter sequence of Ugarit, the extensive link with all Semitic alphabets which were in use in different places gives the Northeast African, Eritrea, great credence as a center for invention. Therefore, the three different Semitic alphabets which had their development in association with North Eastern African region, according to this research work:
• The Unknown Corpus of Haro’m and Car Sagla
• The Wadi el-Hol alphabetic script
• The South Arabian or Old Geez script
Date of Semitic Inscriptions
Leaving the case of the unknown corpus of Eritrea, this analysis is crucial approach for dating Semitic inscriptions, more particularly the Wadi el-Hol alphabets. Synchronism with the date of establishment of Mosaic Law is by far the most reliable device of dating. If the date of composition of Mosaic Law is acceptable, 1500 B.C (C. R. Conder, international standard Bible Encyclopedia), no matter the scoff arises because of late antiquity of dating, Albright’s placing make somehow perfect sense (ca. 1550-1450 BC). The Proto-Sinaitic either couldn’t escape this late dating because it contains at least three of the Mosaic gestures: the worshiping man, the stylistic finger and the connected nails (the variant of the gesture of adultery). I see parallel assertions in Colless views; the upper limit of his dating (1400-1200 BC) agrees with Mosaic period. Secondly, he tried to offer some convincing points which may explain the continuity between the alphabetic systems of Wadi el-Hol and South Arabians.
Again the perception of Egyptian contact to the land of Punt agrees with Albright’s dating: the Hyksos invasion was in c. 1650 BC and ends 1550 BC; the preceding two dynasties 13th and 14th (1803-1690 BC) Egypt was in bad political and economic conditions. Hence to place the date within the range (1803-1550 BC) would become problematic. Therefore, it will be more preferable in the resumption period of Hatshepsut (1501-1479 BC). It was this Hatshepsut which lied central in the assumption of Albright’s dating that he attempted to connect Hatshepsut with the Sphinx on which inscriptions in Proto-Sinaitic alphabets was carved.
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