Writing was hard before the alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs were hard. They had hundreds of signs. It took years to learn them. Some signs, called logograms, stand for a whole word. They are not just a sound. An alphabet is a set of letters. Each letter stands for a sound. It needs only a couple of dozen. So it is easy to learn.

Some of the earliest alphabet writing was found at Egyptian turquoise mines. Most of it was in or near the mines at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai. A group of Semitic-speaking people borrowed some Egyptian hieroglyphs. They used them. They wrote the sounds of their own language. This writing is called Proto-Sinaitic. It is often called the first alphabet.

The earliest alphabet writing used a picture of an ox head. It stood for the letter aleph. Ugarit was an important seaport city. It was in the north of the ancient Levant. That is now northern Syria. It once had its own alphabet of 30 letters. It was written in cuneiform, with a simple stylus pressed into clay.

Ancient traders and sailors called Phoenicians helped spread the alphabet. Theirs had 22 letters. It was simple enough for ordinary traders to learn. They spread it around the Mediterranean Sea. They taught it to the Greeks. The Greeks added letters for vowels to the alphabet they learned. The Romans got their alphabet from the Etruscans. The Etruscans had used a Greek alphabet.

The classical Roman alphabet had 23 letters. J, U and W were not in it. They were added in medieval times. The sign & is called the ampersand. It came from joining the letters e and t of the Latin word et. Et means and. Children who finished reciting the alphabet with & said and per se and. That phrase wore down into the word ampersand.

Words to know

• alphabet: set of letters
• hieroglyphs: picture writing
• Phoenicians: sea traders
• ampersand: and sign
• cuneiform: wedge writing

The short version

An alphabet is a set of letters, and each letter stands for a sound. Some of the earliest alphabet writing was found at Egyptian turquoise mines in the Sinai. The Phoenicians spread their 22-letter alphabet around the Mediterranean Sea, and they taught it to the Greeks. The Greeks added letters for vowels.

Quick facts

• An alphabet is a set of letters, and each letter stands for a sound in a language.
• The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters and was simple enough for ordinary traders to learn.
• The Greeks added letters for vowels to the alphabet they learned from the Phoenicians.
• The classical Roman alphabet had 23 letters. J, U and W were added in medieval times.
• Most of the early alphabet inscriptions were found in or near the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai.