Practice Quiz

CLEP Western Civ I

Category - Ancient Near East

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Why was the Phoenician alphabet so pivotal in the development of written language?
  1. It was the first writing system adopted in a region outside of the one in which it was developed.
  2. It was the preferred syllabry of kings and was subsequently the first language taught to the people of every social class.
  3. It was the syllabry in which most early religious texts were written.
  4. It was the most extensive ancient language and it contained hundreds more glyphs than hieroglyphics or cuneiform.
  5. It was the first written system in which the glyphs represented consonant sounds in a word rather than a whole word.
Explanation
Answer: E - The most important historical quality of the Phoenician alphabet is that its glyphs represented sounds (consonants) in a word rather than entire words. In pictographic languages like hieroglyphics and early cuneiform, each glyph represented a word. As a result, those languages required hundreds of glyphs for effective communication. The Phoenician alphabet required only 22 base glyphs. The same 22 glyphs could be added together in numerous ways to communicate different words. It was a far more efficient writing language than any of its predecessors. Phoenician replaced cuneiform as the predominant language of ancient cultures, and it ultimately became the alphabet from which all subsequent scripts originated.
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