Talk:Proto-Sinaitic script

It is requested that an image or images of one or more symbols or characters illustrating proto-sinaitic glyphs for the synopsis table (more details can be found on pages 8 and 9 here: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19299-revisiting-proto-sinaitic.pdf ) be included in this article to improve its quality. Specific illustrations, plots or diagrams can be requested at the Graphic Lab.
For more information, refer to discussion on this page and/or the listing at Wikipedia:Requested images.

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WikiProject Ancient Egypt to-do list:

Needed articles.

We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.

Cleanup.

To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?

Standardize the Chronology.

A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)

Stub sorting

Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .

Data sorting.

This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.

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Article Rewrite: "Proto-Sinaitic script"[edit]

A rewrite for this article has been suggested. How should we go about it? INFIYNJTE (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's impossible with the state of available material. What we should do is put together an alphabet discussion group, do some original research, and write our own papers. That way these articles about proto Sinaitic and Canaanite have something to refer to. Temerarius (talk) 21:29, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Onceinawhile already mentioned it, the problem with the article is the undefined scope. Right now, there's too much and too unfocused information. Personally, I think the page should just summarize what it is and the difference between it and Proto-Canaanite, summarize the discoveries, and summarize the popular hypotheses on the development. I think the "Inscriptions" section should be removed and just be links to their respective wiki pages under the "See also" section. The individual wikis should be like the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon page where it has the different translations from different researchers highlighted. Controversially, I think the "Synopsis" section should also be removed. With everything clumped together and no formal consensus between all the letters it gets really confusing and becomes somewhat difficult to manage. I feel like it's better for each inscriptions page to have tables for the letters found on them. If needed, we can link to the table on the History of the alphabet page instead of having to maintain it in two places. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 09:12, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's harder to manage getting all inscriptions pages up to a certain level, with detailed alphabet charts. Seems ambitious. We'd need a wikiproject inscriptions. Temerarius (talk) 14:11, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What are wikiproject incriptions? Explain. INFIYNJTE (talk) 14:32, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I was saying it would be a big undertaking to bring each inscription page up to a certain standard. I'm a repeat editor of Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions and despite knowing the topic back and forth I don't have an alphabet up yet. Most individual inscriptions don't have editors willing to do hundreds of edits and so on. So to get this page, and all the others, up to reference-worthy would require a little planning. Hence a hypothetical Wiki-Project to organize it. Reifying alphabets is fun but it's carriage before horse. The inscriptions themselves need study, they're not well understood. Trying to pin down coherent ideas of what proto Sinaitic and proto Whateverelse is -- it's fine, it's not inappropriate, but it's trying to make too much out of too little. Too few papers. Too little knowledge. I'll state again I'm open to collaborating with a volunteer offsite on original research to serve the same goals. Does anybody want to volunteer to start Bet Shemesh ostracon or Izbet Sartah ostracon? From a quick look the latter seems genuine, quite important, almost not referred to. If there are more than one or two papers about these I'm looking in the wrong place. Temerarius (talk) 22:50, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, you're right. I'm being too ambitious. I think Onceinawhile just wants Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite to be more clearly defined. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 02:15, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To fix the issue once and in for all, I decided to replace the current table with a table of selected symbols from the three sets of Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, Serabit El-Khadim, Wadi El-Hol, and Timna, and its correspondences to a reconstructed name, phonetic sounds (preserved), and the Phoenician abjad.

Feel free to revert to the old table if you feel this is too radical, although much of the old table's content was redundant and has already been transferred to "History of the Alphabet" (link to the article been embedded as a main article) since an alphabetic evolution is not wholly relevant to an article covering inscriptions. INFIYNJTE (talk) 01:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where is there too much information? INFIYNJTE (talk) 14:32, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, both "Serabit inscriptions" and "Wadi el-Hol inscriptions" sections have more information here than their respective main article pages. More than half the letters in the Synopsis need to have explainatory footnotes on them to make sense of why the letters are put where they are. The Reference section also has 52 items under it (ternary sources?), which is considerably a lot more than the primary and secondary sources listed in the Bibliography section. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 16:07, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What l-Ba'alat? Spelling in infobox[edit]

I believe the key phrase was "beloved l-b'lt," not mt l b'lt. Where did this come from? It's in the infobox. I saw it on another page too. Temerarius (talk) 20:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

File:Ba`alat.jpg does appear to say mtlb'lt in the photo. It's not certain. 𐤁𐤏𐤕 is what I see on the upper right, with a partial house. Bat (goddess) maybe. If the eye isn't an eye, that mark there isn't makeup -- maybe a goose, and if the mark above it is a disk, then that could be son of Ra. Temerarius (talk) 20:35, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Under "discovery" it says beloved is spelled m ayin h. Hard to see in this one. Temerarius (talk) 20:37, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For better pictures see https://www.jstor.org/stable/26732467. If you want to understand what is written in (modern) Hebrew, try to use Image Translation in Google Translate (or any other app because Google are evil...), and if you still don't understand you can ask me! פעמי-עליון (pʿmy-ʿlywn) - talk 12:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably meant Beloved of Ba'laat INFIYNJTE (talk) 03:37, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Śamš as ś?[edit]

Given how the Proto-Semitic word for sun is śamš [1] and not šamš, it is possible by acrophony that the sun glyph represents an ś sound instead of š.

However, the problems with this theory include:

- The reconstruction Śamš is likely based on Arabic šams (where ś > s and š are flipped), and it might not be known if other semitic languages followed the same pattern. However, Arabic is described as a very phonologically conservative Semitic language and hence, śamš could very well be the Proto-Semitic word.

- Akkadian, which is older than the Proto-Sinaitic script, renders sun as šamaš. However, it is possible this is a modification since Akkadian shifted various sounds including ṯ, so it is possible ś got somehow shifted to š.

- It is not known how Proto-Northwest Semitic would have rendered sun, though Ugaritic rendered it as šamšu. However, Ugaritic also lost the ś phoneme and is described as replacing ś with š, whereas Proto-Northwest Semitic still had it.

- The Proto-Canaanite lachish comb glyph for ś looked vastly different, having two dots and an open shape rather than anything resembling a sun.

Thus there is some possibility that śamš stood for ś instead of š, though this needs to be approached carefully. INFIYNJTE (talk) 16:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE: I attempted to analyze Serabit 357 by transcribing it to Hebrew and altering between shin and sin; the best result I got is "נשמע" (to be heard), whereas sin never gave an actual result in any combination of letters.

Hence, my theory is incorrect and śamš (or even šamš) most likely represents š as initially believed. I also consider the possibility that the languages using Proto-Sinaitic lacked an ś sound, but I digress. INFIYNJTE (talk) 13:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Table[edit]

Complaints have been raised about the table of symbols, including too many explanatory footnotes and the confusing nature of it.

Hence I propose recreating the table with rows and columns based on the symbols found in each inscription as opposed to the Phoenician order, and using discretion to determine which sources are more accurate. INFIYNJTE (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You know what I'll just go through with it since the article went inactive.

If you find the change too radical, feel free to revert. INFIYNJTE (talk) 01:28, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your hard work! I think it looks a lot better now. 72.216.186.113 (talk) 06:57, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

𐩸 is in which Serabit el-Khadim inscription?[edit]

The symbol is shown under the Table of Symbol's "Serabit el-Khadim" column, but I don't know if that is accurate. I can see the symbol in the izbet sartah ostracon's abecedary, but I don't see it in any of the Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, unless there's a source I am missing? 72.216.186.113 (talk) 15:29, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I'm aware, you aren't missing anything. I have also been thinking about this matter. I have yet to see the "ziq" symbol in any of the inscriptions.

Therefore, the symbol will be removed from the article unless we find something else, like another inscription. INFIYNJTE (talk) 03:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]