Friday 17 September 2021

Ancestral S

 ANCESTRAL S -  YES S

This form from the #Egyptian #hieratic cursive #script is the ancestor or one of a small group of letter forms that were borrowed into ProtoSinatic and then Phoenician and Greek.




YES THIS IS AN S well part of  a word with an initial sibilant sound.

The first sibilant symbols keep shifting from representing s to sh and became /S/ in Greek which had no "SH" sibilant whereas Afro-Asiaitic languages like Middle Egyptian Punic and Hebrew had at least 2 and sometimes more. Then someone changed this is a zigzag shape which got rotated probably so its could not be confused with some forms of m or n and we have S our simple elegant modern S which by the way probably has nothing to do with Snakes or Serpents. 


More on this and how it became sigma  next time! 




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