We all studied the ancient Phoenicians in elementary or middle school. We learned that their country is where Lebanon is today, and they were such incredible boat builders and mariners that they became the first master tradesmen and colonizers, connecting the entire Mediterranean world through an extensive network of independent city states.
I was kind of bored by all that information in class way back then, and you are possibly starting to nod off now, after reading my first paragraph and hoping for fun to come. I am hoping to perk you up, as I was perked back then, by the next thing my teacher told us about the Phoenicians: they invented twenty-two of the twenty-six letters we still use in our Western alphabet.
Given that nobody ever saw Young Elliot without a piece of paper and Bic pen at the ready, this alphabet information was a real revelation for me. I still remember Mrs. Yount going to the blackboard and drawing what looked like a tiny, simplified house plan: an overhead view of a two-room house with both rooms sharing a wall on the left.
She then seemed to forget about her drawing, as she explained that the Phoenicians spoke a very similar language to what is today labeled “Semitic,” with Hebrew and Arabic being its two main modern tongues.
When inventing the letters that would represent their twenty-two sounds, the Phoenicians cleverly decided to design each letter to remind the writer of a word that began with that particular sound.
One of the most common words in any language is the term for “house.” The Phoenician word was “beth.” It is still the word for “house” in Hebrew. The synagogue I prayed in as a child was Beth El (House of God). An ancient town in Israel, located in an area where wheat grew in abundance, is named “The House (Beth) of Bread (Lechem)” or “Beth-Lechem.” Have you heard of it? Bethlehem!
Oh, dear, I’ve left Mrs. Yount at the blackboard with her house drawing, and you, my readers, without a clue as to what this has to do with the Phoenician alphabet. Or perhaps you’ve guessed? Because the Phoenician’s word for house started with the sound of “B”, they made their letter, which reflected that sound, a drawing of a house.
After explaining this to our class, Mrs. Yount returned to the blackboard, demonstrating that the two-room house plan she’d drawn was in actuality how the letter “B” was originally written. She then took an eraser to help revise the picture. By rotating, straightening, and curving it, she turned those two rooms and wall into the double-looped modern capital “B.” Every time we write it today, we still draw the two tiny rounded rooms up against the wall on the left.
My recreational equipment as a kid was that alphabet, since I spent so much time after school writing stories and silly jokes and skits. While the other boys were outside playing with bats and balls, I was inside using that Phoenician invention of 3,000 years ago. While I sat at my bedroom desk, the tip of my tongue resting at the corner of my mouth, I enjoyed playing with all twenty-six modern letters, as I placed them in innumerable different patterns to create the words, sentences, and paragraphs that brought me such creative pleasure on my writing tablets.
I knew it was hopeless for me ever to hit a home run. But I do remember in elementary school when we had to write that most cliched of themes — “What I Did Over Summer Vacation.” When our teacher returned the graded themes, she called each student up to retrieve theirs.
Except me. When my classmates had all returned to their desks with their themes, she announced she would now read mine aloud. I could hear the silent groans. But all of my practice in writing and rewriting after school allowed me to pen my theme quite smoothly, even making fun of the topic with a lot of silly humor. When she read my last paragraph aloud, which contained a joke so goofy that only those with the sense of humor of a juvenile could appreciate it, the whole class burst into a fit of the giggles.
THAT, dear readers, was my home run.