Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

� Monument to the Phoenician alphabet at the UNESCO World
Heritage Site, Byblos, Lebanon.
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The Phoenician alphabet
of the major alphabets in use today. As Greece became the
economic and cultural powerhouse, so the Phoenicians’
alphabet gradually gave way to the Greek; furthermore,
some letters were modified to function as vowels.
However, traces of the Phoenician alphabet can still be
found in the Roman era in the 1st century AD.
The oldest example still extant of the full alphabet dates
from around 1200 BC and is engraved on the sarcophagus
of King Ahiram of Byblos, a Phoenician city.