The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, also called Old Hebrew, is the early script used to write biblical Hebrew in ancient Israel and Judah. It is closely related to the Phoenician script and developed from the broader Canaanite writing tradition. The earliest known examples date to approximately the 10th century BCE. [en.wikipedia.org]

Main features

• It contains 22 letters.

• It is an abjad, meaning the letters primarily represent consonants.

• It is written horizontally from right to left.

• Early writing generally did not include the vowel-pointing system found in later Hebrew texts.

• Following the Babylonian exile, Jewish writers gradually adopted an Aramaic-derived script. That writing tradition developed into the familiar square Hebrew letters used today.

• The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of Paleo-Hebrew. [en.wikipedia.org], [en.wikipedia.org]

Paleo-Hebrew and modern Hebrew

Paleo-Hebrew and modern square Hebrew are not two separate Hebrew languages. They are principally different scripts used to represent Hebrew.

For example, the divine name consists of the same four consonants in either script:

• Modern square Hebrew: יהוה

• Transliteration: YHWH

• Letters: Yod–He–Waw–He

The Paleo-Hebrew Alphabet

The following Paleo-Hebrew characters use the Unicode Phoenician character set because Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician are closely related regional varieties of the same ancient writing tradition. The exact shapes varied by inscription, location, and historical period.

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A note about “pictographic meanings”

Popular charts often associate the early letter forms with pictures such as:

• Aleph with an ox

• Bet with a house

• Dalet with a door

• Yod with a hand

• Mem with water

• Ayin with an eye

• Resh with a head

These associations can help learners remember the historical origins of letter shapes. However, it is important not to treat every Hebrew word as a secret sentence created by combining modern English “meanings” assigned to its individual letters. In ordinary Hebrew, letters function primarily as written signs representing sounds. The Ancient Hebrew Research Center provides comparative charts showing changes between pictographic, Phoenician, Greek, Latin, and other related scripts.