The Serabit Sphinx is a great example of the Egyptian-Semite mixed root of the Sinai manuscript, which includes hieroglyphics and the dedication of the original Sinai manuscript, and is one of the keys to deciphering the manuscript. The bottom register can make the pictograph of water (? ) and a cow (? )-these became the letters mem and aleph symbols, and finally became our "m" and "a" The Sinai part is pronounced as m' HB' lt, which stands for Lady, that is, Hassall. (Photo: British Museum)
This example certainly illustrates the interaction between hieroglyphics and the transfer of political power, and hieroglyphics eventually became a widely used and very successful Phoenician alphabet. It can be traced back to about 1750 BC and was found in Serabit el-Khadim in the southwest of Sinai Peninsula. It was dedicated to Hassall as the "hostess of turquoise"-the main reason why Egypt is interested in this area is its turquoise mine. But it doesn't tell us where the new use of hieroglyphics comes from.
The conclusion of establishing a colonial industrial zone for the first time in the Semitic Phoenician alphabet is that Egyptian supervisors communicate with their non-Egyptian miners, especially advocating Oljinshui wine, which is a simple and eye-catching conclusion. However, there is no conclusive way to prove that the script starts from below-adapted by Jewish workers-or from above. It is a tool created by Egyptian managers to help organize mines.
About 20 years ago, people found something that looked like an earlier inscription in the Hall Valley, but this did not really solve the problem, but made the painting more complicated. Ancient archaeologists believe that in Wadi el-Hol's inscriptions, hieroglyphics are earlier than Serabit el-Kadim, and they also conspicuously mention the existence of "Asian scribes" (for Egyptians, this means anyone from eastern Sinai, including Bedouin or Canaanite in primitive Arabia). This provides fuel for the "top-down" hypothesis, but it is not certain: we don't know enough details about the bureaucracy of the thirteenth dynasty to determine what this means.
Another thing we know also complicates the situation: during the thirteenth dynasty, Egypt was at a low ebb. There was disharmony between 13 and 14 dynasties-14 dynasties were generally regarded as "Asian" rulers with Varis as the center, which was outside the traditional Egyptian power center. The thirteenth tribe finally gave way to Hixos (about 1650 BC), another tribe that is usually considered as Semitic. This is a period when the balance of power between Egypt and its neighbors is constantly changing: the script may be a bottom-up project team worker, or a top-down project is tried by Egyptian bureaucrats-or an "Asian" elite works in some way to create a way to record its own language with the mediation of Egypt.
It's hard to be sure. This is one of the reasons why the Encyclopedia of Egyptology is deliberately vague about the entry "Wadi el-Hol": the melting pot of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force produced the alphabet in the Middle Kingdom period, which used symbols derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics and assigned phonemes to these limited symbols according to the semiotic names of the depicted objects. However, this is also controversial. -The hieroglyphics in the original Sinai language came from the form of the ancient kingdom, two or three centuries earlier than the oldest hieroglyphics.
The original inscription of Sinai on Wadi el-Hol (picture: Israeli archaeology) seems to be a good argument that this innovation came from Semitic people rather than Egyptians-but it's hard to say: an Egyptian who can speak two languages can easily make such an appeal: for example, an "Asian scribe". So: We can be sure that the original Sinai culture originated from a mixture of Egyptian culture and Canaan culture-but we can't be too sure beyond that.