The Phoenicians, who kept constant trade records, needed a different letter - light, simple and convenient. They came up with an alphabet in which each sign - a letter - denoted only one specific sound of speech.
The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 simple letters. All of them are consonants, because consonants played the main role in the Phoenician language. To read a word, the Phoenician needed to see its skeleton, consisting of consonant letters.
The most ancient inscriptions, composed of letters of the Phoenician alphabet, were found during excavations in the ancient city of Byblos (now the city of Jebel), at the foot of the Lebanese range. They belong to the XIII century. BC. The Phoenicians wrote from right to left. They made their trade records in ink on shards. There are few such shards. Better preserved are the inscriptions carved on the stone: gravestones (on the sarcophagi of kings and priests) and construction, telling about the construction of palaces at the behest of the Phoenician kings.
Since the IX century. BC e. the Phoenician alphabet began to spread rapidly in many countries. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the ancient Greeks learned writing from the Phoenicians. Indeed, even the very names of the Greek letters are Phoenician words. For example, the name of the letter "alpha" (A) comes from the Phoenician word "aleph" - bull. (The original shape of this letter resembled the head of a bull.) The name of the Greek letter "beta" comes from the Phoenician word "bet" - house. (This letter was originally a simplified drawing of a house plan.) The word "alphabet" itself is essentially a combination of the Phoenician words "Aleph" and "Bet".
The letters in the Phoenician alphabet were arranged in a specific order. This order was also adopted by the Greeks. But in Greek, unlike Phoenician, vowel sounds play an important role. At the same time, the Phoenician language had many guttural sounds that were alien to the Greeks. The corresponding Phoenician letters were used by the Greeks to denote vowel sounds. They also came up with some new letters.
The Phoenician alphabet was incomparably simpler and more convenient than any cuneiform or hieroglyphics. But the Greek alphabet is even more perfect: it consists of 24 letters denoting both vowels and consonants. The Greek alphabet formed the basis for Latin, and that, in turn, served as the basis for the alphabets of all Western European languages. The Church Slavonic alphabet also originated from the Greek alphabet, composed, according to legend, by the natives of Thessaloniki (now the city of Thessaloniki) Cyril and Methodius. Under Peter I, the Church Slavonic alphabet was simplified, an easier-to-read civil alphabet appeared, which we also use.
The Phoenician alphabet was the ancestor of not only Greek, but also Arabic, Hebrew and other alphabets. The invention of the Phoenicians was a great step in the cultural development of human society, making writing accessible to the masses.
The director of the Volgograd Institute of Art Education Nikolai Taranov has many titles: calligrapher, doctor of pedagogy, candidate of art history, professor, member of the Union of Artists of Russia. But few people know that he is still studying symbols. And, doing this, he went on the "detective trail" and made an amazing discovery. Who invented the Slavic alphabet?
It would seem that everyone knows this: Cyril and Methodius, whom the Orthodox Church calls equal to the apostles for this merit. But what kind of alphabet did Kirill come up with - Cyrillic or Verb? (Methodius, this is known and proven, supported his brother in everything, but with the "brain of the operation" and educated personwho knew many languages, it was the monk Cyril). There is still debate about this in the scientific world. Some Slavic scholars say: “Cyrillic! It is named after its creator. " Others object: “Glagolitic! The first letter of this alphabet looks like a cross. Cyril is a monk. It's a sign". It is also argued that before the work of Cyril there was no written language in Russia. Professor Nikolai Taranov strongly disagrees with this. 
The assertion that there was no written language in Russia before Cyril and Methodius is based on one single document - the "Legend of the Writings" of the monastic Khrabr found in Bulgaria, - says Nikolai Taranov. - There are 73 lists from this scroll, and in different copies, due to translation errors or errors of scribes, completely different versions of the key phrase for us. In one version: "the Slavs before Cyril did not have books", in the other - "letters", but at the same time the author indicates: "they wrote with lines and cuts." It is interesting that Arab travelers who visited Russia in the VIII century, that is, even before Rurik and even more so before Cyril, described the funeral of one Russian prince: “After the funeral, his soldiers wrote something on a white tree (birch) in honor of the prince, and then, riding on horses, they departed. " And in the "Life of Cyril", known to the Russian Orthodox Church, we read: "In the city of Korsun, Cyril met a Rusyn (Russian), who had with him books written in Russian letters." Cyril (his mother was a Slav) got out some of his letters and with their help began to read the very books of the Rusyns. Moreover, these were not thin books. These were, as stated in the same "Life of Cyril", translated into Russian "Psalter" and "Gospel". There is a lot of evidence that Russia had its own alphabet long before Cyril. And Lomonosov said the same thing. He cited the testimony of Roman pope VIII, a contemporary of Cyril, in which it is stated that Cyril did not invent these letters, but rediscovered them.
The question arises: why did Kirill create the Russian alphabet, if it already existed? The fact is that the monk Cyril had a task from the Moravian prince - to create for the Slavs an alphabet suitable for translating church books. Which he did. And the letters with which church books are now written (and in a modified form - our today's printed works) are the work of Cyril, that is, the Cyrillic alphabet.
Was Glagolitic destroyed on purpose?
There are 22 points that prove that the Glagolitic alphabet was older than the Cyrillic alphabet, Taranov claims. There is such a concept among archaeologists and philologists - palimpsest. This is the name of an inscription made on top of another destroyed inscription, most often scraped out with a knife. In the Middle Ages, parchment made of the skin of a young lamb was quite expensive, and for the sake of economy, scribes often destroyed "unnecessary" records and documents, and wrote something new on the scraped sheet. So: everywhere in Russian palimpsests the Glagolitic alphabet is erased, and on top of it there are Cyrillic inscriptions. There are no exceptions to this rule. 
There are only five monuments in the world written in Glagolitic. The rest were destroyed. Moreover, in my opinion, the records in Glagolitic were destroyed on purpose, - says Professor Nikolai Taranov. - Because the Glagolitic alphabet was not suitable for writing church books. The numerical meaning of the letters (and then the belief in numerology was very strong) in it was different than what was required in Christianity. Out of respect for the Glagolitic alphabet, Kirill left in his alphabet the same letter names as they were. And they are very, very difficult for an alphabet "born" in the 9th century, as it is claimed. Even then, all languages \u200b\u200bwere striving for simplification, letters in all alphabets of that time denote only sounds. And only in the Slavic alphabet are the names of the letters: "Good", "People", "Think", "Earth", etc. And all because the Glagolitic alphabet is very ancient. It has many signs of pictographic writing.
Pictographic writing is a type of writing, the signs of which (pictograms) indicate the object depicted by them. The latest findings of archaeologists speak in favor of this version. So, tablets with Slavic writing were found, the age of which dates back to 5000 BC.
"The genius created the verb"
All modern alphabets in Europe are descended from the Phoenician alphabet. In it, the letter A, as we were told, denotes the head of a bull, which then turned over with its horns down.
And the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote: "These letters are called Phoenician, although it is more correct to call them Pelasgic, since they were used by the Pelasgians," Nikolai Taranov says. - Do you know who the Pelasgians are? These are the ancestors of the Slavs, the Proto-Slavic tribes. The Phoenicians stood out among the surrounding dark-skinned black-haired tribes of farmers, Egyptians and Sumerians with fair skin and red hair. Moreover, their passion for travel: they were excellent navigators.
In the 12th century BC, the Pelasgians just participated in the Great Migration of Nations, and their individual groups of desperate conquerors of new lands wandered very far. What gives the Volgograd professor a version: the Phoenicians were familiar with the Slavs and borrowed the alphabet from them. Otherwise, why did an alphabetic alphabet suddenly appear in the neighborhood of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform?
They say: "The Glagolitic alphabet was too decorative, complex, so it was gradually replaced by a more rational Cyrillic alphabet." But the Glagolitic alphabet is not so bad, - Professor Taranov is sure. - I studied the earliest versions: the first letter of the Glagolitic alphabet does not mean a cross, but a person. That is why it is called "Az" - I. A man for himself is a starting point. And all the meanings of the letters in Glagolitic are through the prism of human perception. I painted the first letter of this alphabet on transparent film. Look, if you put it on other letters of the Glagolitic alphabet, you get a pictogram! I believe: not every designer will come up with this so that every grapheme falls into the grid. I am amazed at the artistic integrity of this alphabet. I think the unknown author of the Glagolitic alphabet was a genius! In no other alphabet in the world there is such a clear connection between the symbol and its digital and sacred meaning! 
Glagolitic and numerology
Each sign in the Glagolitic alphabet has a sacred meaning and denotes a certain number.
Sign "Az" - person, number 1.
The sign "I know" is the number 2, the sign is similar to the eyes and nose: "I see, then I know."
The sign "Live" is the number 7, the life and reality of this world.
The sign "Zelo" is the number 8, the reality of a miracle and something supernatural: "too", "very" or "too much".
Good sign - number 5, singular, giving birth to its own kind or a decade: "Good begets good."
The sign "People" - number 50, according to numerology - the world from where human souls come to us.
The sign "Our" - number 70, symbolizes the connection between the heavenly and the earthly, that is, our world, given to us in sensations.
Sign "Omega" - number 700, a kind of divine world, "Seventh Heaven".
The sign "Earth" - according to Taranov, means a picture: the Earth and the Moon in the same orbit.
Sveta Evseeva-Fedorova
In Egypt and Mesopotamia, few people knew how to write and read. After all, both hieroglyphic writing and cuneiform contain more than 600 characters, each of which usually depicts a whole word or syllable. All of them had to be known by heart.
Phoenician inscription on the temple of the god Eshmun
The Phoenicians, who kept constant trade records, needed a different letter - light, simple and convenient. They came up with an alphabet in which each sign - a letter - denoted only one specific sound of speech.
The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 simple letters. All of them are consonants, because consonants played the main role in the Phoenician language. To read a word, the Phoenician needed to see its skeleton, consisting of consonants. 
The Phoenician letters (3) are derived from the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs for whole words (1). One of the intermediate stages is the Sinai hieroglyphic writing (2). Greek originated from the Phoenician alphabet (4)
The most ancient inscriptions, composed of letters of the Phoenician alphabet, were found during excavations in the ancient city of Byblos (now the city of Jebel), at the foot of the Lebanese range. They belong to the XIII century. BC. The Phoenicians wrote from right to left. They made their trade records in ink on shards. There are few such shards. Better preserved are the inscriptions carved on the stone: gravestones (on the sarcophagi of kings and priests) and construction, telling about the construction of palaces at the behest of the Phoenician kings.
Since the IX century. BC e. the Phoenician alphabet began to spread rapidly in many countries. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the ancient Greeks learned writing from the Phoenicians. Indeed, even the very names of the Greek letters are Phoenician words. For example, the name of the letter "alpha" (A) comes from the Phoenician word "aleph" - bull. (The original shape of this letter resembled the head of a bull.) The name of the Greek letter "beta" comes from the Phoenician word "bet" - house. (This letter was originally a simplified drawing of a house plan.) The word "alphabet" itself is essentially a combination of the Phoenician words "aleph" and "bet".
The letters in the Phoenician alphabet were arranged in a specific order. This order was also adopted by the Greeks. But in Greek, unlike Phoenician, vowel sounds play an important role. At the same time, in the Phoenician language there were many guttural sounds that were alien to the Greeks. The corresponding Phoenician letters were used by the Greeks to denote vowel sounds. They also came up with some new letters.
The Phoenician alphabet was incomparably simpler and more convenient than any cuneiform or hieroglyphics. But the Greek alphabet is even more perfect: it consists of 24 letters denoting both vowels and consonants. The Greek alphabet formed the basis for Latin, and that, in turn, served as the basis for the alphabets of all Western European languages. The Church Slavonic alphabet also originated from the Greek alphabet, composed, according to legend, by the natives of Thessaloniki (now the city of Thessaloniki) Cyril and Methodius. Under Peter I, the Church Slavonic alphabet was simplified, an easier-to-read civil alphabet appeared, which we also use.
The Phoenician alphabet was the ancestor of not only Greek, but also Arabic, Hebrew and other alphabets. The invention of the Phoenicians was a great step in the cultural development of human society, making writing accessible to the masses.
where the alphabet appeared and got the best answer
Answer from OLGA [guru]
Nobody knows where, when or how the first alphabet was created.
It is generally believed that the first alphabet appeared sometime between 2000 and 1500 BC in the eastern Mediterranean, most likely in the territory where Syria is now located. This alphabet is called North Semic, it consisted of 22 characters representing only consonants.
Since the very first alphabet was created, more than 200 different ways of recording the sounds of human speech have appeared, with signs of the most different shapes. These alphabets include: Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Batak, Brahmi, Cyrillic, Ethiopian, Georgian, Glagolitic, Javanese, Korean, Lao, Thai, etc.
The Arabic alphabet is the third most widespread after the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. There are two forms of the alphabet: kufik - the Koran was written for the first time; naskhi - is now widely accepted in the Arab world.
Cyrillic is the second most common alphabet. Its creation is attributed to the Greek missionaries Cyril and his brother Methodius. It originally had 43 letters. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, their number was reduced to 33. Cyrillic is used to write Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and many other languages.
The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters and has actually existed since 1918 (officially only since 1942).
Most letters (72) in the alphabet of the Khmer language, and least of all (11) in the alphabet of the Rotokas language of Bougainville Island (Papua New Guinea)
The most ancient letter is considered the letter "o", which remained unchanged in the same form in which it was adopted in the Phoenician alphabet.
The most ancient alphabet was the city-state of Ugarit (a city in Syria).
Source: link
Answer from Leysan[guru]
The principle of the alphabet was invented by the Semitic peoples. All R. 3rd millennium BC e. scribes in the city of Ebla (present-day Tel-Mardih, Northern Syria) created such a classification of cuneiform syllables borrowed from Mesopotamia, which they used to write the local Eblaite language and Mesopotamian sumerian language, in which the signs were ordered according to the nature of the vowels with the same consonants: ma, mi, mu (in Semitic languages \u200b\u200bthere were only 3 vowels a, i, u). Apparently, thanks to the use of the experience of cuneiform writing and Egyptian writing, the Semites no later than the 1st half. 2nd millennium BC e. created such an initial type of consonant-syllabic writing, where there were signs for conveying consonants (for example, w) in combination with any vowel (syllables like wa, wi, wu, written not in different signs, as in cuneiform, but in one).
After the vowel signs were included in the set of all written signs, the alphabet was finally formed as an ordered set of written phoneme designations.
The most ancient was the alphabet of the city-state of Ugarit, known from the middle. 2nd millennium BC e. The order of signs in it basically corresponds to the order of signs in other West Semitic alphabets, known from the last centuries of the 2nd millennium BC. e. : in Phoenician, Hebrew and some others. Phoenicians who lived on the east coast Mediterranean Seawere famous sailors in ancient times. They were active in trade with the Mediterranean states.
The Greek and Aramaic alphabets originate from the Phoenician alphabet, which gave rise to most modern scripts, as well as many "dead-end lines" in the development of writing: the Asia Minor alphabets, the Iberian script, the Numidian script, etc. The order of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet can be traced in the descendant alphabets; the word "alphabet" itself is formed from the name of the first two letters alpha ἄλφα / aleph and beta βῆτα / bet. )
The South Semitic alphabet, which outwardly resembled the Phoenician alphabet, did not seem to originate from it, but from a hypothetical common ancestor with the Phoenician; a descendant of South Semitic writing is modern Ethiopian writing.
Around the turn of the 2nd millennium BC. e. (possibly somewhat earlier) the Phoenician alphabet of 22 letters was adopted by the Greeks, who significantly transformed it, turning the ancient Greek alphabet into a complete system. The correspondence between the letters of the alphabet and the phonemes became one-to-one: all the characters of the alphabet were used to write the phonemes to which they corresponded, and a certain letter of the alphabet corresponded to each phoneme. The Etruscan alphabet, which are closely related to the ancient Greek, and the Asia Minor alphabets in Asia Minor of ancient times, which have common features with it, have the same features. Chronology of the creation and development of all alphabets at the turn of the 2nd millennium BC e. remains controversial.
In the 1st millennium BC. e. Southern Italy was colonized by the Greeks. As a result, they got acquainted with the Greek letter different nations Italy. The Greek alphabet serves as a model for the creation of the Latin and other Italic (which also experienced indirect Etruscan influence) alphabets. During the era of the Roman Empire, the Latin language and writing were widely spread. Its influence increased in the Middle Ages in connection with the conversion to Christianity of all the peoples of Europe. Latin language became a liturgical language in all states Western Europe, and the Latin letter is the only acceptable letter for liturgical books.
In the early Middle Ages, under the direct or indirect Greek influence, the Armenian (Mesrop Mashtots), Georgian, Gothic (presumably Ulfil), Old Slavic Glagolitic and Cyrillic (Cyril and Methodius, their students) and other alphabets were created, where the order, names and form of signs are exactly or with certain changes correspond to Greek. The further spread of the alphabet for writing new languages \u200b\u200bwas carried out on the basis of already created alphabets, primarily the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic, etc.
All types of writing could not withstand the competition of the alphabet. Alphabets, also called phonemic alphabets, are a set of letters that are usually arranged in a specific order. Each of these letters represents one or more phonemes. Typically, letters are divided into vowels and consonants. This division has its own characteristics in each of the languages, letters, which is quite natural, are used in order to add words.
The word "alphabet" comes from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet - alphaand beta... It was the Greeks who contributed to the spread of alphabetic writing in most countries of the world. Similarly arranged english word abecedary or Russian aBC (by names in the first case of four, and in the second - the first two letters, respectively, of the English and Church Slavonic alphabets).
In fact, the origin of the alphabet is shrouded in mystery, and only the later stages of its history are relatively clear. The Cyrillic alphabet, currently used in Russia and some countries of Eastern Europe, was invented in the 9th century AD by the enlightened saints Cyril and Methodius. It is based on the Greek alphabet with a few additional letters added. The modern Western alphabet (used by the English, French, Spanish, Germans, Italians, and several other peoples) is identical to the Latin alphabet used during the Roman Empire; the only difference is the letters J, U and W added in the Middle Ages (the Romans used I and V to denote these sounds). We know this for certain, as well as the common origin of the Greek and Latin alphabets.
Phoenicians, who kept constant trade records, need a different, simple and convenient letter. They came up with an alphabet in which each character - a letter - means only one specific sound of speech. They are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 simple letters. All of them are consonants, because consonants played the main role in the Phoenician language. To read a word, the Phoenician had to see its skeleton, which consisted of consonants.
The letters in the Phoenician alphabet were arranged in a specific order. This order was also borrowed by the Greeks, but in the Greek language, in contrast to the Phoenician language, vowel sounds played an important role.
Greek writing was the starting point for the development of all Western alphabets, the first of which was Latin.
The alphabet as a writing system that reflects the sounds of a language has many advantages over non-alphabetic writing systems - but it is this property that is fraught with a certain danger. Living languages \u200b\u200bare constantly changing, while alphabets recorded in printed and handwritten texts tend to be more resilient to change. As a result, the degree of suitability of the alphabet decreases, the degree of its ability to reflect sound system language.
The Latin alphabet, when applied to the English language, contains three "extra" consonants - c, qand x - and discovers a lack of six other letters that are needed to convey specific consonant sounds in the English language. These are the sounds that are pronounced at the end of words. bath [q], bathe [ð], splash [š], much [č], beige [ž], bring ... To convey these sounds in the English letter there are digraphs, for example, th, sh, ch, ng,however, at best, they do not fully cope with their task. For example, the sound [š] can be written not only using a combination of letters sand h(as in the word shape), but also through ch(chartreuse), through ti(nation) and through s(sugar). Moreover, digraphs do not always convey the same sound. So, chreads like [k] in words chlorineand technique; threads like [t] in name Thomas, and is skipped (in colloquial speech) in the word clothes... The position with the designation of English vowels is no better. Letter ande.g. reads five different ways in words same, cat, ball, anyand star.Letter oreads differently in words hot, to, goand (in most varieties of English) for.On the contrary, the same vowel sound can be transmitted in writing in different ways. For example, the sound [u] is written in eight different ways in words soon, chew, true, tomb, rude, suit, youthand beauty.
For a long time, there was an opinion that the letter came to Russia along with Christianity, with church books and prayers. A talented linguist, Cyril, creating a Slavic letter, took the Greek alphabet, consisting of 24 letters, as a basis, supplemented it with characteristic slavic languages hissing (w, w, w, h) and several other letters, Some of them have survived in the modern alphabet - b, b, b, s, others have long gone out of use - yat, yus, izhitsa, fita. So the Slavic alphabet originally consisted of 43 letters, similar in spelling to Greek. Each of them had its own name: A - "az", B - "beeches" (their combination formed the word "alphabet"), C - "lead", G - "verb", D - "good" and so on. The letters in the letter meant not only sounds, but also numbers. "A" - number 1, "B" - 2, "P" - 100. In Russia, only in the XVIII century. Arabic numerals have replaced "alphabetic" ones.
As you know, the Church Slavonic language was the first to receive literary use from the Slavic languages. For some time, along with the Cyrillic alphabet, another Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic, was also in use. It had the same composition of letters, but with a more complex, ornate spelling. Apparently, this feature predetermined further destiny Glagolitic: to the XIII century. she almost completely disappeared. This is not the place to dwell on which Slavic tribe this language belonged to the Bulgarians or Pannoyans.
The earliest examples of Sumerian writing are tags (usually made of clay) with a seal and a note about the quantity, which were tied to objects or animals. Then more complex accounting tables appeared. The outstanding achievement of the Sumerians was that they denoted the number with a separate sign. For example, five cows corresponded to five ovals and an image of a cow, and not five drawings of a cow, as in various prescriptions. The system gradually became more complicated. Standard signs appeared - hieroglyphs, with the help of which it was easier to depict specific frequently mentioned things - the sun, a cow, a bird, etc. Signs-drawings began to be used for similar words: for example, the hieroglyph “sun” began to mean “bright”, “light”, “day”.
For some concepts, a combination of signs was used. Thus, the word “slave” was denoted by two drawings - women and mountains - since slaves were usually brought to Sumer from the mountains. Gradually, the icons became less and less like drawings. The Sumerians had standard conventional signs, consisting of wedge-shaped lines, very remotely reminiscent of the previous drawings. Maybe, appearance Sumerian writing is associated with the fact that the signs were carved on wet clay. According to the shape of the wedge-shaped features, the Sumerian letter and its heirs in Mesopotamia were called cuneiform.
The emergence of the alphabet was preceded by several stages in the development of methods of written recording of speech. Traditionally, in the history of writing, among the pre-alphabetic systems, pictographic (drawing) scripts were distinguished - images of specific objects, both denoting them, and ideographic ones, conveying some abstract meanings (ideas), most often through the image of specific objects associated with these meanings. Ideographic scripts were also called hieroglyphic - after the name of the Egyptian script, first used by the ancient Greek scholar Clement of Alexandria and literally meaning "sacred carved [letters]".
After the works of the American historian and theorist of writing I. Gelba, a somewhat different periodization became widespread, distinguishing the stages of non-writing (drawings not related to the signified conditional connection), pre-, or proto-writing, using the ideographic principle, which was proposed to be renamed into semasiographic (writing down the meaning), and the actual writing using phonographic (sound recording) principle.
At the same time, Gelb proposed to include not only two main types of alphabetical writing among the actual scripts - syllabic and alphabetic, - but also the so-called verbal and syllabic (logographic-syllabic) writing, to which practically all historically recorded types of hieroglyphic scripts actually belong. The signs of such scripts, according to Gelb, are considered to denote not ideas, but words, in connection with which they were named logograms (or logographers). In almost all hieroglyphic writing systems attested in history, in addition to logograms, there were signs used to write parts of a word, usually syllables, i.e. syllabogramsas well as the so-called determinatives to indicate which category a word belongs to.
Alphabets and syllabaries are much more efficient than logographic systems. The number of characters in them is much less, and it is much easier to learn such a writing system. The creation of a syllabary may require from 50 to 200 characters, and the creation of an alphabet may be limited to a dozen or two characters, sufficient to record all the words of a given language. English language, which has about 33 phonemes in most dialects, ideally requires 33 characters.
The earliest monument to Latin writing is an inscription on a 6th century gold brooch. BC, known as the Prenestian fibula. It reads simply MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NVMASIOI ("Manius made me for Numasius"). Like Etruscan and early Greek inscriptions, it is written from right to left. From the next century, a vase with a different inscription from right to left and a pillar from the Roman forum, inscribed in an alternating (bustrophedon) manner, survived. After 1 century. AD almost all inscriptions began to be made from left to right.