The origins of the alphabet are unknown, but there are several theories as to how it developed. One popular proposal — the Proto-Sinaitic theory — is that the history of the alphabet began in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing. Under this theory, the alphabet was invented to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets), and was at least influenced by the alphabetic principles of the Egyptian hieratic script. If correct, nearly all alphabets in the world today either descend directly from this development or were inspired by its design.
The most widely used alphabet today is the Latin alphabet. It derives from the Greek, the first true alphabet in that it consistently assigns letters to both consonants and vowels. The Greek alphabet in turn was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which was an abjad – a system where each symbol usually stands for a consonant.
Read more about History Of The Alphabet: Pre-history, Predecessors
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“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
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—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you’re thinking
of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
crawling up the alphabet on her own bones.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)