Is there any Archaeological Evidence that Phoenicians wrote Using Alphabetic Letters/Symbols?

Question

Since we hear a lot about Phoenician influence to the creation of Alphabet, they should have written something, correct? Searching for decades, I haven't come across any! So, please, if there is such, enlighten me! Thank you!

Answer 1

Hello dear!
Sorry to disappoint you but I have never come across any written Phoenician documents previous to Greek ones using letters. As a matter of fact, they never used letters but pictograms (mainly syllable symbols, never letters!

Answer 2

"Searching for decades"? You must have been looking in the wrong places. Just a few minutes in Wikipedia gave me this :

"The Phoenicians are credited with spreading the Phoenician alphabet throughout the Mediterranean world. It was a variant of the Semitic alphabet of the Canaanite area developed centuries earlier in the Sinai region, or in central Egypt. Phoenician traders disseminated this writing system along Aegean trade routes, to coastal Anatolia (present day Turkey), the Minoan civilization of Crete, Mycenean Greece, and throughout the Mediterranean. Classical Greeks remembered that the alphabet arrived in Greece with the mythical founder of Thebes, Cadmus."

"This alphabet has been termed an "abjad" or a script that contains no vowels. A cuneiform abjad originated to the north in Ugarit, a Canaanite city of northern Syria, in the 14th century BC. Their language, Phoenician, is commonly classifed as in the Canaanite subgroup of Northwest Semitic. Its later descendant in North Africa is termed Punic."

"The earliest known inscriptions in Phoenician come from Byblos and date back to ca. 1000 BC. Phoenician inscriptions are found in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Cyprus and other locations, as late as the early centuries of the Christian Era."

"Phoenicia : Language and literature" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia#Language_and_literature

"Inscription in the Phoenician alphabet from the Temple Mount" : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Phoenicianstone.jpg

"The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendents such as Latin, Cyrillic and Coptic), was a direct successor of Phoenician, though certain letter values were changed to include vowels."

"When Phoenician was first uncovered in the 19th century, its origins were unknown. Scholars at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs."

"However, the oldest known inscription of Phoenician is known as the Ahiram epitaph, and is engraved on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram."

"Phoenician alphabet" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet

And then there all the books about the Phoenician Alphabet. You seriously claim they're all lies? Because the alphabet wasn't invented by pure-blooded heroic Greeks? Tough titty!

Answer 3

You are addressing a very strong question: you ask for evidence of Phoenician alphabetic writing before Greek!
Well, there is no such! Everything said is "bla, bla", no evidence, just theories!
But, we live in the age of TV and everything TV and the Media spreads around is accepted as truth!
No, there is no such evidence, as far as alphabetic writting, not any kind of writing, including syllabic!
The Phoenicians didn't have symbols for vowels, ...