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About five
thousand years ago, the people of ancient
Egypt invented a system of writing with
pictures. They used pictures of things to
stand for words. A picture of an ox head
stood for their word for ox.
Much later, people called Semites, who
lived between where Egypt and israel are
today, had a better idea. They used
pictures of things to stand for the first
sound of things to stand for the first
sound in the name of the thing pictured.
This was the beginning of the alphabet.
For the first letter of their alphabet,
the Semites used a simpler form of the
Egyptian ox head. They called this letter
aleph, their word for ox.
How did the head of an ox come to look
like our "A" ?
About 3,500 years ago, the Semites took
the eye and the ear
out of the picture of the ox head to make
it simpler, like this.
Then, about 3,000 years ago,
people called Phoenicians made the
picture even simpler,
and turned it on its side.
And, about 2,000 years ago,
the Romans finally made the ox head
into the shape we now know as "A"
Many of our letters started with pictures
the way "A" did. But no matter
how their shapes have changed, the
letters have always been codes for sounds
that people make when they talk.
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