2824: The Origins of Ge’ez Sep 13, 2024

Egyptian hieroglyphs eventually led to the modern alphabets that most of the world uses, but that is mostly because of the widespread proliferation of Phoenician writing, which you should read more about here. However, there was another offshoot early on. Before Phoenician writing even existed, there was the Proto-Sinaitic script which is the first alphabetic type writing to emerge from hieroglyphs. This eventually evolved into Phoenician, but it also led to the South Semitic writing system, turning into (among other now-extinct systems) Old South Arabian, used in what is now Yemen. With Old North Arabian scripts dying out by the 4th century AD, the only surviving descendant of what were once many scripts tracing their lineage to South Semitic writing is Ge’ez, used for a number of languages in Ethiopia and Eritrea, notably Tigrinya and Amharic. 

This makes Ge’ez, with all of its local variations, possibly the only alphabetic writing system with ancient roots not directly linked with the Phoenicians.