00:05In 2005, archaeologists made an amazing discovery at Tel Zayit in ancient Judah.
00:12They found a big limestone rock with very old writing on it.
00:16This writing was an early Hebrew alphabet.
00:19The Zayit stone is one of the oldest examples of the Hebrew alphabet.
00:23It helps us learn about the ancient Israelites and their writing.
00:27This script was used to write the first parts of the Bible.
00:34So, where did this Paleo-Hebrew writing come from?
00:37It grew out of Proto-Sinaitic, inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs.
00:42This alphabet emerged in the Sinai Peninsula around the 19th century BCE.
00:47It evolved into Proto-Canaanite in the Late Bronze Age,
00:51used by groups like Israelites, Phoenicians, and Moabites.
00:54By the 10th century BCE, it became Paleo-Hebrew,
00:57a special version for the Hebrew language with 22 consonant letters.
01:01Paleo-Hebrew became the main way of writing in ancient Israel and Judah.
01:09People used it for hundreds of years.
01:11They used it to write down their history, their laws, and what they believed about God.
01:16It became super important to their way of life.
01:20People called scribes were the main ones who did the writing.
01:23They were very good at it.
01:25Scribes worked for kings, in temples, and for rich people.
01:29They wrote important papers, kept records for the government, and copied holy writings.
01:34Finding alphabets written out, like on the Zayit stone, tells us there might have been schools or practice lessons for new scribes to learn.
01:43We find Paleo-Hebrew writing on different kinds of things.
01:48Things like words carved in stone, and on pieces of broken pottery called ostraca.
01:54Yes, people wrote on broken pots, and they probably used a paper-like material called papyrus for longer writings.
02:02They wrote all sorts of things in Paleo-Hebrew, like messages from kings, notes for running things, personal letters, special stamps called seals, and even parts of the Hebrew Bible.
02:17Lots of important Paleo-Hebrew writings have lasted through the years.
02:21These show us exactly how this old writing was used.
02:24One of the oldest is called the Giza calendar.
02:27It's a small stone tablet that was found in 1908 at a place called Tel Giza.
02:33It's from the late 10th century BCE, so it's really old.
02:38It lists the months of the year and tells what kind of farming work was done each month.
02:43The words are in a very old form of Hebrew.
02:48We're not sure exactly what the calendar was for.
02:51Maybe it was homework for a student, a rhyme to help remember something, words to a song, or even a list for paying taxes.
03:00The Giza calendar is one of the oldest Hebrew writings we have.
03:04It shows us that Paleo-Hebrew writing was used this early on, and it tells us a lot about farming in ancient Israel.
03:15As the Israelites' way of life grew, they started using Paleo-Hebrew more and more.
03:21They used it for big, important carvings on stone and also for everyday government jobs.
03:27One of the most famous big carvings is the Siloam inscription.
03:31It was found in 1880 in Jerusalem inside a tunnel called Hezekiah's Tunnel.
03:37This writing tells about when the tunnel was finished.
03:40It even describes how two groups of workers digging from different ends met in the middle.
03:45Another important carving is the Royal Steward inscription.
03:49It was found on a stone piece above the door of a tomb in Silouan near Jerusalem.
03:54This one is from the 7th century BCE.
03:57It says whose tomb it was, an important person who worked for the king.
04:01And it has a warning, like a curse, for anyone who messes with the tomb.
04:06Remember those Ostraka writings on broken pottery?
04:09They give us tons of information.
04:11For example, there are the Lachish letters.
04:13These were mostly messages for soldiers from the early 6th century BCE.
04:18And the Arad, Ostraka, are about running the temple and keeping track of supplies.
04:24All this shows that Paleo-Hebrew was used for keeping records every day.
04:29Paleo-Hebrew wasn't alone.
04:34It was like part of a big family of ways to write.
04:37We call this family Canaanite, or Northwest Semitic scripts.
04:42The most famous family member is probably the Phoenician alphabet.
04:46It was used by traders who sailed the seas from big cities like Tyre and Sidon.
04:51The Phoenician alphabet and Paleo-Hebrew were like close cousins.
04:55Both came from that proto-Canaanite writing we talked about earlier.
05:00At first, they looked almost exactly the same.
05:03You could often only tell them apart by the language that was written down.
05:07Both ways of writing had 22 letters, and these letters were for consonant sounds.
05:13They didn't really show vowel sounds, like R-A-E-E-I-O-U,
05:19and the letters were in the same order in both alphabets.
05:22But after a while, some small differences in style started to show up.
05:26This made Paleo-Hebrew look special to the people of Israel or Judah.
05:31Other groups of people in Canaan, like the Moabites and Edomites,
05:34also had their own slightly different ways of writing.
05:38They were all part of this big Canaanite writing family.
05:42For hundreds of years, Paleo-Hebrew was the main way people in Israel and Judah wrote everything.
05:52But then things started to change.
05:54Another way of writing, called Aramaic, became really popular.
05:57This meant people started using Paleo-Hebrew less and less for everyday things.
06:03The Aramaic writing also came from those old proto-Canaanite writings.
06:08At first, it was used by people in kingdoms called Aramean kingdoms.
06:13But Aramaic got much more important when big empires, like the Assyrian Empire,
06:18started using it as their main government language.
06:21Then the Babylonians and the Persian Empire did too.
06:25Later, when many people from Judah were forced to live in Babylon,
06:29a time called the Babylonian exile, they saw and used Aramaic a lot.
06:33They started using the Aramaic language and its way of writing, even for writing Hebrew.
06:38You see, the Aramaic writing was more flowy, kind of like cursive handwriting,
06:43and it was easier to write quickly with a pen and ink.
06:46That's one big reason people started using it more.
