L2/04-149 Title: Miscellaneous Input on Phoenician Encoding Proposal Date: May 25, 2004 --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jameskass@att.net Date: 2004-05-02 12:41:56 -0700 (For possible submission as an L2/UTC document.) Concerning N2746 (Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS): Quoting from Birnbaum (1971) as given to the Unicode public list by John Hudson (thread: New contribution, 2004/04/29) " To apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable. I have therefore coined the term Palaeo-Hebrew." Palaeo-Hebrew did not exist as a concept or term before modern times. Palaeo-Hebrew and Phoenician are synonymous when speaking of scripts, Palaeo-Hebrew and modern Hebrew are not. Palaeo-Hebrew and Phoenician are two names given to the identical script. Palaeo-Hebrew should be unified with Phoenician for this reason. Objections have been raised about the proposal on the basis that many scholars traditionally encode Palaeo-Hebrew using modern Hebrew characters. First, this can not be a long-held tradition as we haven't had computer technology until recently. Second, on-line research reveals the following, that some users in the user community rightly consider Palaeo-Hebrew and modern Hebrew to be separate scripts; and that some scholarly users encode both modern Hebrew and Palaeo-Hebrew using an ad-hoc encoding scheme called "Web Hebrew" -- which is a masquerade (in both cases) of upper-ASCII. Quoting from the page: http://ebionite.org/fonts.htm "We also use a font that uses upper ASCII to show Hebrew in the same manner as "Web Hebrew" fonts (with the same character assignments) but with added features. Included in the font is transliteration symbols for Hebrew in two schemes to make it backwards compatible with our first special font we used on our sites. And instead of using the "square script" used to represent Hebrew today and over the last few milennia, we use Palaeo-Hebrew script. Palaeo-Hebrew has been used in the past to archaize, that is, to preserve a link to an earlier state of things. That is after all, what we are about, so Palaeo is the perfect script for us to use." Their home page... http://ebionite.org/ .... has a graphic of Hebrew script surrounding a Menorah, a graphic showing Latin script with diacritics, and a graphic showing Palaeo-Hebrew. That they use a graphic for Palaeo-Hebrew on their home page is no more suggestive that Palaeo-Hebrew should be displayed using graphics than is their use of a graphic depiction of the Latin script. Quoting from this page: http://www.fossilizedcustoms.com/critic.html (In which the author has been criticized for his choice of using palaeo-Hebrew characters and is responding.) "Lew: YHWH Elohim used palaeo-Hebrew to write the Torah in the stone tablets, so I stand on my choice of characters with Him. In fact, most of the prophets wrote in the archaic, primary Hebrew; it was only during the Babylonian Captivity that the Yahudim took the "Babylonian Hebrew" characters on -- Belshatstsar needed Daniel to read this "outlandish and ridiculous" script, because the Babylonians knew nothing of it. Mosheh, Abraham, Enoch, Dawid, Shlomoh -- these men could not read modern Hebrew; they used that "outlandish and ridiculous" palaeo-Hebrew script. The Great Scroll of Isaiah (YeshaYahu) is a copy of the original, and it is on display in the Shrine of the Book Museum in Yerushaliyim -- the Name is preserved in its original "outlandish and ridiculous" palaeo-Hebrew script, while the rest of the text is in modern Hebrew." Quoting from the Google excerpt for: www.yahweh.org/publications/sny/sn02Chap.pdf " ... In most cases he will come across a notation that the personal name "Yahweh" ( hwhy in palaeo-Hebrew and hwhy in Aramaic script) has M ... " The excerpt shows that this user is masquerading Palaeo-Hebrew and Aramaic as regular ASCII, although given that this is a file in PDF format, and that there exists no standard for encoding Palaeo-Hebrew or Aramaic, this is understandable. At: http://www.geocities.com/stojangr/transliterating___the___ancient.htm This page shows Phoenician transliterated into Greek, both as the alphabet and as the inscription which is the focus of the site. The Phoenician inscription in the Greek language is not offered transliterated into modern Hebrew for reasons which should be obvious. The above link is offered here to illustrate that there are most certainly users of the Phoenician script (a.k.a. Palaeo- Hebrew) who are not necessarily Hebrew scholars. Since it is an established practice among some scholars to masquerade modern Hebrew as upper-ASCII, it is no surprise that they like to masquerade palaeo-Hebrew in the same fashion. As scholars and users of various persuasions migrate towards The Unicode Standard, options for digitally encoding texts using the characters in which they were originally written should be preserved and advanced. Accepting the current proposal would do so. Thank you for your consideration. --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Deborah W. Anderson" <dwanders@pacbell.net> Date: 2004-05-02 14:58:52 -0700 To: <unicode@unicode.org> Subject: Re: New Contribution: In support of Phoenician from a user Sender: unicode-bounce@unicode.org As one coming from the world of ancient Indo-European (IE) and as editor of a journal on IE out of UCLA, I am in support of the Phoenician proposal. In Indo-European, the origins of the Greek alphabet are of interest, and hence the materials that discuss Phoenician as the possible source for the rise of the Greek alphabet are important (as discussed, for example, in Barry Powell's _Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet_, Cambridge, 1991). >From my perspective, I would like to be able to see in plain text the Phoenician as it appears in inscriptions where the purported Phoenician to Greek transmission may have occurred (Hama or Al Mina, Syria, for example, in the first half of the first millennium B.C.). A facsimile could capture the inscription, but I would like to be able to cite and discuss the words and letters in plain text, particularly to compare the Phoenician letters to the Greek letter forms. (Powell's book includes inline examples of the Phoenician and Greek letters.) In order to do this, I need Phoenician to appear, and not Hebrew, and would use a Phoenician encoding (if in Unicode). Also, as a advocate of the use of Unicode in the journal I edit--which will eventually be made available online (in XML)--I need to be make sure that if an article on Greek/Phoenician were published online, users will see the Phoenician letters, and not Hebrew, which a Phoenician encoding would allow. Additionally, I am myself interested in tracking the use of the PHOENICIAN WORD SEPARATOR and what its relation to the AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR DOT (and AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR LINE) may be. (There is a different opinion on the origin of the Greek script by Roger Woodard, _Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer_ [Oxford, 1997] in which he instead puts the "invention" of the Greek script in the hands of Cypriot syllabary scribes during Mycenaean times. But here, too, the ultimate origin of the Greek script lies with the Phoenician script.) With best regards, Deborah Anderson Deborah Anderson Researcher, Dept. of Linguistics UC Berkeley Email: dwanders@socrates.berkeley.edu or dwanders@pacbell.net --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Dean Snyder <dean.snyder@jhu.edu> Date: 2004-05-05 00:50:00 -0700 To: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org> Subject: Phoenician Unicode Proposal: Expert Feedback Requested Sender: unicode-bounce@unicode.org The following came in yesterday to the Ancient Near Eastern email list. Dean A. Snyder ---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- Subject: [ANE] Re: Phoenician Unicode Proposal: Expert Feedback Requested Date Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2004 7:37 PM From: Reinhard G. Lehmann <lehmann@uni-mainz.de> To: ane@listhost.uchicago.edu Hallo out there, I fully aggree with what has been said by Steven Kaufamn and Bob Whiting, and in my humble opinion Unicode Phoenician seems to be as superfluous as a Phoenician typewriter. But of course it does not hurt someone... Some expert feedback is requested - here it is: 1. Some of the figure tables shown in the proposal are outdated and obsolete - even Ifra used some outdated tables! 2. the names in the names list (p. 15) should be those of proper Ancient Hebrew, because we do not have original Phoenician letter Names (at least not their pronounciation) 3. The glyphs table page 14 are beautiful - like those of the Imprimerie nationale, which are, to be sure, Phoenician types cutted for the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum by famous script designers of the 19th century. Even Bodoni made a proposal (which had been rejected by the Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres). They are *beauti*ful, and correct as abstraction of a certain stage of development in the Phoenician script - but I do not know for what they should be *use*ful. I myself would never use them, even for teaching, because students should not learn a certain 'polaroid' of a specialized Phoenician script, but the structures of that kind of Northwest Semitic linear alphabetic script and the general parameters and regularities of its Phoenician, South Canaanite (including Hebrew), and Aramaic branches of the first millenium BCE. 4. I have no idea what benefit should have the Unicode representation of several NWS regional handwritings like "font Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite, Punic, Neo-Punic, Phoenician proper, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Palaeo-Hebrew" - for example, what really *is* (or was) "Phoenician proper"? Byblos 10th century, Tyrus 6th?, Byblos 5th? Byblos 2nd? or Sidon 6th? What really is "Siloam Hebrew"? It is not a script type, but the hazarduous remnant of *only one single* inscription of only a few lines! What means "Hebrew seals"? Who ever studies the corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals should know that here is not a certain script of "Hebrew seals". Who knows exactly how Ammonite or Moabite or Edomite script has to look like? We only do know the different remnants of such a script in only few lines of several inscriptions from different locations and different times. 5. Figure 2, the Ahirom inscription, is - not late 11th century but later (I suggest 9th), as will be shown together with some new readings in a forthcoming edition. 6. Information in the introduction: a. The type described by Garbini as "very elegant script with long, slightly slanting vertical lines, minuscule loops and flat letters" is not the forerunner of Etruscan, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and so on, where this slanting vertical lines and minuscule loops are missing. The Ancient Phoenician script may be called the forerunner of the mentioned scripts, but this ancient Phoenician script is only represented in very few inscriptions, mainly from Byblos (Ahirom, Shipitbaal, Abibaal, Elibaal), and some arrowheads, which do not have slanting vertical lines at all. Arabic script is more developed from Nabataean, which developed Official Aramaic, which developed from Old Aramaic, which developed from Old Phoenician - but there was no Phoenician script with slanting vertical lines etc in between. b. Phoenician as described in the proposal p. 3 is *not* "quintessentially illustrative of the historical problem of where to draw lines in an evolutionary tree of continuously changing scripts in use over thousands of years", because Phoenician (script) itself is not only part, but product of this evolutionary process. c. The proposal says (p. 3 bottom) "Phoenician language inscriptions usually have no space between words; there are sometimes dots between words in later inscriptions (e.g. Moabite inscriptions)"... This is not true. Early Phoenician inscriptions know divinding dots or strikes, the *later* inscriptions do not. Moabite is not Phoenician Or otherwise all Canaanite linear alphabet scripts are to be considered Phoenician: but then it is wron to say that they "usually have no space between words". The scriptio continua is the end of development, not the beginning. Best regards Reinhard G. Lehmann ******************************************************** Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann, AkOR Forschungsstelle für Althebräische Sprache und Epigraphik Fachbereich 02 Evangelische Theologie Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz D - 55099 Mainz tel: (+49) 6131 - 39 23284 mailto: lehmann@mail.uni-mainz.de web-HP: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~lehmann/ look at: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~lehmann/link.html look at: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~lehmann/KUSATU-dframe.html ******************************************************** ----------------- End Forwarded Message ----------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Paul James Cowie <pjamescowie@ancientneareast.net> Date: 2004-05-06 00:45:01 -0700 To: unicode@unicode.org Subject: Phoenician Sender: unicode-bounce@unicode.org I've just been reading over the discussion regarding Phoenician script encoding that has been generated over the last few days. As an 'expert', i.e. someone actually working with ancient languages, can I put in a vote for Michael's proposal to encode the Phoenician script along the lines he has indicated? (Of course, there are undoubtedly some glitches to iron out..... That's why it's called a 'proposal'.... On the whole though, his reasoning is sound). Somewhat echoing Deborah Anderson's contribution from a few days ago, I am categorically against any script unification in this matter and I believe that Phoenician script should be encoded separately from square Hebrew script - when I have the need to encode both scripts within one XML / XHTML document, I want to be sure that both scripts are rendered accurately without confusion, and without having to step though a font minefield. A few contributors to this list have argued that separate encoding is unnecessary and shouldn't happen on the grounds that the user community doesn't / wouldn't make use of it.... Well, I can certainly tell you that my user / research community (i.e. Near Eastern history, archaeology and Egyptology) remains incredibly conservative in nearly all their practices - their current practice overall is certainly no guide to what *should* be happening.... Some of us *are* trying to pioneer and teach different practices - the use of XML / XHTML, the application of Unicode instead of different fonts, for example - but it is a slow, slow process. The encoding of Phoenician script, alongside square Hebrew and Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform (all used to represent the same or similar languages, BUT completely different scripts in history, appearance and behaviour) - would be a great boon. Hope this helps, ------------ Paul James Cowie BA Hons (Sydney) GradDipEd MA (Macquarie) PhD in candidato London, UK and Sydney, Australia Editor, http://www.ancientneareast.net/ Area Supervisor, Tel Rehov Excavations, Israel Committee Member, Friends of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology PhD Candidate, Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The following two notes were received earlier via the on-line feedback form, and also will appear among the regular public feedback. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date/Time: Thu Apr 29 08:28:50 EDT 2004 Contact: peterkirk@qaya.org Report Type: Other Question, Problem, or Feedback Opt Subject: Phoenician script proposal Michael Everson has made a proposal, N2746, for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS. The principle of encoding Phoenician separately from Hebrew has been discussed at length e.g. on the Unicode Hebrew list, and remains highly controversial. Indeed it seems to have won little support in these discussions apart from that of the current proposer. The general scholarly practice is to encode Phoenician, paleo-Hebrew etc as Hebrew script with variant glyphs. A change to using a separate Phoenician script will be disruptive and will compromise existing encoded texts. The user community is apparently far from convinced that the negative effects of this change will be outweighed by any claimed benefits. In section C point 2a of the proposal the proposer states that no contact has been made with the user community. In fact there has been some contact, at least on the Unicode Hebrew list, but the users contacted have not been in favour of the principle of the proposal. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date/Time: Thu Apr 29 15:30:26 EDT 2004 Contact: cowan@ccil.org Report Type: Other Question, Problem, or Feedback Opt Subject: Against Phoenician I believe that it is inappropriate to encode Phoenician script at this time. The Roadmap provides for no less than 8 copies of the same 22-character West Semitic abjad (viz. Hebrew, Mandaic, Samaritan, North Arabic, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Phoenician, Aramaic). Before any of these other than Hebrew are encoded, we need to have a systematic justification for making precisely these cuts in the complex Semitic family tree and no others. Saying simply "Adherence to the Roadmap" does not cut it. (Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and Indic, though also descendants of Phoenician, are not relevant because they are no longer 22-character abjads). In particular, if all of these are encoded using the Hebrew block, they will "just work" without any further implementation effort, since none of them require any treatment different from that applied to the subset of Hebrew characters represented by the base characters excluding final forms. This is a real advantage to users. An affirmative defense is needed for disunifying these scripts from Hebrew. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Date/Time: Mon May 10 12:24:59 CDT 2004 Contact: jcowan@reutershealth.com Report Type: Submission (FAQ, Tech Note) Opt Subject: For the UTC: Phoenician I wish to withdraw my remarks opposing the encoding of Phoenician as a separate script. I also urge the UTC to collate Hebrew and Phoenician scripts jointly in the default collation, so that aleph and alaph are given the same primary weight, beth and beth, etc. etc. --------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "S. George Khalaf" <slim@phoenicia.org> To: <jameskass@att.net> (posted to L2 register by permission) Subject: Re: Phoenician and computer encoding Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 23:55:48 +0000 Hello James, Thank you for visiting "A Bequest Unearthed, Phoenicia" and for taking the time to write such a kind yet very important message. I am indebted to you for having alerted me to this bit of information. I was aware the the proposal was underway though I had never had a chance to read it. Further, I was unaware of the attempt to smother Phoenician script by not allowing it to have its unique and separate Unicode identity. No one can deny that the modern Hebrew script is very useful in "dealing" with Phoenician script in the computer world. However, Hebrew is not the only medium script-wise which can be useful for Phoenician, in fact, Aramaic script as well as its Syriac branch are useful too. Many scholar find western Aramaic to be relatively modern Phoenician. Further, as far as I am concerned, I find it much easier for me to read Phoenician using the Phoenician script than to read it using Hebrew. I cannot recognize all the Hebrew characters while I can easily see Latin characters in the Phoenician alphabet. With due respect to Hebrew, I believe that it must not substitute Phoenician in the computer medium. Phoenician Canaanite is separate, unique and independent of any language, despite its similarities with many ancient languages of the Middle East. I believe one of the strongest points made in the proposal is this: > Phoenician is quintessentially illustrative of the historical problem of where > to draw lines in an evolutionary tree of continuously changing scripts in use > over thousands of years. The twenty-two letters in the Phoenician block may be > used, with appropriate font changes, to express Punic, Neo-Punic, Phoenician > proper, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew > seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Palaeo-Hebrew. The historical cut that has been > made here considers the line from Phoenician to Punic to represent a single > continuous branch of script evolution. The objection and use of Hebrew instead of the Phoenician script reminds of the problem Champolion was faced with when he was trying to decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphics. He had access to the Coptic language which is the closest to ancient Egyptian. However, at some point in time, Coptic books were not anymore written in Egyptian Hieroglyphics but in Greek; therefore, Egyptian was forgotten as a written medium. Refusing to encode Phoenician and using Hebrew is an intellectual crime against the Phoenician heritage and history which I very strongly condemn. I have already planned and started to contact my colleagues in the Aramaic, Coptic and Syriac computer community to lobby their support in approving the unicoding of the Phoenician script. Regretfully, I am not experienced or seasoned in the machination of lobbying support among scholars of this field but I will do my best so to do, thanks to you. My site, a labor of love for preserving and disseminating information about my heritage, is continuously growing with new materials as time permits. Kind regards, Salim* George Khalaf, Byzantine Phoenician Descendent * perhaps from Shalim, Phoenician god of dusk "A Bequest Unearthed, Phoenicia" ? Encyclopedia Phoeniciana http://phoenicia.org Center for Phoenician Studies Chapel Hill, NC USA > Greetings, > > Your wonderful web site is keeping me on-line! Thank you so much > for making all of this information available on the World wide web. > > There's currently a proposal before ISO/Unicode to encode the > ancient Phoenician script so that it can have a unique range in > the World's standard for the computer encoding of text. > > Interested scholars and users are invited to review this proposal > and comment upon its merits. > > Objections have been raised to this proposal by some scholars that > the ancient Phoenician writings should be encoded on computers > using the modern Hebrew script range, and that Phoenician writing > doesn't need to have its own computer encoding range because there > is no need to be able to distinguish between modern Hebrew writing > and ancient Phoenician writing in computer plain text. > > There has been a lively discussion about this on the Unicode public > mailing list recently. The author of the proposal has said that the > proposal will be revised. This is why it is important that scholars and > other users voice their opinions and why I am writing you. If you > have any opinions about this and would like to respond, your response > would be most welcome and would be forwarded to the responsible > people. If you know of anyone interested who would like to > offer an opinion, please feel free to forward this message along. > > The current proposal is on-line in PDF format at: > http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2746.pdf > > The Unicode public list is open to anyone who joins, as the name > suggests. It is archived openly and more information can > be found at: > http://www.unicode.org/consortium/distlist.html > > Sincerely, > > James Kass > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 17:56:17 +0100 To: l2doc@Unicode.ORG From: "saqqara" <saqqara@csi.com> (by way of Michael Everson) Subject: In support of N2746 (Phoenician) Michael Having followed the discussion on N2746 (Phoenician) in the Unicode and ANE lists and reviewed the proposal in detail, I am writing to welcome the proposal and offer my best wishes for a speedy and trouble-free journey through the UTC approval process. I am working on a software treatment of a range of ancient scripts from the Mediterranean region for publication next year so have a real interest in the position of the Phoenician script family in Unicode. Having studied all the arguments against listing Phoenician as a distinct script in Unicode, I am now convinced that the distinction is helpful in software usability terms and worthwhile generally. Sympathetic treatment of Hebrew representations is not at all harmed by the existence of other historical scripts indeed I strongly suspect that the Hebrew-centric approach will in time turn out to be enrichened by the wider repertoire of expression I ought to add I have little more than educated layman knowledge on the intricacies of the Semitic script and language developments. The question of whether the proposed character set is complete and correct and the illustrative font appropriate is a matter for the subject experts. However my credentials include substantial experience of commercial multilingual software development including Far Eastern languages/scripts and my own work with Ancient Egyptian software is widely used in that academic community. Do feel free to share my view with UTC and get in touch if you need any technical amplifications of software issues connected with ancient scripts. Bob Richmond Saqqara Technology