<Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto - Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet . The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants, with matres lectionis used for some vowels in certain late varieties . It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia . </P> <P> The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs . It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures . The Paleo - Hebrew alphabet is a local variant of the Phoenician alphabetical script . Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script . The Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script . The Greek alphabet (and by extension its descendants, such as Latin, Cyrillic, Runic, and Coptic) was also derived from Phoenician . </P> <P> As the letters were originally incised with a stylus, most of the shapes are angular and straight, although more cursive versions are increasingly attested in later times, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet of Roman - era North Africa . Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are some texts written in boustrophedon . </P>

Which type of writing did the phoenician alphabet develop from