Ox, House, Stick: The Story of Our Alphabet

I bought this book for my niece, but also read it myself. I have an advanced degree in linguistics so the alphabet is more than just a passing interest. This book was informative and helpful, without being too detailed or unreadable. Since she's growing up in a bilingual household, she often asks me questions about language comparisons and this book has sparked a whole new series of inquiries. Not that she'll follow my academic training, but it's nice to see the little lady stretching her mind with a well-written text on an interesting subject.

I had to respond to the assertion by another reviewer that:

"the illustrations of women of antiquity attired as present-day observant muslim women, complete with head coverings."

There are only three women illustrated in this book, and only one of those is attired as a Muslim woman with her head covered. The other two have no head coverings or face veiling - one has a wreath of leaves and one has an ornate hair style.

Overall, I found this book to be a good introduction - though it is not in depth at all and merely glosses over the history of each letter. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and the book is useful for brief introductions, for a starting point, etc. There is a wonderful list of references and further readings on the subject that can be used for more in-depth explanations.

I bought this book for my six year old granddaughter, thinking it would be a good introduction to the study of language. And in some respects, this book is just that. It's readable, copiously and colorfully illustrated, and will interest children of any age from six to sixteen and beyond. That being said, I fail to understand why except in one small aside, the term "Hebrew" is not even mentioned except in an aside where it is implied as being developed contemporaneously with the arabic alphabet, despite the fact that the Hebrews may indeed have invented what Anne Smith chooses to call the Phoenician alphabet. The date of this invention by Semitic people is generally agreed upon circa 2000 BCE. By 1000 BCE, the Phoenicians had a distinct alphabet which was virtually identical to the Hebrew alphabet of the same period. The arabic language was at that time not an element in the developing Hebrew/Phoenician alphabet. In fact, the arabic alphabet as far as is known did not exist before, at the very earliest, 500 BCE and derives from the Nabateans, and the first presently existing example of the arabic alphabet dates from 200 BCE.

It is simply not known whether the Phoenicians borrowed the new, highly flexible and efficient alphabet from the Hebrews or some other Semitic foreign workers in Egypt, or the Hebrews from the Phoenicians. Instead of saying "Hebrew," author Smith chooses to refer to the people living in the traditional Hebrew homeland as "Sinaitic." This is despite the discovery of the so-called "Gezer Calendar" at an ancient Hebrew city in what is now southern Israel, which is written in the earliest Hebrew alphabet (virtually indistinguishable at that point in time from the Phoenician) and signed personally by its author, a man named Abijah who was almost certainly a Hebrew living in Gezer circa 900 BCE, or at the approximate time of the Hebrew king Solomon. And, while we know the names of the Hebrew letters as they existed in 900 BCE, the names of the Phoenician letters for the most part have to be assumed from the Hebrew names.

But what I most object to in this book are the illustrations of women of antiquity attired as present-day observant muslim women, complete with head coverings. There is even an illustration of a face-veiled Roman woman beside a man who is dressed in Roman attire including a laurel wreath around his head. As far as can be ascertained, Roman women did not usually cover their faces. They are invariably depicted without head or face coverings in the numerous mosaics and paintings dating from the Roman period. In fact, Roman women are usually portrayed during that period with no head coverings at all, but with fairly elaborate coifeurs. They may have worn a stole over the head in cooler weather, which no doubt could have been used as a partial face covering if the situation demanded it; but to the best of my knowledge, the only habitually veiled Roman women were the Vestal virgins. I fail to understand why Ms. Smith chose these particular illustrations, unless to somehow appease England's growing and increasingly vocal muslim population. But, islam is not at all contemporary with the beginnings of the ancient alphabet. In fact, from the time of the first non-Egyptian alphabet c. 2000 BCE, more than two full millennia were to pass before islam was even thought of, and more than 1600 years from the time of the Phoenician/Hebrew alphabet of 1000 BCE which is the common ancestor of many modern alphabets, to the beginning of islam c. 650 CE. Why the carefully non-committal term "sinaitic" when "Hebrew" would have been just as correct? In 1000 BCE, both the Phoenicians and the Hebrews, as well as the Egyptians, were recognizable historic peoples living in the eastern Mediterranean in what are today Israel-- the Phoenicians were located north of the Hebrews in what is now Lebanon, and both peoples had extensive commerce with the Egyptian empire. Why then is the term Phoenician acceptable to Ms. Smith while Hebrew is not? Surely children's books should be free of such overt bias. Furthermore, the purpose of education in our western world is still to present the truth, no matter how offensive it may be to the sensibilities or prejudices of any given group. Facts are facts. I refer anyone interested in this book to David Sacks' excellent book "Letter Perfect," written for adults by this student of language, and first published by Broadway Books as "Language Visible" in 2003. Mr. Sacks is a Canadian.