ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2746R2
L2/04-141R2
2004-05-29
Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set
International Organization for Standardization
Organisation Internationale de Normalisationеждународная организация по стандартизации
Doc Type: Working Group Document
Title:
Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS
Source: Michael Everson
Status:Individual Contribution
Action:For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC
Date:
2004-05-29
Replaces: N1932 (1998-11-23)
This document revises and replaces N1932, which was based on the proposal written by Rick McGowan
and published in UTR#3, and the proposal written by me in N1592. It contains the proposal summary.

A. Administrative
1. Title
Final proposal for encoding the Phoenician script in the UCS
2. Requester’s nameMichael Everson
3. Requester type (Member body/Liaison/Individual contribution)
Individual contribution.
4. Submission date
2004-05-29
5. Requester’s reference (if applicable)
N1592, N1932
6. Choose one of the following:
6a. This is a complete proposal
Yes.
6b. More information will be provided later
No.

B. Technical – General
1. Choose one of the following:
1a. This proposal is for a new script (set of characters)
Yes.
Proposed name of script
Phoenician.
1b. The proposal is for addition of character(s) to an existing blockNo.
1b. Name of the existing block
2. Number of characters in proposal
27.
3. Proposed category (see section II, Character Categories)
Category C
4a. Proposed Level of Implementation (1, 2 or 3) (see clause 14, ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000)
Level 1.
4b. Is a rationale provided for the choice?
Yes.
4c. If YES, reference
Spacing characters are proposed.
5a. Is a repertoire including character names provided?
Yes.

1

5b. If YES, are the names in accordance with the character naming guidelines in Annex L of ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000?
Yes.
5c. Are the character shapes attached in a legible form suitable for review?
Yes.
6a. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font (ordered preference: True Type, or PostScript format) for
publishing the standard?
Michael Everson. TrueType.
6b. If available now, identify source(s) for the font (include address, e-mail, ftp-site, etc.) and indicate the tools used:
Michael Everson, Fontographer.
7a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts etc.) provided?
Yes, see bibliography below.
7b. Are published examples of use (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources) of proposedcharacters attached?
Yes.
8. Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing (if applicable) such as input, presentation,sorting, searching, indexing, transliteration etc. (if yes please enclose information)?
Yes, see below.
9. Submitters are invited to provide any additional information about Properties of the proposed Character(s) orScript that will assist in correct understanding of and correct linguistic processing of the proposed character(s) orscript. Examples of such properties are: Casing information, Numeric information, Currency information, Displaybehaviour information such as line breaks, widths etc., Combining behaviour, Spacing behaviour, Directionalbehaviour, Default Collation behaviour, relevance in Mark Up contexts, Compatibility equivalence and other Unicode
normalization related information. See the Unicode standard at http://www.unicode.org for such information on otherscripts.
AlsoseeUnicode
Character
Database
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeCharacterDatabase.html and associated Unicode Technical Reports for information needed for considerationby the Unicode Technical Committee for inclusion in the Unicode Standard.
Yes, see Unicode properties below.

C. Technical – Justification
1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before? If YES, explain.
Yes. N1592, N1932
2a. Has contact been made to members of the user community (for example: National Body, user groups of the scriptor characters, other experts, etc.)?
Yes. Phoenician is a simple and well-known historic script used in a wide variety of contexts.
2b. If YES, with whom?
• Jo Ann Hackett, who is Professor of the Practice of Biblical Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy at Harvard. She isagainst using a Hebrew encoding (with a Phoenician font) and, though admitting many scholars may not use it forpublication, said the new script would be useful to students and laypeople. Indeed, she says she would use it and suggests
the particular glyph shape in the code chart could even become the default “standard.” She adds: “And I would argue thateven with only Eshmunazor available [represented by the glyphs in the proposal’s codechart], there would be times when it
would be nice to distinguish between Ph[oenicia]n and Hebrew and Aramaic.”• Dr. Peter Haarer, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University, who will be editing a book for Oxford
University Press based on papers from a conference on “Alphabetic Responses to Western Semitic Writing”;• Barry Powell, Professor of Classics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has written on the history of the Greekalphabet;• Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, author (who holds a degree from Leiden University in Slavic languages and literature), who iscurrently writing a chapter on the transmission of the Phoenician alphabet to Greece, Anatolia, and Italy for theInternational Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, and who will be using Phoenician fonts for the article;• Andrew Beck, Commissioning editor of Religion and Anthropology at Cambridge University Press, for whom the proposal
could be of potential use.
2c. If YES, available relevant documents
This information was provided to me by Deborah Anderson.
3. Information on the user community for the proposed characters (for example: size, demographics, information
technology use, or publishing use) is included?
Scholarly communities researching the Phoenician language; educational communities of all kinds interested in the history of
the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other alphabets..
4a. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare)
Phoenician script is proposed to unify the similar writing styles (palaeographic “scripts”) known in some sources as PalaeoHebrew, Archaic Phoenician, Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew,Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Punic.

24b. Reference
N2311.
5a. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
Yes.
5b. If YES, where?
By scholars and script enthusiasts worldwide.
6a. After giving due considerations to the principles in Principles and Procedures document (a WG 2 standingdocument) must the proposed characters be entirely in the BMP?
No.
6b. If YES, is a rationale provided?
6c. If YES, reference
7. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range (rather than being scattered)?
Yes, they should be encoded in a single block as presented here.
8a. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation form of an existing character or character
sequence?
No.
8b. If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
8c. If YES, reference
9a. Can any of the proposed characters be encoded using a composed character sequence of either existing charactersor other proposed characters?
No.
9b. If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
9c. If YES, reference
10a. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar (in appearance or function) to an existingcharacter?
No.
10b. If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
10c. If YES, reference
11a. Does the proposal include use of combining characters and/or use of composite sequences (see clauses 4.12 and4.14 in ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000)?
No.
11b. If YES, is a rationale for such use provided?
11c. If YES, reference
12a. Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images (graphic symbols) provided?
No.
12b. If YES, reference
13a. Does the proposal contain characters with any special properties such as control function or similar semantics?
No.
13b. If YES, describe in detail (include attachment if necessary)
14a. Does the proposal contain any Ideographic compatibility character(s)?
No.
14b. If YES, is the equivalent corresponding unified ideographic character(s) identified?
14c. If YES, reference

D. Proposal
The Phoenician alphabet and its successors were widely used over a broad area surrounding theMediterranean Sea. Phoenician evolved over the period from about the 12th century BCE with somemodifications until the 2nd century BCE, with the last neo-Punic inscriptions dating from about the 3rdcentury CE (it is not certain as of this writing whether Neo-Punic should be unified with Phoenician orwhether it attained a differentiation significant enough for consideration as a separate script). Garbini
2001 suggests that while the origins of Phoenician may have been a reform of the ProtoSinaitic/Canaanite script, it came into its own from the 9th century BCE, when it “became a very elegant
script with long, slightly slanting vertical lines, minuscule loops and flat letters.” A less elegant older
form of the Phoenician alphabet is a forerunner of the Etruscan, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac
scripts among others, many of which are still in modern use. It has also been suggested that Phoenician is
the ultimate source of Kharoshthi and of the Indic scripts descending from Brahmi.

3Phoenician is illustrative of the historical problem of where to draw lines in an evolutionary tree ofcontinuously 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 (for instance) Palaeo-Hebrew, Archaic
Phoenician, Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew,Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Punic. The historical cut that has been made here considers theline from Phoenician to Punic to represent a single continuous branch of script evolution.

Processing
Phoenician is written from right to left horizontally. Phoenician language inscriptions usually have nospace between words; there are sometimes dots between words in later inscriptions (e.g. in Moabiteinscriptions). Typical fonts for the Phoenician and especially Punic have very exaggerated descenders.
These descenders help distinguish the main line of Phoenician evolution toward Punic from the other(e.g. Hebrew) branches of the script, where the descenders instead grew shorter over time.

Numerals
Phoenician numerals are built up from four elements in combination; samples of these are shown inFigures 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11. Like the letters, Phoenician numbers are written from right to left:means 143 (100 + 20 + 20 + 1 + 1 + 1).

∆∆∆»»…

Names
The names used for the characters here are those reconstructed by Theodor Nöldeke in 1904, as given inPowell 1996 (see Figure 1).

Unicode Character Properties
10900;PHOENICIAN LETTER ALF;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10901;PHOENICIAN LETTER BET;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10902;PHOENICIAN LETTER GAML;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10903;PHOENICIAN LETTER DELT;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10904;PHOENICIAN LETTER HE;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10905;PHOENICIAN LETTER WAU;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10906;PHOENICIAN LETTER ZAI;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10907;PHOENICIAN LETTER HET;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10908;PHOENICIAN LETTER TET;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10909;PHOENICIAN LETTER YOD;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
1090A;PHOENICIAN LETTER KAF;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
1090B;PHOENICIAN LETTER LAMD;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
1090C;PHOENICIAN LETTER MEM;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
1090D;PHOENICIAN LETTER NUN;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
1090E;PHOENICIAN LETTER SEMK;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
1090F;PHOENICIAN LETTER AIN;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10911;PHOENICIAN LETTER PE;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10912;PHOENICIAN LETTER SADE;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10913;PHOENICIAN LETTER QOF;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10914;PHOENICIAN LETTER ROSH;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10915;PHOENICIAN LETTER SHIN;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10916;PHOENICIAN LETTER TAU;Lo;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;
10917;PHOENICIAN NUMBER ONE;No;0;R;;;;1;N;;;;;
10918;PHOENICIAN NUMBER TEN;No;0;R;;;;10;N;;;;;
10919;PHOENICIAN NUMBER TWENTY;No;0;R;;;;20;N;;;;;
1091A;PHOENICIAN NUMBER ONE HUNDRED;No;0;R;;;;100;N;;;;;
1091F;PHOENICIAN WORD SEPARATOR;Po;0;R;;;;;N;;;;;

Bibliography
Faulmann, Carl. 1990 (1880). Das Buch der Schrift. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn. ISBN 3-8218-1720-8
Fossey, Charles. 1948. Notices sur les caractères étrangers anciens et modernes rédigées par un groupe esavants. Nouvelle édition míse à jour à l’occasion du 21e Congrès des Orientalistes. Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale de France.
Garbini, Giovanni. 2001. “The question of the alphabet” in The Phoenicians, ed. Sabatino Moscati. I. B.
Tauris. ISBN 1-85043-533-2
4

Healey, John F. 1990. The early alphabet. (Reading the past). London: British Museum. ISBN 0-71418073-4
Ifrah, Georges. 1998. The universal history of numbers: from prehistory to the invention of the computer.
London: Harvill Press. ISBN 1-86046-324-X
Imprimerie Nationale. 1990. Les caractères de l’Imprimerie Nationale. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale
Éditions. ISBN 2-11-081085-8
McCarter, P. Kyle, Jr. 1975. The antiquity of the Greek alphabet and the early Phoenician scripts.
Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press. (Harvard Semitic Monographs; 9) ISBN 0-89130-066-X
Nöldeke, Theodor. 1904. Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft. Strasburg.
Powell, Barry B. 1996. Homer and the origin of the Greek alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-58907-X .
Robinson, Andrew. 1995. The story of writing. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-01665-8
Rumford, James. 2002. There’s a monster in the alphabet. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-61822140-9

FiguresFigure 1. Table of Phoenician and Greek letterforms from Powell 1996.
The character names taken from Theodor Nöldeke’s reconstruction are shown in the first column.
5Figure 2. Text sample from Healey 1990.
Note the use of the PHOENICIAN WORD SEPARATOR with a short vertical glyph.

Figure 3. Sample from Imprimerie Nationale 1990:161. Note the use of digits (6 and 1 in line 1, and 2 inline 3) and of the PHOENICIAN WORD SEPARATOR with a dotted glyph in the second passage.

6

Figure 4. Plates from McCarter 1975 showing different glyph variants of Phoenician script.

Figure 5. Comparison of alphabets from Birnbaum 1954–57.
Stylistically, all of these are similar enough to be unified under Phoenician.

711+11+1+11+1+1+13+23+33+3+13+3+23+3+3
1010 + 1
2020 + 120 + 1020 + 20
20 + 20 + 20 + 10
20 + 20 + 20 + 20
100

2 + 100
2 + 100

Figure 6. Sample from Faulmann 1880 showing glyph variants for Phoenician letters and numbers.

8

Figure 7. Sample from Ifrah 1998 showing the Phoenician numbers ONE. TEN, and TWENTY.

Figure 8. Sample from Ifrah 1998 showing the Phoenician number ONE HUNDRED.

9

Figure 9. Phoenician text sample from Fossey 1948. The text is from the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar
which is now in the Louvre. Compare the coloured lines with those in Figure 11.

∞ ± ≤ ≥ ¥ µ ∂ ∑ ∏ π ∫ ª º Ω æ ø ¿ ¡ ¬ √ ƒ ≈a b g d e f z h { i k l m n x o p j q r s t
a b g d h w z H T y k l m n s o p t q r S X
a b g d h o z j t e k l m n s u p c q r w xFigure 10. Phoenician font samples. Sidon (Michael Everson); Eshmoon (Salim G. Khalaf),Phoenician Moabite (David Myriad Rosenbaum), and Phtem (Maroun Kassab)

10Figure 11. Sample from Imprimerie Nationale 1990.
The text is from the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar which is now in the Louvre. The Phoenician numbers
ONE and TEN can be seen in the first line. Compare the coloured lines with those in Figure 8.
A translation of the text of this inscription can be found at www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Eshmun.html.
The reference glyphs for the code chart are based on this font style; the sarcophagus is shown below.

11Figure 12. Sample from Rumford 2002. This delightful children’s book is an example of non-scholarly
yet educational use of Phoenician script in the context of the history of our alphabet. The character names
Rumford uses are based on Theodor Nöldeke’s reconstruction, except that he uses NAHESH ‘snake’ rather
than NUN ‘fish’.

12Figure 13. A fragment of the Septuagint dated between 50 BCE and 50 CE. The fragments is part of the“Nahal Hever Minor Prophets” collection, containing fragments of Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk,Zephaniah and Zechariah found in the Nahal Hever cave, south of Qumran. The Tetragrammaton inPhoenician script is indicated with the large black arrow; the rest of the text is Greek.

Figure 14. A fragment of Job 42, again containing the Tetragrammaton in Phoenician script alongside
Greek text. Apparently no copies of the Septuagint dated before the mid-2nd century CE substitutes theTetragrammaton with ∫˘ÚÈÔ˜ ‘LORD’. Sample from www.eliyah.com/lxx.html
13

Figure 14. A text from Qumran, containing the Tetragrammaton
in Phoenician script (Palaeo-Hebrew variant) alongside Hebrew text.

Figure 15. Table of Archaic Phoenician, Old Phoenician, Greek, Late Phoenician, and cursive Neo-Punicletterforms from Fossey 1948.
14

Proposal for the Universal Character Set

Michael Everson

TABLE XX - Row 109: PHOENICIAN

15109010910∞

¿

1±¡

2

≤¬

3

≥√

4

¥

ƒ

5µ≈

6

∂

∆

7

∑

«

8

∏

»

9π…

A

∫

BªCºD

Ω

E

æ

F

ø

œ

G = 00
P = 01

Proposal for the Universal Character Set

Michael Everson

TABLE XX - Row 109: PHOENICIAN
hex
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
090A
0B
0C
0D0E
0F
10111213
1415161718191A
1B1C1D1E1FGroup 0016NamehexName

PHOENICIAN LETTER ALF
PHOENICIAN LETTER BETPHOENICIAN LETTER GAMLPHOENICIAN LETTER DELTPHOENICIAN LETTER HEPHOENICIAN LETTER WAU
PHOENICIAN LETTER ZAIPHOENICIAN LETTER HETPHOENICIAN LETTER TETPHOENICIAN LETTER YOD
PHOENICIAN LETTER KAF
PHOENICIAN LETTER LAMDPHOENICIAN LETTER MEM
PHOENICIAN LETTER NUN
PHOENICIAN LETTER SEMKPHOENICIAN LETTER AINPHOENICIAN LETTER PE
PHOENICIAN LETTER SADEPHOENICIAN LETTER QOFPHOENICIAN LETTER ROSH
PHOENICIAN LETTER SHINPHOENICIAN LETTER TAU
PHOENICIAN NUMERAL ONE
PHOENICIAN NUMERAL TEN
PHOENICIAN NUMERAL TWENTYPHOENICIAN NUMERAL ONE HUNDRED(This position shall not be used)(This position shall not be used)(This position shall not be used)(This position shall not be used)(This position shall not be used)
PHOENICIAN WORD SEPARATOR

Plane 01

Row 109