page_title: Geʽez script
section_title: History and origins
hierarchical_section_title: Geʽez script / History and origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Meskel Adebabay, Ethiopian federal states flags, Addis Abeba
context_page_description: Geʽez is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Eritrea and Ethiopia. It originated as an abjad and was first used to write Geʽez, now the liturgical language of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and Beta Israel, the Jewish community in Ethiopia. In Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is often called fidäl, meaning "script" or "letter".
  The Geʽez script has been adapted to write other languages, mostly Semitic, particularly Amharic in Ethiopia, and Tigrinya in both Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is also used for Sebat Bet, Meʼen, and most other languages of Ethiopia. In Eritrea it is used for Tigre and it has traditionally been used for Bilen, a Cushitic language. Tigre, spoken in western and northern Eritrea, is considered to resemble Geʽez more than other derivative languages. Other Cushitic peoples in the Horn of Africa, such as Oromos, Somalis and Afars, used Latin-based orthographies.
  For the representation of sounds, this article uses a system that is common among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages. This differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
context_section_description: The earliest inscriptions of Semitic languages in Eritrea and Ethiopia date to the 9th century BCE in Ancient South Arabian script, which is known as Epigraphic South Arabian (ESA), an abjad shared with contemporary kingdoms in South Arabia.
  After the 7th and 6th centuries BCE,   variants of the script arose, evolving in the direction of the later Geʻez abugida or  alphasyllabary. 
  This evolution can be seen most clearly in evidence from inscriptions (mainly graffiti on rocks and caves) in the Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia and the former province of Akele Guzai in Eritrea.
  By the first centuries CE, what is called "Old Ethiopic" or the "Old Geʻez alphabet" arose, an abjad written left-to-right (as opposed to boustrophedon like ESA) with letters basically identical to the first-order forms of the modern vocalized alphabet (e.g. "k" in the form of "kä"). There were also minor differences, such as the letter "g" facing to the right instead of to the left as in vocalized Geʻez, and a shorter left leg of "l", as in ESA, instead of equally-long legs in vocalized Geʻez (somewhat resembling the Greek letter lambda).
  Vocalization of Geʻez occurred in the 4th century, and though the first completely vocalized texts known are inscriptions by Ezana, vocalized letters predate him by some years, as an individual vocalized letter exists in a coin of his predecessor, Wazeba of Axum. Linguist Roger Schneider has also pointed out in an unpublished early 1990s paper anomalies in the known inscriptions of Ezana of Axum that imply that he was consciously employing an archaic style during his reign, indicating that vocalization could have occurred much earlier.
  As a result, some believe that the vocalization may have been adopted to preserve the pronunciation of Geʻez texts due to the already moribund or extinct status of Geʻez, and that, by that time, the common language of the people were already later Ethiopian Semitic languages. At least one of Wazeba's coins from the late 3rd or early 4th century contains a vocalized letter, some 30 or so years before Ezana. Kobishchanov, Peter T. Daniels, and others have suggested possible influence from the Brahmic scripts in vocalization, as they are also abugidas, and the Kingdom of Aksum was an important part of major trade routes involving India and the Greco-Roman world throughout classical antiquity.
  According to the beliefs of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the original consonantal form of the Geʻez fidäl was divinely revealed to Enos "as an instrument for codifying the laws", and the present system of vocalisation is attributed to a team of Aksumite scholars led by Frumentius (Abba Selama), the same missionary said to have converted King Ezana to Christianity in the 4th century. It has been argued that the vowel marking pattern of the script reflects a South Asian system such as would have been known by Frumentius. A separate tradition, recorded by Aleqa Taye, holds that the Geʻez consonantal alphabet was first adapted by Zegdur, a legendary king of the Agʻazyan Sabaean dynasty held to have ruled in Ethiopia c. 1300 BCE.
  Geʻez has 26 consonantal letters. Compared to the inventory of 29 consonants in the South Arabian alphabet, continuants are missing of ġ, ẓ, and South Arabian s³  (Geʻez Sawt ሠ being derived from South Arabian s² ), as well as z and ṯ, these last two absences reflecting the collapse of the interdental with the alveolar fricatives. On the other hand, emphatic P̣ait ጰ, a Geʻez innovation, is a modification of Ṣädai ጸ, while Pesa ፐ is based on Tawe ተ.
  Thus, there are 24 correspondences of Geʻez and the South Arabian alphabet:
  Many of the letter names are cognate with those of Phoenician, and may thus be assumed for the Proto-Sinaitic script.
caption: Sign in Amharic using the Geʻez script at the Ethiopian millennium celebration
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