Some letters were borrowed from hieroglyphs ... less persuasive than Goldwasser’s account—if Egyptian scribes invented the alphabet, why did it promptly disappear from their literature ...

We don’t know exactly who invented the first letters. The Phoenician alphabet is considered the first known alphabet, but experts think it has its roots in an earlier Old Canaanite tradition.

The story of that first alphabet has long been a mystery, but over the past 25 years we have made enormous progress towards pinpointing when and where it was invented. Most astonishing ...