Answer · Byblos syllabary

An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless)

The Byblos inscriptions record an archaic West Semitic language older than the split between Canaanite and Arabic, written with a syllabary of consonant and consonant-vowel signs.

Still possibleAnswers 1 question0

Where it stands

Still possibleOne piece of evidence for, one against. It needs two reviews to be accepted.

What it predicts

Mendenhall's values, applied to the Akhenaten-daughters seal, yield the names Meritaten, Meketaten and Ankhesenpaaten or recognisable forms of them.
The same sign list reads all 15 inscriptions, including the spatulas and fragments k to n, as grammatical texts without new allographs.
The syllabary's inventory divides into a consonant series and a consonant-vowel series with the predicted vowel distribution.

What would rule it out

The seal names do not come out under Mendenhall's values.
A secure Iron Age date for the tablets, which would postdate the Canaanite-Arabic split by a millennium.
Sequence analysis shows the sign distribution of a syllabary without a separate consonant-only series.

Evidence 1 for · 1 against

Colless reports that 18 of 22 Phoenician letters have a shape ancestor in the syllabary and that his own values…

Speculative

FOR

Garbini's review found Mendenhall's translations cryptic and his method unconstrained, and the reading was set aside…

Supported

AGAINST

The questions it answers

What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?

Open6 answers, none ahead

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless) [Answer ANS0DEDS7919YAY]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ANS0DEDS7919YAY

@misc{mysteriesdept_ans0deds7919yay,
  title     = {An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless)},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Answer, catalog key ANS0DEDS7919YAY},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ANS0DEDS7919YAY}
}