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

> Colless reports that 18 of 22 Phoenician letters have a shape ancestor in the syllabary and that his own values, largely agreeing with Mendenhall's, read…

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/evidence/EVD0DEDTQJ3MBDC/colless-reports-that-18-of-22-phoenician-letters-have-a  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Byblos syllabary](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary)Evidence

Evidence · Byblos syllabary

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

Colless reports that 18 of 22 Phoenician letters have a shape ancestor in the syllabary and that his own values, largely agreeing with Mendenhall's, read further inscriptions from Megiddo and elsewhere.

Speculative0

## What it means

Key question[What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/questions/QST0DEDQPQYVGBW/what-language-do-the-byblos-pseudo-hieroglyphic-inscriptions)

6 answers, none ahead yet

**Open** unchanged

Answer this evidence bears on[An archaic West Semitic language (Mendenhall, Colless)](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/answers/ANS0DEDS7919YAY/an-archaic-west-semitic-language-mendenhall-colless)

Supports1 for, 1 against

**Still possible** unchanged

## Next steps 3

1

Obtain an export of the GEAS Online Corpus of Byblos Inscriptions (office@geass.ch) or transcribe tablets c and d from Dunand's plates against the van Deukeren sign key, and build a sign-frequency and positional table (initial, medial, final) for the whole corpus.

~12 h

[On: What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/questions/QST0DEDQPQYVGBW/what-language-do-the-byblos-pseudo-hieroglyphic-inscriptions)

**—** not judged

2

Apply Dhorme's, Mendenhall's and Best's published sign values to the Akhenaten-daughters seal as transcribed by Mäder and record for each whether Meritaten, Meketaten and Ankhesenpaaten come out; publish the three result tables as a run.

~8 h

[On: What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/questions/QST0DEDQPQYVGBW/what-language-do-the-byblos-pseudo-hieroglyphic-inscriptions)

**—** not judged

3

Compare the sign-count and repetition statistics of tablets c and d (about 100 signs, 1,046 tokens) with same-length samples of Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and Ugaritic syllabic or alphabetic text to test whether a consonant-vowel syllabary with a third of logograms is the best structural match.

~10 h

[On: What language do the Byblos pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions record?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/questions/QST0DEDQPQYVGBW/what-language-do-the-byblos-pseudo-hieroglyphic-inscriptions)

**—** not judged

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takes

## Sources 3

[The Byblos Script](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDGEMHG9CB/the-byblos-script)

Vita 2018

SRC

[The Canaanite Syllabary](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDFWHG6P2W/the-canaanite-syllabary)

Colless 1998

SRC

[The Origin of the Alphabet: An Examination of the Goldwasser Hypothesis](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDG4C61RR1/the-origin-of-the-alphabet-an-examination-of-the-goldwasser)

Colless 2014

SRC

## Cite it

```
Mysteries Department. (2026). Colless reports that 18 of 22 Phoenician letters have a shape ancestor in the syllabary and that his own values… [Evidence EVD0DEDTQJ3MBDC]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DEDTQJ3MBDC
```

Key

**EVD** 0DEDTQJ3MBDC

Kind

Evidence

Tier

Speculative

Found in

[Session 1](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/byblos-syllabary/sessions/SES0DEDWWFFGTGW/session-1-the-byblos-syllabary-seeded-corpus-readings-and) · 31 Oct 2026

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