Mysteries of the Alphabet—The Origins of Writing

The author is a professor (comparative literature), a poet, the author of fiction and non-fiction, and a rabbi, and is affiliated with the Aleph Center for Jewish Studies in Paris and the Bar-Ilan U. in Tel Aviv. This work, translated from the French (1999, Editions Assoudine, Paris) is a charming, visually delightful, information packed exploration of letters, words, and meanings. In particular, it tells how proto-Sinaitic pictograms derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics and discovered in the Sinai at the beginning of the 20th century evolved through the millennia and left their traces on our alphabet. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)