Fig. 17. Albright’s chart of letters in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions (From W. F. Albright, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment, Cambridge [Mass.] 1966, Fig. 1 opp. p. 12) Now, the question arises: Did these West Semitic workers or slaves in Sinai invent the first alphabetic writing? For some decades after the discovery, the answer was positive. Scholars believed that these Semites, who were in daily contact with Egyptian writing, improved it and restricted it to uniconsonantal