PART ONE: HORUS IS HATHOR? An early, yet very common, combination of signs on Middle Bronze Age scarabs is (Fig. 1). It is very frequently attested in Canaan and Byblos, but is rare in Egypt. 2 It does not appear in the Uronarti collection or any other dated Egyptian example, and is known from Tell el-Dab c a from two surface finds to date. 3 This motif was by and large explained by scholars as a combination of the hieroglyph of the Horus falcon and a crudely executed n®r (R8) hieroglyph. 4 Assessing the aggregate of hieroglyphic signs that appear on the Middle Bronze Age scarabs, it seems that the aggregate is built of signs which are connected either to the royal titles, royal names, or otherwise to good wish meanings. 5 Unlike other non-iconic scripts, in the hiero- glyphic script, single pictorial icons, which are easy to identify by the uninitiated as well, carry full meanings 6 such as “the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,” “life, 7 ” “good,” “stability,” “gold,” “unifica- tion,” “His Majesty,” “protection,” etc.; all these signs may have simultaneously carried the addi- tional prestige value “Egyptian” for their users. One should remember that even in Egypt only a very small percentage of the population could read and write: the estimated range is 1–3%. 8 Yet probably every Egyptian, and many foreigners too, would have recognized these specific icons and would have understood their meaning. We can find the budding form of this usage on early scarabs. 9 A basic repertoire of Egyptian signs on scarabs is represented by the corpora of Uronarti and Kahun. 10 These local Egyptian corpora can clearly be shown to have borrowed their motifs from Egyptian Middle Kingdom jewelry, magic wands, coffins, and of course typical royal and pri- * A shorter version of this article was presented at the con- ference “Grenzbereiche der Schrift, Neue Forschungen zur ägyptischen Kultur und Geschichte,” organized by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissen- schaften and held in Berlin on 19 th January 2006. I am deeply indebted to Benjamin Sass for the fruitful discussions on the Protosinaitic script and his many helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks are also due to Claus Jurman from the Institute of Egyptology of the University of Vienna, who very skillfully aided me in editing this article and made useful suggestions. Final- ly, I would like to thank Niv Allon from the Department of Bible Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his contribution to the editorial work and to the reading of the Wadi el-Óôl inscriptions. The designations of the hieroglyphic signs in this arti- cle follow the sign list in GARDINER 1957: 438–548. 1 Beatrice Teissier mentioned his work writing “M. Shuval of Tel Aviv University is currently making a comparative study of Middle Bronze Age scarabs in order to deter- mine which were Palestinian and which were Egyptian” (TEISSIER 1996: 15, n. 9). 2 TUFNELL 1984: 118; BEN-TOR 1997: 179; MLINAR 2006: 214–218. 3 BEN-TOR 1998: 159. 4 TUFNELL 1984: 118; KEEL 1995: 172; BEN-TOR 1998: 159. 5 For a recent elaborate discussion on this topic, see QUIRKE 2004. 6 They are not symbols but are part of a writing system and thus have a stable signified in the language – they refer to a word or a combination of words. 7 The anx sign (S34) is one of the most popular Egyptian hieroglyphs on cylinder seals. It also appears as a symbol of blessing at royal courts (e.g., Alalakh: BECK 2002: 81). Its attraction lies in the option of presenting the abstract notion “life” in a single, concrete, portable icon. 8 BAINES and EYRE 1983. 9 Mainly with the floral “unification” motif, see WARD 1978. 10 TUFNELL 1975. CANAANITES READING HIEROGLYPHS * Horus is Hathor? – The Invention of the Alphabet in Sinai By Orly Goldwasser This article is dedicated to the memory of Menakhem Shuval, a student at Tel Aviv University. Shuval wrote a Ph.D. thesis on local scarab production in Middle Bronze Age Canaan under the supervision of the late Pirhia Beck and myself. He concentrated on the definition of the local Canaanite scarab industry and collected hundreds of examples, which he divided into types of “specific Canaanite motifs.” 1 His sudden death in December 1995 left behind a very extensive, unfinished manuscript, which comprises hundreds of pages of texts and plates and which has never been published. Many recent publications have confirmed his conclusions. May he rest in peace.