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Early Bronze Age tomb, Umm el-Marra, Syria
Before the invention of alphabets, literacy was the purview of Egyptian and Mesopotamian scribes trained in complex writing systems that could take years to master. Proto-Sinaitic script, which uses a set of alphabetic signs adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphics, is the earliest known system to rely on symbols alone to represent sounds and that could be mastered by someone who had never set foot in a scribal school. This early script is known principal
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