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The alphabet. Proto-Sinaitic cut by miners, not scribes; the sign stops meaning the thing and starts meaning the noise.
Geometry, Two clocks: A reading: history runs on two clocks, the calendar and the count of what is passed on. A cheaper way to write speeds the second.
In plain words
Semitic-speaking soldiers and miners in Egypt and Sinai, not temple scribes, cut the first alphabet, where a sign stands for a sound instead of a thing. It is a release: a cheaper tool, in the hands of people the temple did not employ, breaks the temple's hold on writing.
The mechanism
RELEASE — the temple's monopoly on the Word is broken by a cheaper technology in the hands of people the temple did not employ
How it was checked
- EvidenceT6 PHYSICAL / MANUSCRIPT; Status: COMMITTED; a capture; a release
- Letter eraTHE ENCLOSURE AT THE BIRTH OF WRITING c. 3500 to c. 1150 BC
- Plate — Romain Butin, photograph of a Proto-Sinaitic inscription, Serabit el-Khadim · Public domain · source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romain_Butin,_Serabit_el-Khadim_inscriptions,_371.jpg
- SourcesARCHAEOLOGY — Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi el-Hol inscriptions
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