Well, what about the Samekh in Ugaritic, Hebrew or
Phoenician inscriptions in addition to the Shin/Sin
letter there? Obviously those who used both found a need to
distinguish between their sibilants.
Compare the similarity of some biblical roots with
a Sin to those with a Samekh, such as Sin Beth Kaf/
Samekh Beth Kaf.
In this context cf. the informative Shibboleth
incident in Jud. 12.
I don't see the relevance of the three Alephs in Ug.
here; the difference between these two languages was
not the point.
Uri Hurwitz Great Neck, NY
I have to take a middle ground here, because it's hard to tell from the
pre-exilic Hebrew
script, but Ugaritic isn't going to tell us much. Ugaritic did in fact have
several sibilant
symbols, but it also had three different graphemes for Aleph, depending on the
vowel
associated with it. Hebrew didn't. so Ugaritic isn't going to be much help
either way in this
case.
Dave Washburn
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