Sumerian cuneiforms (wedge shaped symbols in clay tablets) and Egyptian hieroglyphics (pictographs) were the only known forms of writing before the Phoenicians developed the alphabet. Both scripts used picture writing which later represented sounds. By about 1200 B.C., the Phoenicians had developed symbols which in time became a real alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of twenty-two symbols, all consonants. It is important to note that the early cuneiform shapes were often pictograms and ideograms, and they did not always represent unique (alphabetic) sound-signs, or phonograms, while the Phoenician letters, did. The Phoenicians are credited for the development of the first alphabet and it's distribution. A detailed path of the Phoenician letters transformation into the many forms used today is found below:

• The evolution of the Phoenician character set from the Proto-Sinaitic glyphs.
  These are the pictographs found in the Sinai peninsula, ca. 1500 BC and are assumed to be the source of the sound symbols developed several centuries later by the Phoenicians.
• The evolution of the Greek character set from the Phoenician character set.
• The eventual evolution of the Arabic character set from its Phoenician roots.
  Not pictured are the developments of Aramaic and Nabatean, which led to the modern Arabic script.
• The Phoenician characters which in Greek rotated 90 degrees or the the non-symmetrical characters that flipped horizontally when the direction of Greek switched from left to right.
• The evolution of the Square Aramaic/Hebrew character set from the Phoenician character set.
• The evolution of the Modern Cyrillic character set from the Greek character set.
• The evolution of the Latin character set.