Samekh
| Samekh | |
|---|---|
| Phoenician | samekh |
| Hebrew | |
| Aramaic | samekh |
| Syriac | ܣ |
| Phonemic representation | s |
| Position in alphabet | 15 |
| Numerical value | 60 |
| Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician | |
| Greek | Ξ, Ϲ |
| Cyrillic | Ѯ, С |
Samekh (Phoenician sāmek 𐤎 ; Hebrew samekh Template:Hebrew, Syriac semkaṯ) is the fifteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including the Hebrew alphabet.
Samekh represents a voiceless alveolar fricative /s/. Unlike most Semitic consonants, the pronunciation of /s/ remains constant between vowels and before voiced consonants.
The numerical value of samekh is 60. The letter has no continuant in the Arabic alphabet, its numerical value is taken by Arabic Šīn.
History
The Phoenician letter may continue a glyph from the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, either based on a hieroglyph for a tent peg or support, possibly the djed "pillar" hieroglyph[1] (c.f. Hebrew root סמך s-m-kh 'support', סֶמֶךְ semekh 'support, rest', סוֹמֵךְ somekh 'support peg, post', סוֹמְכָה somkha 'armrest', סָמוֹכָה smokha 'stake, support', indirectly s'mikhah סמיכה; Aramaic סַמְכָא samkha 'socket, base', סְמַךְ smakh 'support, help'; Syriac ܣܡܟܐ semkha 'support').
The shape of samek undergoes complicated developments. In archaic scripts, the vertical stroke can be drawn either across or below the three horizontal strokes. The closed form of Hebrew samek is developed only in the Hasmonean period.[2]
| Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew (c. 800 BC) |
Samaritan (c. 400 BC) |
Imperial Aramaic (c. 400 BC) |
Hebrew (from ca. 50 BC) |
|---|---|---|---|
 
|
ࠎ | 
|
|
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek xi (Ξ),[3] whereas its name may also be reflected in the name of the otherwise unrelated Greek letter sigma.[4]
The archaic "grid" shape of Western Greek xi (
) was adopted in the early Etruscan alphabet (𐌎 esh), but was never included in the Latin alphabet.
Syriac semkat
The Syriac letter semkaṯ ܣܡܟܬ develops from the Imperial Aramaic "hook" shape 𐡎 into a rounded form by the 1st century. The Old Syriac form further develops into a connected cursive both in the Eastern and Western script variants.
| Aramaic | Old Syriac | Eastern | Western |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
Hebrew samekh
Hebrew samekh develops a closed cursive form in the middle Hasmonean period (1st century BC). This becomes the standard form in early Herodian hands.[2]
| Orthographic variants | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew |
Rashi script | ||
| Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | ||
| ס | ס | ס | 
|
.svg){kind=small}
|
Talmudic legend
In Talmudic legend, samekh is said to have been a miracle of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 32:15 records that the tablets "were written on both their sides." The Jerusalem Talmud interprets this as meaning that the inscription went through the full thickness of the tablets. The stone in the center parts of the letters ayin and teth should have fallen out, as it was not connected to the rest of the tablet, but it miraculously remained in place. The Babylonian Talmud (tractate Shabbat 104a) also cites the opinion that these closed letters included samekh, attributed to Rav Chisda (d. ca. 320).[5]
Character encodings
| Preview | ס | ܣ | ܤ | ࠎ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH | SYRIAC LETTER SEMKATH | SYRIAC LETTER FINAL SEMKATH | SAMARITAN LETTER SINGAAT | ||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1505 | U+05E1 | 1827 | U+0723 | 1828 | U+0724 | 2062 | U+080E |
| UTF-8 | 215 161 | D7 A1 | 220 163 | DC A3 | 220 164 | DC A4 | 224 160 142 | E0 A0 8E |
| Numeric character reference | ס |
ס |
ܣ |
ܣ |
ܤ |
ܤ |
ࠎ |
ࠎ |
| Preview | 𐎒 | 𐡎 | 𐤎 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | UGARITIC LETTER SAMKA | IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER SAMEKH | PHOENICIAN LETTER SEMKA | |||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 66450 | U+10392 | 67662 | U+1084E | 67854 | U+1090E |
| UTF-8 | 240 144 142 146 | F0 90 8E 92 | 240 144 161 142 | F0 90 A1 8E | 240 144 164 142 | F0 90 A4 8E |
| UTF-16 | 55296 57234 | D800 DF92 | 55298 56398 | D802 DC4E | 55298 56590 | D802 DD0E |
| Numeric character reference | 𐎒 |
𐎒 |
𐡎 |
𐡎 |
𐤎 |
𐤎 |
References
- ^ Betro, M. C. (1996). Hieroglyphics. Abbeyville Press, NY, p. 209.
- ^ a b Frank Moore Cross, Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook: Collected Papers in Hebrew and West Semitic Palaeography and Epigraphy (2018), p. 30.
- ^ Muss-Arnolt, W. (1892). On Semitic Words in Greek and Latin. Transactions of the American Philological Association v. 23, p. 35-156. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- ^ Jeffery, Lilian H. (1961). The local scripts of archaic Greece. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 25–27.
- ^ The William Davidson Talmud , Shabbat 104a.