Феничанско писмо је пронађено на већем броју археолошких налазишта на Медитерану где су Феничани имали своје колоније, као у Библосу (Либан) и Картагини (Тунис). Првобитно, сва слова су била урезивана у камен, већина их је била попречна и усправна, као и ознаке у рунама. Феничани су писали здесна налево, али понекад и слева надесно као и у баустрофедону, где су редови текста наизменично писани здесна налево и слева надесно. Нека слова су писана на различите начине, као нпр. слово тав које се писало као „+“ али и као „х“.
^The date of 1050 BC is conventional, the oldest known inscriptions are from the 10th century BC; the predecessor scripts used in the Syro-Hittite kingdoms of the 13th to 12th centuries BC is classified as "Proto-Canaanite". Greek travellers shared their alphabet with the people living there who made a new mix of the Greek alphabet, which the Greeks adopted.
Use of the Phoenician script declined during the Hellenistic period as its evolved forms replaced it; it became obsolete with the destruction of Carthage in 149 BC.
^Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. "First Alphabet Found in Egypt", Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.
Albright, William F. (1966). The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and their Decipherment.
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Colless, Brian E (2010). „Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah”. Antiguo Oriente. 8: 75—96.
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B. Benjamin Sass (West Semitic Alphabets) – In 1988 a very important doctoral dissertation was completed at Tel Aviv University, *Benjamin Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet and its Development in the Second Millennium BC, Ägypten und Altes Testament 13, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1988.