Paleo-Hebrew alphabet those of the Paleo-Hebrew and the present Hebrew alphabet, with names traditionally used in English. According to contemporary scholars, the Paleo-Hebrew script developed alongside others in the region during the course of the late second and first millennia BCE. It is closely related to the Phoenician script. The earliest known inscription in the Paleo-Hebrew script is the Zayit Stone discovered on a wall at Tel Zayit, in the Beth Guvrin Valley in the lowlands of ancient Judea in 2005. The 22 letters were carved on one side of the 38 lb (17 kg) stone, which resembles a bowl on the
Hebrew alphabet Samaritan alphabet. After the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the square Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was later adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish, and Yiddish. The Hebrew alphabet continued in use for scholarly writing in Hebrew and came again into everyday use with the rebirth of the Hebrew language as a spoken language in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially in Israel. In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants,