Biblical Hebrew and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet, also known as the Assyrian or Square script, is a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet. The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by the 12th century BCE, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. As a result, the 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters could each mark two different
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet began to fall out of use by the Jews in the 5th century BCE, when the Aramaic alphabet was adopted as the predominant writing system for Hebrew. The present Jewish "square-script" Hebrew alphabet evolved from the Aramaic alphabet. The Samaritans, now fewer than 1,000 people, have continued to use a derivative of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, known as the Samaritan alphabet. While the use of the script is negligible nowadays, it is present in some symbolic usage, such as the ₪1 coin and the logo of the Israeli town Nahariyah. The chart below compares the letters of the Phoenician script with