The Alphabet You're Reading Is Over 3,500 Years Old

The Latin alphabet — the script used to write English — descends directly from Phoenician script developed around 1050 BCE, which itself derived from earlier Proto-Sinaitic writing. The letters A and B come from the Phoenician "aleph" (ox) and "beth" (house) — early letters were originally pictograms of the objects they represented. Every word you read carries 3,500 years of evolutionary history.

Source: The Story of Writing — Andrew Robinson