How he fixed upon his signs, it is difficult to say.
According to some, he had recourse to one or other of previously existing modes of expressing speech, and merely simplified the characters which he found in use.

But there are two objections to this view.

First, there is no known set of characters from which the early Phoenician can be derived with any plausability.

Resemblances no doubt may be pointed out here and there, but taking the alphabet as a whole, and comparing it with any other, the differences will always be quite as numerous and quite as striking as the similarities.

For instance, the writer of the article on the "Alphabet" in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (1876) derives the Phoenician letters from letters used in the Egyptian hieratic writing,[0137] but his own table shows a marked diversity in at least eleven instances, a slight resemblance in seven or eight, a strong resemblance in no more than two or three.