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Your Excellency
Dr. Hiyam Saqr,
Allow
me to start my letter by repeating my sentiment of
gratitude to your distinguished University for
bestowing upon me a Doctorate
Degree Honoris Causa in Humane Letters. In addition, I would like
to thank you and other members of your staff that I had
the honour to meet, for the degree of attention that I
received during this event.
At the same time
I would like to comment on certain aspects of the speech
that you made at the graduation ceremony in front of the
new graduating class. I am taking this liberty because I
am aware of your tolerant nature and your well deserved
fame as a person and educator that harbours a deep
rooted conviction of the power of intellectual honesty.
I noticed that
the main focus of your speech was on the role of the
Phoenicians in enriching human civilization. That is a
role we are all rightly proud of. But I wish that you
had also included some related facts. One of these, for
example, is that the Phoenicians were descendants of the
Canaanites, as most researchers and historians agree.
The Canaanites in turn are the descendants of the
Amorite Arabs, who dwelled north of the Arabian
Peninsula before migrating to northern Syria and later
moving south to the borders of Sinai.
Of course, there
are tens of Arab and foreign references that support
this fact. However, I prefer to quote the famous
Lebanese traveler Amin Al Rihani, who wrote in his book
‘Kings Of The
Arabs’: “Some
historians say that the Gulf of Persia is the cradle of
civilization, and even the cradle of the human race. The
old inhabitants of its islands were the first ever to
use sails in conquering the seas. They excelled at the
art of navigation, and formed the link between the East
and the West. Others said that Phoenicians descend from
this Arab homeland. Old Egyptian tablets mentioned the
Pount, which is the name of the Phoenicians before they
settled in Syria. There is a strong possibility that
they descend from an Arab origin. Old legends say that
they emigrated from areas on the Persian Gulf to the
coast of the Mediterranean Sea”.
In your speech,
you stated that the Phoenicians were the people who gave
the alphabet to the world. Beyond any doubt, this was
the accepted fact until the third decade of the last
century, when French archeologists uncovered the old
city of Ugarit near Aleppo in Syria. There, they found
tablets carrying cuneiform writings that go back to an
era between the beginning and the middle of the second
millennium before Christ, which indicate that they were
written several hundred years prior to the Phoenicians
use of the alphabet. Half a century later, Archeologists
discovered the site of Ebla, near Ugarit. Again they
found inscriptions that date to the early third
millennium BC. Recently, tablets were unearthed in
Egypt, and found to be inscribed with cuneiform that is
thought to be the basis of Hieroglyphics.
In this regard,
I would like to point out to a piece of news carried by
the Lebanese Daily Al Hayat on 31/10/2004. It
said: “The Museum of fine arts in the French city of
Lyon hosted last week an exhibition on the history of
the Ugarit Kingdom and culture titled “Le
royaume d'Ougarit aux origines de l'alphabet”.
The paper quoted the famous archeologist Philip
Bourdorubi as saying that this exhibition is important
because it is the first one ever dedicated to Ugarit. He
noted that “the inscriptions found in Ugarit represent
the birth of the Alphabet”, and added that the whole
world showed interest in the heritage of Ugarit. The
paper also quoted the Museum Curator as saying that
Ugarit gains part of its importance from its links with
Iraq, Egypt and Cyprus, and that the inscriptions found
there are the origins of the Alphabet.
We are as proud
as you are of the master scientists and writers that the
Phoenicians gave to the world. However, I wish only that
you shared Amin Al Rihani’s profound human perspective
where he says “I do not care whether the Arabs were; the
origin or the branch. If they were the origin, welcome
to their Phoenician descendants, and if they were the
Branch, welcome to those descending from the
Phoenician”.
I wish you
perfect health and happiness at all times, and wish the
University continued its success under your wise
leadership.
Khalaf Ahmed Al Habtoor | 
