Illustrated, online material for a "History of the Alphabets" course taught at the University of Maryland.

Paper examines features of the alphabets used to write Phoenician and ancient Hebrew. Find images of ancient texts in these languages.

Discover animations depicting how ancient character sets for Phoenician and Cuneiform evolved into Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and others.

Extensive article describes the systems used to write ancient American languages, such as Mayan and Aztec. With a section comparing the systems.

Encyclopedia offers a technical definition of the symbolic system. View the Greek, Roman, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets.

Article examines the differences between different systems of writing the Chinese languages. With a section on the characters' history.