The Phoenician letter may continue a glyph from the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, either based on a hieroglyph for a tent peg or support, possibly the djed "pillar" hieroglyph[clarification needed][1]
(c.f. Hebrew root סמך s-m-kh 'support', סֶמֶךְ semekh 'support, rest', סוֹמֵךְ somekh 'support peg, post', סוֹמְכָה somkha 'armrest', סָמוֹכָה smokha 'stake, support', indirectly s'mikhahסמיכה; Aramaic סַמְכָא samkha 'socket, base', סְמַךְ smakh 'support, help'; Syriac ܣܡܟܐ semkha 'support').
The shape of samek undergoes complicated developments.
In archaic scripts, the vertical stroke can be drawn either across or below the three horizontal strokes.
The closed form of Hebrew samek is developed only in the Hasmonean period.[2]
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greekxi (Ξ),[3] whereas its name may also be reflected in the name of the otherwise unrelated Greek letter sigma.[4]
The archaic "grid" shape of Western Greek xi () was adopted in the early Etruscan alphabet (𐌎 esh), but was never included in the Latin alphabet.
Syriac semkat
The Syriac letter semkaṯܣܡܟܬ develops from the Imperial Aramaic "hook" shape 𐡎
into a rounded form by the 1st century. The Old Syriac form further develops into a connected cursive both in the Eastern and Western script variants.
Aramaic
Old Syriac
Eastern
Western
Hebrew samekh
Hebrew Samekh develops a closed cursive form in the middle Hasmonean period (1st century BC). This becomes the standard form in early Herodian hands.[2]
In Talmudic legend, samekh is said to have been a miracle of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 32:15 records that the tablets "were written on both their sides." The Jerusalem Talmud interprets this as meaning that the inscription went through the full thickness of the tablets. The stone in the center parts of the letters ayin and teth should have fallen out, as these letters are closed in the ktav ivri script and would not be connected to the rest of the tablet, but miraculously remained in place. The Babylonian Talmud (tractate Shabbat 104a) also cites the opinion that these closed letters included samekh, attributed to Rav Chisda (d. ca. 320).[5]
Arabic sīn/ṣād & Nabataean simkath
Samekh has no surviving descendant in the Arabic alphabet, so it was replaced by either صṢād (ultimately from Ṣādē 𐤑) or سSīn (ultimately from Šīn 𐤔).
In the Maghrebian abjad sequence (quoted in apparently earliest authorities and considered older):[6]
صṢād replaces Samekh at 15th position and acquires the numerical value of 60;
ضḌād, a variant of صṣād, is at the 18th position and has the numerical value of 90;
س Sīn is still at its original 21st position and retains the numerical value of 300.
^Betro, M. C. (1996). Hieroglyphics. Abbeyville Press, NY, p. 209.
^ abFrank Moore Cross, Leaves from an Epigrapher's Notebook: Collected Papers in Hebrew and West Semitic Palaeography and Epigraphy (2018), p. 30.
^Muss-Arnolt, W. (1892). On Semitic Words in Greek and Latin. Transactions of the American Philological Association v. 23, p. 35-156. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
^Jeffery, Lilian H. (1961). The local scripts of archaic Greece. Oxford: Clarendon. pp. 25–27.
^ abMacdonald, Michael C. A. (1986). "ABCs and letter order in Ancient North Arabian". Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies (16)., p. 117. 130, 149
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