Moses: the Five Scripts He Would Have Known

About the fifteenth century B.C., a Semitic authority standardized the form of the North Semitic alphabet. From earlier experiments in alphabet making, he determined letter shapes, phonetic value, and order. As to who that might have been, Moses lived at this time. Moses would have been familiar with at least five writing systems:

Egyptian hieroglyphics and hieratic writing. "Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:21). Brought up as Pharaoh’s grandson, Moses would have been taught Egyptian hieroglyphics and the hieratic brush-and-ink style.
Babylonian cuneiform. "... he was mighty in words and deeds" (Acts 7:21). Moses, as a young diplomat in Pharaoh’s court, would have used cuneiform. In his day, it was the dominant writing system for international correspondence.
Sinaitic (Proto-Semitic) alphabet. "Moses fled and became an alien..." (Acts 7:29). When Moses fled from Egypt, he came to Sinai. He certainly would have visited the nearby turquoise quarries, where there were inscriptions written in Sinaitic, an early experimental Semitic alphabet. Canaanitic (Proto-Semitic) alphabet. "... he led the flock, and came to the mountain of God" (Exodus 3:1). When in Sinai, Moses probably came across broken pottery left by nomadic shepherds from Canaan with inscriptions in their type of alphabet. While tending sheep, he could have reflected on all these writing systems and might have perfected the North Semitic alphabet.
North Semitic alphabet. "He gave to Moses ... two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18). Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of the law, written in the North Semitic alphabet. This alphabet became established among the Hebrews through learning and copying the law. They may have passed it on to the Phoenicians, who distributed it to the rest of the world.