Ramallah - Together - Yesterday, Wednesday, the Palestinian National Library organized a symposium to announce its first publications in the world of publishing. Book: 'The Canaanite Linguistic Heritage of Palestine,' in the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah. The head of the National Library, Issa Qaraqe, and the author of the book and the head of the Department of History and Archeology at Birzeit University, Dr., participated in the symposium. Issam Al-Halayqa, and the book's editor and independent researcher in archaeology, Dr. Hamdan Taha, while the symposium was moderated by Fawaz Salama, Director General of Archives at the National Library. Qaraqe said that the National Library sees this book as an urgent need for the Palestinian library, schools, universities, researchers, and all Palestinian generations, which is why it distributed it to all universities, public and private libraries, research centers, and those interested. He added that the national motive is the most important motivation for issui ng this book. 'Although it appears to be a historical, cultural, and documentary book, it is a serious, professional, scientific, and academic attempt to liberate the Palestinian narrative from the grip and restrictions of Zionist and Orientalist studies that have overwhelmed the Palestinian narrative.' Qaraqi pointed out that this book collected dozens of Canaanite inscriptions and writings in Palestine and its surroundings since the nineteenth century BC, and included reading and political, geographical, urban, economic, social, humanitarian and cultural analysis and analysis of this heritage and these Canaanite treasures in ancient historical times and their development. In doing so, it restores and recovers ancient Palestine from From the past to the present, it confronts the Zionist ideology, its myths, legends, and its claims that the land of Palestine is the promised land, the land of the Torah, and the land of the fathers and grandfathers. Pointing out that the book stood in the face of the attempts of Israeli and Western archaeologists who sought to strip the Palestinians of their past, their historical identity, and their presence on this land in order to justify their colonization and settlement of Palestine, its occupation, and the expulsion of its population. In turn, Dr. said: Taha said that this book includes inscriptions discovered within the borders of the Land of Canaan and the adjacent and overlapping regions, in addition to the surrounding countries in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, which are related to the events of Palestine. In it, the author collected dozens of inscriptions and writings in the Canaanite, Akkadian, hieroglyphic, Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic languages, covering a long period since the beginning of the alphabet in the ninth century. From the tenth century until the sixth century BC, when the Aramaic language prevailed as an international language instead of the Canaanite language, he added that the inscriptions and writings varied between those engraved on huge edifices and rocks , statues, small stones, pottery vessels, pottery fragments, and bone and metal tools, in addition to seals, scarabs, and their impressions on clay, which They represented official seals and bore the names of rulers, princes, merchants, and ordinary people. He pointed out that these inscriptions and writings are considered primary sources for writing ancient history and rebuilding the ancient economic, social and political systems in Palestine, and provide important information about groups, peoples and social classes, the names of people and professions, agricultural tools and military tools, the names of goods and products, trade materials, literature, rituals, religious beliefs and ancient gods. These ancient inscriptions and writings also constitute an important material in studying the development of languages ??in Palestine, starting with pictographic, cuneiform, and alphabetic writing, in which Palestine and the neighboring lands in Sinai were an important theater for this great event in human history , from which emerged the modern alphabetic languages ??of Canaanite, Phoenician, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic. Pointing out that the study clearly showed that the land of Canaan is the land in which the Canaanite alphabet emerged, and how the first evidence of the alphabet was generated on the island of Sinai, which is an area of ??major cultural contact between the Canaanite and Pharaonic civilizations, through the Canaanite miners who worked there, as evidenced by the Serabit inscriptions. Al-Khadim and Wadi Abu Al-Hul. The alphabet is considered the second great stage in the development of writing throughout history in the second millennium BC in Palestine after the invention of writing itself in the late fourth millennium BC. For the first time in southern Iraq and Egypt. While Dr. reviewed Halayqa summarized the contents of the book, which came in 440 large pages, consisting of an introduction and seven chapters and provided with a list of sources and references, pointing out that the first chapter inclu ded a presentation of the nature of the writings discovered in Palestinian sites since the year 3100 BC. AD, until the sixth century BC. M, which is cuneiform, hieroglyphs, and Canaanite. The most important of these pieces of evidence is an inscription that indicates the spread of cuneiform writing traditions that began in northern Palestine and spread south to the city of Tal Balata. It was discovered in Tal Balata and written by a Canaanite teacher complaining about not receiving his salary for three years. As for the second chapter, it provides an overview of the development of Canaanite writing since it began in Egypt and Sinai, influenced by hieroglyphics, passing through three stages, the most prominent of which is pictorial, meaning writing physical things in length and width. In the fourteenth century BC, these images were subjected to the principle of reduction, and from there the image was transformed into a symbol, and in this way The way the Canaanites obtained a symbolic alphabetic writing, and this is the most important cultural contribution that the Canaanites presented to the East region and to the entire world, as the Canaanite writing became the basis for all the alphabets currently existing in the East and in Europe. The following chapters studied the Canaanite inscriptions in Palestine, the Canaanite seals and their prints, and the Canaanite city as a cultural framework for the Canaanite inscriptions in Palestine, in addition to the ethnic context of the Canaanite inscriptions in the second and first millennium BC. And the representation of the Canaanites in Egyptian fine art. Source: Maan News Agency