The first Hebrew alphabet was scrawled on the walls of mines, in haste. Indeed, it meant haste. The slaves used a few hieroglyphs to represent sounds, a breakthrough in technology more profound than the harnessing of electricity or the splitting of the atom. The method is called "acrophonic." Acro- (high, first) and phone ... The first sound of a common hieroglyph was applied to represent the first sound of the word the Egyptians used it to map. The pictogram for "house" - signifying the object "house" - was now enslaved to a different purpose: it stood not for a single word but an atom of sound, the consonant b. To preserve its aborigin, it is called bet (house).