shapes of the letters Ayin in Paleo-Hebrew and Samekh in square script on the stone tablets as miracles according to the respective sages arguing for one script or the other. This third opinion was accepted by some early Jewish scholars, and rejected by others, partially because it was permitted to write the Torah in Greek. Contemporary use Use of Proto-Hebrew in modern Israel is negligible, but it is found occasionally in nostalgic or pseudo-archaic examples, e.g. on the ₪1 coin ( "Judea") and in the logo of the Israeli town Nahariyah (Deuteronomy 33:24 "Let Asher be blessed with children"). Archaeology In 2019, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) unearthed a 2,600 year-old seal impression, while conducting excavations at the City of David, containing paleo-Hebrew script, and which is thought to have belonged to a certain "Nathan-Melech," an official in King Josiah's court. Table of letters Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew characters were never standardised and are found in numerous variant shapes. A general tendency of more cursive writing can be observed over the period of c. 800 BCE to 600 BCE. After 500 BCE, it is common to distinguish the script variants by names such as "Samaritan", "Aramaic", etc. There is no difference in "Paleo-Hebrew" vs. "Phoenician" letter shapes. The names are applied depending on the language of the inscription, or if that cannot be determined, of the coastal (Phoenician) vs. highland (Hebrew) association (c.f. the Zayit Stone abecedary). Unicode The Unicode block Phoenician (U+10900–U+1091F) is intended for the representation of, apart from the Phoenician alphabet, text in Palaeo-Hebrew, Archaic Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyri, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Punic. See also Ancient Hebrew writings Ancient North Arabian Biblical Hebrew orthography History of the Hebrew alphabet Proto-Canaanite alphabet References Further reading "Alphabet, Hebrew". Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed. Cecil Roth. Keter Publishing House. External links Hebrew Alphabet at the Jewish Encyclopedia History of the Aleph-Bet at the Jewish Virtual Library Aramaic/Paleo-Hebrew alphabet at Omniglot Unicode Modern/Paleo-Hebrew conversion tool Paleo-Hebrew Abjad font (the current version of the font is 1.1.0) Open-source Unicode Hebrew Fonts Ancient Jewish history Canaanite writing systems Hebrew alphabet Language and mysticism Obsolete writing systems Proto-Sinaitic script Right-to-left writing systems