Kaph — 𐤊

From Kaph to Kappa, then K

When the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to their own language, they also adopted Kaph.

The letter became:

Kappa — Κ

It retained the consonantal value /k/.

Its shape changed relatively little. Over time, the Greek sign developed the angular form still recognizable in Kappa and in the Latin K.

Its position in the alphabet, however, shifted. Kaph is the eleventh letter of the Phoenician sequence, while Kappa is the tenth letter of the modern Greek alphabet, partly because some archaic Greek letters later disappeared from the sequence. The broader order of the Greek alphabet nevertheless remains inherited from the Semitic model.

Kappa then passed through the alphabets of ancient Italy and into Latin:

Kaph — 𐤊 → Kappa — Κ → K

The Latin K has its own particular history.

It appears in early Latin inscriptions, but was soon largely displaced by C, which became the normal way of writing the sound /k/. K survived mainly in a limited number of traditional spellings, such as Kalendae.

Unlike Teth, then, Kaph has a direct Latin descendant:

the modern K belongs directly to the lineage of Kaph.

Kaph and Byblos

In Byblos, Kaph appears in a particularly interesting royal inscription — not only as a letter in the text, but also as a sign whose archaic form complicated the history of its modern decipherment.

The inscription of King Abibaal, catalogued as KAI 005, is engraved on the base of a statue bearing the name of the Egyptian pharaoh Sheshonq. DEAPS dates the inscription palaeographically to around 940–930 BCE.

The text identifies Abibaal as:

MLK GBL — king of Byblos

In MLK, the final consonant is Kaph — 𐤊.

The letter therefore appears in one of the most fundamental words of Phoenician royal vocabulary: mlk, “king.”

The inscription also preserves something rarer.

DEAPS notes that the text uses an archaic form of Kaph that was once confused with another letter in early attempts to read the inscription. This palaeographic feature contributed to difficulties in its correct decipherment.

Kaph therefore allows us to see the alphabet from another angle.

Phoenician letters were not always graphically fixed. They could vary enough in form to mislead modern epigraphers.

In Byblos, Kaph belongs both to the language of kingship and to the modern history of deciphering Phoenician writing.

Conclusion

With Kaph, the alphabetic lineage is especially clear.

Its name is associated with the palm of the hand, while the earliest alphabetic evidence supports a reconstructed graphic ancestor related to the hand.

In Phoenician, Kaph — 𐤊 represents the consonant /k/.

The Greeks adopted it as Kappa — Κ, preserving that phonetic value.

Kappa then passed through the alphabets of ancient Italy and became the Latin K.

Kaph — 𐤊 → Kappa — Κ → K

Latin eventually reduced the use of K in favour of C, but the letter never disappeared entirely.

More than three millennia after Kaph, the shape and sound of K still preserve a remarkable continuity with their Phoenician ancestor.