Nearly every alphabet on Earth traces back to Phoenician traders

Around 1050 BC, Phoenician merchants simplified earlier scripts into about 22 consonant letters, no pictures required. Greeks added vowels and borrowed it wholesale; Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic scripts all descend from that same Phoenician root. A trading alphabet built for shipping manifests became the ancestor of most writing systems used today.

— Wikipedia contributors, Phoenician alphabet — Wikipedia, history of writing systems