Samekh


Samekh is the fifteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including the Hebrew alphabet.
Samekh represents a voiceless alveolar fricative. Unlike most Semitic consonants, the pronunciation of remains constant between vowels and before voiced consonants.
The numerical value of samekh is 60.
The letter has no continuant in the Arabic alphabet, its numerical value is taken by Arabic Šīn.

History

The Phoenician letter may continue a glyph from the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, either based on a hieroglyph for a tent peg or support, possibly the djed "pillar" hieroglyph
.
The shape of samek undergoes complicated developments.
In archaic scripts, the vertical stroke can be drawn either across or below the three horizontal strokes.
The closed form of Hebrew samek is developed only in the Hasmonean period.
Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew
Samaritan
Imperial Aramaic
Hebrew

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek xi, whereas its name may also be reflected in the name of the otherwise unrelated Greek letter sigma.
The archaic "grid" shape of Western Greek xi was adopted in the early Etruscan alphabet, but was never included in the Latin alphabet.

Syriac semkat

The Syriac letter semkaṯ ܣܡܟܬ develops from the Imperial Aramaic "hook" shape ?
into a rounded form by the 1st century. The Old Syriac form further develops into a connected cursive both in the Eastern and Western script variants.

Hebrew samekh

Hebrew samekh develops a closed cursive form in the middle Hasmonean period. This becomes the standard form in early Herodian hands.

Talmudic legend

In Talmudic legend, samekh is said to have been a miracle of the Ten Commandments. records that the tablets "were written on both their sides." The Jerusalem Talmud interprets this as meaning that the inscription went through the full thickness of the tablets. The stone in the center parts of the letters ayin and teth should have fallen out, as it was not connected to the rest of the tablet, but it miraculously remained in place. The Babylonian Talmud also cites the opinion that these closed letters included samekh, attributed to Rav Chisda.

Character encodings