SHIN

SHIN (Heb. ש; שׁין), the twenty-first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; its numerical value is 300. In the early Proto-Canaanite script the shin was drawn as a pictograph of a composite bow \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2061 . Then in the Phoenician, Aramaic, and Hebrew scripts   it was written \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2062 . While the Hebrew script preserved this form (cf. the Samaritan \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2063 ), the Phoenician shin developed into \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2064 → \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2065 → \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2066 , and the Aramaic shin into \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2067 → \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2068 → \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2069 which is the basic form of the Jewish shin \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2070 . From the Nabataean \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2071 → \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2072 . the Arabic evolved, which was used both for the sin ( \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2073 ) and shin ( \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2074 ). Presumably, the later Proto-Canaanite or the early Phoenician shin was the model from which the Greek sigma \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2075 , \!ejud\_0002\_0018\_0\_img2076 – the ancestor of the Latin "S" – developed. See alphabet , Hebrew. (Joseph Naveh)