Casper

I really like this Colless guy. Straightforward and easy to digest.

It seems though that his views would contra-indicate any need for early Canaanite scribes to transpose S and Sh, and Th <-> Sh would be more likely, if I read correctly. There is mention of the secondary symbol for Samek (S) being used for translation of Hurrian, but Hurrian is a little bit removed from Egyptian.

http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/

Not only that, it seems intuitive (to me) that the R11 spinal column (looks like a telephone pole) versian of Samek (the one used for Hurrian) resembles the bones of a fish complete with tail, while the K1 version is a fish. On the Izbet ostracon you can view that character as either a fish with the bones inside, or without the fish outline as just the bones or spinal column. Probably not important but I found that interesting.

Anat

Regarding the names of alphabet letters, I used to think shin was a tooth (shen), though obviously the Egyptian sign was not directly related. And in modern Hebrew at least, qof means the eye of the needle, I thought the Egyptian pictogram was a threaded needle, though I don't know how far back this usage goes.

Casper

I was looking for an example and got caught up in the number six.

Interesting that shusha is the name for Lily, and they have six petals. Seems to be a candidate for the regional root of the word for "six".

Still an Akkadian cognate, but it gets even more interesting because the Persian is Susa. Makes one wonder the original pre-writing trajectory for the word.