Both כרסא and שרביט seem to be forms borrowed from Akkadian through the medium of Aramaic.
One could also mention the form דרמשק for דמשק "Damascus" which appears in Chronicles, IQIs-a from Qumran, and Rabbinic literature (דורמסקי).
"resh can interchange with lamed and nun."
lamed and resh are both liquid consonants, so ok. but what is the connection with the nun?
Ari -
Klein gives the following examples:
כרע / כנע
טמן / טמר
בן / בר
It gets its name from the original shape of the letter - like a rosh ראש - head.
Just intutively (i.e., I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about), it seems like this gets things backwards. I'd guess the sequence (assuming speech precedes writing) is: (1) the word "rosh" exists in speech; (2) whoever comes up with the alphabet decides to name the letter that "rosh" begins with "resh"; (3) since "resh" either means head or sounds like the word that means head, a head-shaped character is devised.
Mike - Well, without imparting any religious significance, David Sacks writes:
"Modern experts now believe the alphabet was invented sometime around 2000 BC by Semites who dwelled as foreigners in pharaoh's Egypt; the inventors were inspired by Egyptian writing systems."
He then goes on to show how Semites in Egypt took the shapes from the Egyptian hieroglyphics and gave them the letters to be used in their alphabet.
Commenting by HaloScan
