Samekh

← Nun Samekh Ayin →
Phoenician Hebrew ס Aramaic Syriac ܣ,ܤ Arabic س,س [1]
Phonemic representation	s
Position in alphabet	15
Numerical value	60
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek Ξ Latin (none) Cyrillic Ѯ

Samekh or Simketh is the fifteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ṣāmek , Hebrew ˈSamekh ס, Aramaic Semkath , Syriac Semkaṯ ܣ, representing /s/. The Arabic alphabet, however, uses a letter based on Phoenician Šīn to represent /s/ (see there); however, that glyph takes Samekh's place in the traditional Abjadi order of the Arabic alphabet.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Xi (Ξ, ξ).^[2]

Origins

The origin of Samekh is unclear. The Phoenician letter may continue a glyph from the Middle Bronze Age alphabets, either based on a hieroglyph for a tent peg / some kind of prop (s'mikhah, Hebrew: סמיכה‎, or t'mikhah, Hebrew: תמיכה‎, in modern Hebrew means to support), and thus may be derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph djed.^[3]

Hebrew Samekh

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ס	ס	ס

Hebrew spelling: סָמֶךְ

Pronunciation

Samekh represents a voiceless alveolar fricative /s/. Unlike most Semitic consonants, the pronunciation of /s/ remains constant between vowels and before voiced consonants.

Significance

Samekh in gematria has the value 60.

Samekh and Mem form the abbreviation for the Angel of Death, whose name in Hebrew is Samael. It also stands for centimetre.

In some legends, samekh is said to have been a miracle of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 32:15 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 (tractate Shabbat 104a), on the other hand, attributes this instead to samekh, but samekh did not have such a hollow form in the sacred Paleo-Hebrew alphabet that would presumably have been used for the tablets. However, this would be appropriate for the Rabbis which maintained that the Torah or the Ten Commandments were given in the later Hebrew "Assyrian" script (Sanhedrin 21b-22a).

Character encodings

Character	ס		ܣ		ܤ		ࠎ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH		SYRIAC LETTER SEMKATH		SYRIAC LETTER FINAL SEMKATH		SAMARITAN LETTER SINGAAT
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1505	U+05E1	1827	U+0723	1828	U+0724	2062	U+080E
UTF-8	215 161	D7 A1	220 163	DC A3	220 164	DC A4	224 160 142	E0 A0 8E
Numeric character reference	ס	ס	ܣ	ܣ	ܤ	ܤ	ࠎ	ࠎ

Character	𐎒		𐡎		𐤎
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER SAMKA		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER SAMEKH		PHOENICIAN LETTER SEMKA
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	66450	U+10392	67662	U+1084E	67854	U+1090E
UTF-8	240 144 142 146	F0 90 8E 92	240 144 161 142	F0 90 A1 8E	240 144 164 142	F0 90 A4 8E
UTF-16	55296 57234	D800 DF92	55298 56398	D802 DC4E	55298 56590	D802 DD0E
Numeric character reference	𐎒	𐎒	𐡎	𐡎	𐤎	𐤎

Notes

1. The Arabic alphabet has no glyph of this origin. sīn, derived from Shin, takes its place in abjadi order.
2. Muss-Arnolt, W. (1892). On Semitic Words in Greek and Latin. Transactions of the American Philological Association v. 23, p. 35-156. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
3. Betro, M. C. (1996). Hieroglyphics. Abbeyville Press, NY, p. 209.