Short inscriptions carved by turquoise miners at Serabit al-Khadim in Sinai from about 1700 bc onwards indicate that the alphabet was invented in Palestine or Syria, probably between 1800 and 1650 bc. These areas were under strong Egyptian influence, and that influence is very clear in the origin of the alphabet. The Egyptians, in turn, got their writing system from the Sumerians. They did not. War is not only absurd, it creates the absurd. World War One shoveled millions of men against impossible barriers of barbed wire and machine guns, to die miserably, pointlessly squabbling over a few yards of filthy mud. Between 1916 and 1923 Western European artists and writers absorbed this great lesson in futility and meaninglessness, and turned it to artistic ends.