heth

Heth, sometimes written Chet, but more accurately Ḥet, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ḥēt 𐤇, Hebrew ḥēt ח, Aramaic ḥēṯ 𐡇, Syriac ḥēṯ ܚ, and Arabic ḥāʾ ح. Heth originally represented a voiceless fricative, either pharyngeal , or velar . In Arabic, two corresponding letters were created for both phonemic sounds: unmodified represents , while represents . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek eta , Etruscan , Latin H, and Cyrillic И. While H is a consonant in the Latin alphabet, the Greek and Cyrillic equivalents represent vowel sounds, though the letter was originally a consonant in Greek and this usage later evolved into the rough breathing character. Origins The shape of the letter Ḥet ultimately goes back either to the Egyptian hieroglyph for 'courtyard' (ḥwt): O6 (compare Hebrew חָצֵר ḥatser of identical meaning, which begins with Ḥet) or to the one for 'thread, wick' representing a wick of twisted flax: (ḥ) V28 (compare Hebrew חוּט ḥut of identical meaning, which begins with Ḥet). Possibly named in the Proto-Sinaitic script.