Pat gets a no-prize that sings a little song for bringing us this NYTimes article detailing the discovery of the earliest Hebrew "abecedary", a listing of the alphabet in its traditional order. Dating to the 10th century BC, it shows a system that is still transitioning from Phoenician but is still recognizably Hebrew. While I'm not well-versed enough in linguistics to tell if the quote "All successive alphabets in the ancient world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit" is hyberbole or truth, this inscription would definitely be near the base of all western alphabets, if not actually at it.