An alphabet is a stranger invention than it looks. Earlier wri systems us a si for ea word o each syll, which me learning hund of sha before y could read anything at all. Somebody in the eastern Mediterranean noticed that speech could be cut into a much smaller set of sounds, and that a couple of dozen marks would then cover everything anyone could ever want to say. The idea spread because it made literacy cheap to acquire.

Type only the missing letters. Each box is one letter, and the number of boxes matches the letters that are missing.