A scholar writes

One of the reasons moving me to collect and print the principal Phoenician Inscriptions is, that I consider the general use of the square Hebrew character joined to the general practice of writing it in the way we call ‘backwards,’ is an immense bar to the popularisation of Semitic research. For its general inconvenience this character seems to me simply detestable. Circumstances have hitherto secured for it a kind of supremacy among its congeners. What little I can do towards dethroning it I will attempt. Certainly if so inconvenient a language should much longer remain the ackowledged standard of reference for the increasing number of Semitic dialects which we group around it, the task of popularising Semitic researches will be hopeless indeed. (PhƏnician inscriptions / by Dunbar Isidore Heath. Part I. London : Quaritch, 1873). On such enlightened attitudes was our Empire built. If only the Phoenicians and Israelites had written the King’s English it would have made Semitic study so much more easy and convenient.