The sound /p/ is a voiceless bilabial plosive. This sound is found in most languages today.

Picture signs of the human mouth (pe) are found in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing (around 2000 BCE).

Proto-Sinaitic script, a very early Semitic writing (around 1500 BCE) also had a symbol for the mouth (pe).

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, a consonantal alphabet from the 15 th century BCE had a glyph for the /p/ sound which it called pi’t- meaning “bend.”

The Phoenician alphabet which developed from the Proto- Canaanite (around 1050 BCE) had the letter pe which meant “mouth.”

Phoenician was spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world and became one of the most widely used writing systems It was assimilated by many other cultures and evolved.

Phoenician Arameic Hebrew Arabic Brahmi India Southeast Asia Tibet Mongolia Greek Latin Cyrillic Coptic

The Greek alphabet (late 9 th century BCE) was the first alphabet to note each consonant and vowel with a separate symbol. Its /p/ sound was represented by the letter “pi” Ππ

The Latin (Roman) alphabet evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet (the Cumaean alphabet) in the 7 th century BCE. The letter /p/ appeared like this in the Cumaean alphabet:

The Latin alphabet was made up of 23 letters. The letter for the /p/ sound in the Latin alphabet is the same as the one we know today: