History of the letter e

    The letter E started thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, where scribes used heiroglyphics, effectively pictorial symbols, to represent sounds. One of these symbols looked like a simple, horizontal zigzag or a throne-like shape, and it represented a sound similar to the one we know today as E. This early symbol was not E yet, but it planted the seed. Instead, the symbol that would become e was actually ancient Egyptian for /qʼ/. It looked like a person holding his hands up.

    Then the Proto-Sinaitic people came and just took the ancient Egyptian /qʼ/ and made it into their letter heh. Their heh looked less like a person, more like a stickman drawing.

    After that, the Proto-Canaanite hillul people took that letter, and simplified it more into their He. Then, it actually looked somewhat like the E we all know today, but rotated upside down.

    When the Phoenicians borrowed the Proto-Caanite hillul He in 1000 BCE, they called it "he," and gave it the symbol 𐤄.

    The Greeks inherited the Phoenician symbol and adapted it around the 8th century BCE. They rotated it and gave it the vowel sound we recognize today, calling it epsilon. Epsilon looked like Εε, pretty close to our Ee. It became an important part of their alphabet because vowels were essential for clearly representing speech in writing.

    Later, the Romans borrowed the Greek alphabet and brought epsilon into Latin as E. The shape was refined, straightened, and standardized, turning into the three parallel horizontal lines we see today, connected by a vertical line. This E became widespread across Europe, appearing in many texts in the Roman Empire.

    After the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin remained in use among scholars and scribes. The letter E kept its form through many handwriting styles. In Carolingian writing it looked rounded and simple, and in Gothic it became sharper and narrower. Even with these changes, the basic shape stayed the same, recognizable everywhere.

    When printing began in the 15th century, E was copied directly from the handwritten Latin forms. It appeared in early English print with almost no alteration. English used the Latin alphabet as its base, so E just continued in its usual role, showing up constantly in writing and text without any redesign or change in sound.

    The English E today is still the same shape the Romans used two thousand years ago. It has kept its simple three-bar structure through scripts, books, and modern type. Its form is stable, familiar, and hasn’t needed any modification since it first appeared in Latin writing.