EGYPTOLOGISTS have found limestone inscriptions they describe as the earliest known examples of the use of an alphabet, one which takes a step from hieroglyphics toward a Semitic language like Arabic or Hebrew. John Coleman Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, and his wife Deborah, a doctoral student, discovered the inscriptions on cliffs west of present-day Luxor while researching ancient desert caravan routes. The find recalls traces of alphabetic writing found in the Syria-Palestine region and Sinai peninsula two or three centuries later. The New York Times, which reported the find earlier this week, said a report on the couple’s findings would be given November 22 at a Boston, Massachusetts, meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.