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Let’s look at Paleo-Hebrew, the early Hebrew alphabet used by Israelites from about the 10th to 6th centuries BCE.

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It’s a right-to-left, consonant-only script, closely related to Phoenician.

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In Paleo-Hebrew, the name Kenaz is just three letters: Q-N-Z.

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King is M-L-K.

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Israel reads Y-S-R-’-L, and Joshua Y-H-W-SH-’.

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Vowels weren’t written, and the sin/shin letter wasn’t dotted yet—context did the work.

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The letter shapes began as simplified pictographs centuries earlier, but here they function as true alphabetic signs.

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You can still see them on the Gezer Calendar, the Samaria ostraca, and the Siloam Tunnel inscription.

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After the Babylonian exile, scribes shifted to the square Aramaic script, though Paleo-Hebrew lingered on coins and sometimes for sacred names.

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So when you picture “Kenaz,” think angular strokes spelling Q-N-Z—the Paleo-Hebrew way.