Mark-Alain Ouaknin

"The second of the Ten Commandments states: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath…’ This prohibition on the image forced the Semites, who still wrote their language in a pictographic writing, to rid themselves of images."

This comment is taken from 'Mysteries of the Alphabet' and is reference to explaining how an alphabet of pictograms evolved into a series of abstract symbols.