A

The letter A is the first (1st) letter in the Latin alphabet.

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The letter A probably started as a pictogram of an ox head in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-semitic alphabet.

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By 1600 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the basis for all later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the Hebrew aleph.

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When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used the sign for the vowel , and changed its name to alpha. In the earliest Greek inscriptions, dating to the 8th century BC, the letter rests upon its side, but in the Greek alphabet of later times it generally resembles the modern capital letter, although many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.

Ox: An ox (plural oxen), or bullock (Australia, New Zealand, India) is a bovine animal trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly adult, castrated male cattle, but cows (adult females) or bulls (entire males) may also be used in some areas. Oxen are used for plowing, transport (pulling carts or wagons...

Egyptian hieroglyph: Hieroglyphs are a system of writing used by the Ancient Egyptians, using a combination of logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements....

Proto-semitic alphabet: Proto-semitic meaning a form of language that is the ancestor of the Semitic written language. Two such languages are Sinaitic and Canaanitic....