Is there any way to avoid the invention of the alphabet in the West and instead have Egyptian hieroglyphs take a course of evolution as Chinese characters did? Granted, Mediterreanean/European languages are very diverse (Indo-European, Semitic, Finno-Ugric, Altaic), but I think a solution like Japanese might be suitable (at least for English). Hieroglyph-derived symbols fulfill Indo-European word endings and such (like in Japanese) while hieroglyphs represent the "concept" of the noun, verb, or adjective. This would inevitably mean that every writing system in use requires either knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese characters. I'd expect that there would be multiple ways of adapting Egyptian hieroglyphs to other Western languages.
So is this at all plausible? It seems like the Phoenicians are the major issue since they spread the Semitic alphabet basically everywhere.