HANDWRITING
It is manifestly important to determine whether the term used by the
Ninevite, the Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and other ancient nations for
the right hand was exclusively limited to the member of the body
on what is now universally recognised as the right side; or was
applicable to either hand, implying no more than the one habitually
and preferentially employed. But the true right and left of the
Hebrew and other ancient Semitic nations has a special significance,
in view of the fact that, whilst the great class of Aryan languages,
as well as the Etruscan and others of indeterminate classification,
appear, from a remote date, to have been written from left to right;
all the Semitic languages, except the Ethiopic, as well as those of
other races that have derived their written characters from the
Arabian,--such as the Turks, Malays, and Persians,--are written from
right to left. Habit has so largely modified our current handwriting,
and adapted its characters to forms best suited for continuous and
rapid execution in the one direction, that the reversal of this at
once suggests the idea of a left-handed people. But the assumption
is suggested by a misinterpretation of the evidence. So long as each
character was separately drawn, and when, moreover, they were pictorial
or ideographic, it was, in reality, more natural to begin at the
right, or nearer side, of the papyrus or tablet, than to pass over to
the left. The forms of all written characters are largely affected by
their mode of use, as is abundantly illustrated in the transformation
of the Egyptian ideographs in the later demotic writing. The forms
of the old Semitic alphabet, like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, are
specially adapted to cutting on stone. The square Hebrew characters
are of much later date; but they also, like the uncials of early
Christian manuscripts, were executed singly, and therefore could be
written as easily from right to left as in a reverse order. The oldest
alphabets indicate a special adaptation for monumental inscription.
The Runic characters of northern Europe owe their peculiar form
apparently to their being primarily cut on wood. When papyrus leaves
were substituted for stone, a change was inevitable; but the direction
of the writing only becomes significant in reference to a current hand.
The Greek fashion of _boustrophedon_, or alternating like the course
of oxen in ploughing, illustrates the natural process of beginning
at the side nearest to the hand; nor did either this, or the still
earlier mode of writing in columns, as with the ancient Egyptians,
or the Chinese, present any impediment, so long as it was executed
in detached characters. But so soon as the reed or quill, with the
coloured pigment, began to supersede the chisel, the hieratic writing
assumed a modified form; and when it passed into the later demotic
handwriting, with its seemingly arbitrary script, the same influences
were brought into play which control the modern penman in the slope,
direction, and force of his stroke. One important exception, however,
still remained. Although, as in writing Greek, the tendency towards the
adoption of tied letters was inevitable, yet to the last the enchorial
or demotic writing was mainly executed in detached characters, and
does not, therefore, constitute a true current handwriting, such as
in our own continuous penmanship leaves no room for doubt as to the
hand by which it was executed. Any sufficiently ambidextrous penman,
attempting to copy a piece of modern current writing with either
hand, would determine beyond all question its right-handed execution.
But no such certain result is found on applying the same test to the
Egyptian demotic. I have tried it on two of the Louvre demotic MSS. and
a portion of a Turin papyrus, and find that they can be copied with
nearly equal dexterity with either hand. Some of the characters are
more easily and naturally executed, without lifting the pen, with the
left hand than the right. Others again, in the slope and the direction
of the thickening of the stroke, suggest a right-handed execution; but
habit in the forming of the characters, as in writing Greek or Arabic,
would speedily overcome any such difficulty either way. I feel assured
that no habitually left-handed writer would find any difficulty in
acquiring the unmodified demotic hand; whereas no amount of dexterity
of the penman compelled to resort to his left hand in executing
ordinary current writing suffices to prevent such a modification in
the slope, the stroke and the formation of the characters, as clearly
indicates the change.
Attention has been recently called to this special aspect of the
subject in a minutely detailed article in the _Archivio Italiano per le
Malatie Nervose_, of September 1890, by Dr. D’Abundo Guiseppe, of the
University of Pisa. The inquiry was suggested to the Pisan professor
by the peculiar case of a left-handed patient, thus stated by him: “I
was treating electrically a gentleman, thirty-three years of age, who
had been affected for two years with difficulty in writing, and which
proved to be a typical case of the spasm called _writer’s cramp_. The
fact to which I desire to draw attention is that the gentleman was
left-handed, and had been so from his birth, so that he preferentially
used the left hand except in writing, as he had learned to write with
the right hand. He was a person of good intellect and superior culture;
and he had taught himself to sketch and paint with the left hand. Under
the electric treatment he improved, but in view of the liability to
relapse, I advised him to commence practising writing with the left
hand; more especially as he is left-handed. But he informed me that in
the first attempts made by him he felt, in addition to the difficulty;
that they produced painful sensations in the right arm, as if he were
writing with it. Wishing to master the facts, I caused him to write in
my presence; and I observed that, instead of commencing from left to
right, he automatically proceeded from right to left. At my request,
he began with the greatest readiness and rapidity to write some lines
which I dictated to him. What struck me was the rapidity with which he
wrote, the regularity of the writing, and the ease with which, with
unruled paper, he went on writing from right to left. He assured me
that he had never before made any attempt to write in that way; and he
was himself really surprised.”[7]
[7] _Archivio Italiano_, Milan, September 1890, “Su di alcune
particolarità della scrittura dei mancini,” p. 298.
Dr. Guiseppe’s attention being thus directed to this aspect of the
subject, his next aim was to determine whether the phenomenon might
not be physiological, and specially characteristic of left-handed
persons; and he naturally reverted to the pathological evidence bearing
on left-handed manifestations. He points out that Buchwald, in three
cases of aphasia, had found a very peculiar disturbance of written
language, which consisted in the fact that the letters were written
by the patient from right to left, with reverted slope. He accordingly
made further research, with a special view to determine whether this
peculiar manifestation was due to morbid causes. Unfortunately,
although he states that the subjects of his observation included a
considerable number of left-handed persons, the cases stated by him
in detail are mainly those of the right-handed who, by reason of
injury or loss of the right hand, had been compelled to cultivate
the use of the other. Such cases, however, amount to no more than
evidence of the extent to which the left hand may be educated, and so
made to perform all the functions of the right hand. To one, indeed,
familiar by practical experience with the exceptional facilities and
the impediments of the left-handed, it is curious to observe the
difficulty experienced by a highly intelligent scientific student of
the phenomena, to appreciate what seems to the ordinary left-handed
man not only natural but inevitable. In the case of Dr. Guiseppe’s
original patient, he wrote reversely instinctively, and with ease, on
the first attempt to use the unfamiliar pen in his left hand. Acquired
left-handedness revealed itself, on the contrary, in the writer placing
the paper obliquely; or in other ways showing that, with all the
facility derived from long practice, it was the result of effort and
a persevering contest with nature. Dr. Guiseppe accordingly adds in a
summary of results: “In general, I have discovered that right-handed
persons who became the subjects of disease affecting the right arm
from their infancy were forced to learn to write with the left hand;
and they wrote from right to left with sufficient facility, varying
the slope of the letters. Those, however, who had become affected
with disease in the right arm in adult life, when they had already
familiarly practised writing with the right hand, and in consequence
of disease had been obliged to resort to the left hand, were less
successful in writing with the reversed slope.”[8]
[8] _Archivio Italiano_, September 1890, p. 304.
To the naturally left-handed person, especially when he has enjoyed
the unrestrained use of the pencil in his facile hand, the reversed
slope is the easiest, and the only natural one. But this is entirely
traceable to the comparatively modern element of cursive writing.
No such cause affected the graver, or the hieroglyphic depictor of
ideographs, even when reduced to their most arbitrary demotic forms, so
long as they were executed singly.
So soon as the habitual use of the papyrus, with the reed pen and
coloured pigments, had developed any uniformity of usage, the customary
method of writing by the Egyptian appears to have accorded with that
in use among the Hebrew and other Semitic races; though examples do
occur of true hieroglyphic papyri written from left to right. But the
pictorial character of such writings furnishes another test. It is
easier for a right-handed draftsman to draw a profile with the face
looking towards the left; and the same influence might be anticipated
to affect the direction of the characters incised on the walls of
temples and palaces. This has accordingly suggested an available clue
to Egyptian right or left-handedness. But the evidence adduced from
Egyptian monuments is liable to mislead. A writer in _Nature_ (J.
S., 14th April 1870) states as the result of a careful survey of the
examples in the British Museum, that the hieroglyphic profiles there
generally look to the right, and so suggest the work of a left-handed
people. Other and more suggestive evidence from the monuments of Egypt
points to the same conclusion, but it is deceptive. The hieroglyphic
sculptures of the Egyptians, like the cufic inscriptions in Arabian
architecture, are mainly decorative; and are arranged symmetrically for
architectural effect. The same principle regulated their introduction
on sarcophagi. Of this, examples in the British Museum furnish abundant
illustration. On the great sarcophagus of Sebaksi, priest of Phtha,
the profiles on the right and left column look towards the centre
line; and hence the element of right-handedness is subordinated to
decorative requirements. If this is overlooked, the left-handedness
ascribed above to the ancient Egyptians may seem to be settled beyond
dispute by numerous representations both of gods and men, engaged
in the actual process of writing. Among the incidents introduced in
the oft-repeated judgment scene of Osiris,--as on the Adytum of the
Temple of Dayr el Medineh, of which I have a photograph,--Thoth, the
Egyptian God of Letters, stands with the stylus in his left hand, and
a papyrus or tablet in his right, and records concerning the deceased,
in the presence of the divine judge, the results of the literal
weighing in the balance of the deeds done in the body. In other smaller
representations of the same scene, Thoth is similarly introduced
holding the stylus in his left hand. So also, in the decorations on
the wall of the great chamber in the rock-temple of Abou Simbel,
Rameses is represented slaying his enemies with a club, which is held
in his left hand; and the goddess Pasht is shown decapitating her
prisoners with a scimitar also in the left hand. This evidence seems
sufficiently direct and indisputable to settle the question; yet
further research leaves no doubt that it is illusory. Ample evidence to
the contrary is to be found in Champollion’s _Monuments de l’Egypte et
de la Nubie_; and is fully confirmed by Maxime du Camp’s _Photographic
Pictures of Egypt, Nubia_, etc., by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s _Manners
and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, and by other photographic and
pictorial evidence. In a group, for example, photographed by Du Camp,
from the exterior of the sanctuary of the palace of Karnac, where the
Pharaoh is represented crowned by the ibis and hawk-headed deities,
Thoth and Horus, the hieroglyphics are cut on either side so as to look
towards the central figure. The same arrangement is repeated in another
group at Ipsamboul, engraved by Champollion, _Monuments de l’Egypte_
(vol. i. Pl. 5). Still more, where figures are intermingled, looking
in opposite directions,--as shown in a photograph of the elaborately
sculptured posterior façade of the Great Temple of Denderah,--the
accompanying hieroglyphics, graven in column, vary in direction in
accordance with that of the figure to which they refer. Columns of
hieroglyphics repeatedly occur, separating the seated deity and a
worshipper standing before him, and only divided by a perpendicular
line, where the characters are turned in opposite directions
corresponding to those of the immediately adjacent figures.
When, as in the Judgment scene at El Medineh and elsewhere, Osiris
is seated looking to the right, Thoth faces him, holding in the
off-hand--as more extended, by reason of the simple perspective,--the
papyrus or tablet; while the pen or style is held in the near or left
hand. To have placed the pen and tablet in the opposite hands would
have required a complex perspective and foreshortening, or would have
left the whole action obscure and unsuited for monumental effect.
Nevertheless, the difficulty is overcome in repeated examples: as in
a repetition of the same scene engraved in Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s
_Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_ (Pl. 88), and on a
beautifully executed papyrus, part of _The Book of the Dead_, now in
the Louvre, and reproduced in facsimile in Sylvestre’s _Universal
Palæography_ (vol. i. Pl. 46), in both of which Thoth holds the pen or
style in the right hand. The latter also includes a shearer holding
the sickle in his right hand, and a female sower, with the seed-basket
on her left arm, scattering the seed with her right hand. Examples of
scribes, stewards, and others engaged in writing, are no less common in
the scenes of ordinary life; and though when looking to the left, they
are at times represented holding the style or pen in the left hand, yet
the preponderance of evidence suffices to refer this to the exigencies
of primitive perspective. The steward in a sculptured scene from a tomb
at Elethya (_Monuments de l’Egypte_, Pl. 142) receives and writes down
a report of the cattle from the field servants, holding the style in
his right hand and the tablet in his left. So is it with the registrar
and the scribes (Wilkinson, Figs. 85, 86), the steward who takes
account of the grain delivered (Fig. 387), and the notary and scribes
(Figs. 73, 78)--all from Thebes, where they superintend the weighing at
the public scales, and enumerate a group of negro slaves.
In the colossal sculptures on the facades of the great temples, where
complex perspective and foreshortening would interfere with the
architectural effect, the hand in which the mace or weapon is held
appears to be mainly determined by the direction to which the figure
looks. At Ipsamboul, as shown in _Monuments de l’Egypte_, Pl. 11,
Rameses grasps with his right hand, by the hair of the head, a group
of captives of various races, negroes included, while he smites them
with a scimitar or pole-axe, wielded in his left hand; but an onlooker,
turned in the opposite direction, holds the sword in his right hand.
This transposition is more markedly shown in two scenes from the same
temple (Pl. 28). In the one Rameses, looking to the right, wields the
pole-axe in the near or right hand, as he smites a kneeling Asiatic;
in the other, where he looks to the left, he holds his weapon again in
the near, but now the left hand, as he smites a kneeling negro. On the
same temple soldiers are represented holding spears in the near hand,
right or left, according to the direction they are looking (Pl. 22);
and swords and shields are transposed in like manner (Pl. 28). The
same is seen in the siege scenes and military reviews of Rameses the
Great, on the walls of Thebes and elsewhere. The evidence is misleading
if the primary aim of architectural decoration is not kept in view.
In an example from Karnac--appealed to in proof that the Egyptians
were a left-handed people,--where Thotmes III. hold his offering in
the extended left hand, his right side is stated to be towards the
observer. Nor are similar examples rare. Thoth and other deities,
sculptured in colossal proportions, on the Grand Temple of Isis, at
Philæ, as shown by Du Camp, in like manner have their right sides
towards the observer, and hold each the mace or sceptre in the extended
left hand. But on turning to the photographs of the Great Temple of
Denderah, where another colossal series of deities is represented in
precisely the same attitude, but looking in the opposite direction,
the official symbols are reversed, and each holds the sceptre in the
extended right hand. Numerous similar instances are given by Wilkinson;
as in the dedication of the pylon of a temple to Amun by Rameses III.,
Thebes (No. 470); the Goddesses of the West and East, looking in
corresponding directions (No. 461), etc.
Examples, however, occur where the conventional formulæ of Egyptian
sculpture have been abandoned, and the artist has overcome the
difficulties of perspective; as in a remarkable scene in the
Memmonium, at Thebes, where Atmoo, Thoth, and a female (styled by
Wilkinson the Goddess of Letters) are all engaged in writing the name
of Rameses on the fruit of the Persea tree. Though looking in opposite
directions, each holds the pen in the right hand (Wilkinson, Pl. 54 A).
So also at Beni Hassan, two artists kneeling in front of a board, face
each other, and each paints an animal, holding the brush in the right
hand. At Medinet Habou, Thebes, more than one scene of draught-players
occurs, where the players, facing each other, each hold the piece in
the right hand. Similar illustrations repeatedly occur.
Among another people, of kindred artistic skill, whose records have
been brought anew to light in recent years, their monumental evidence
appears to furnish more definite results; while the curiously definite
reference in the Book of Jonah leaves no room to doubt that among the
ancient Ninevites it was recognised that at the earliest stage when
voluntary action co-operated with the rational will, a specific hand
was habitually in use. That the ancient dwellers on the Euphrates and
the Tigris were a right-handed people appears to be borne out by their
elaborate sculpture, recovered at Kourjunjik, Khorsabad, Nimroud,
and other buried cities of the great plain. The sculptures are in
relief, and frequently of a less conventional character than those
of the Egyptian monuments, and are consequently less affected by the
aspect and position of the figures. The gigantic figure of the Assyrian
Hercules--or, as supposed, of the mighty hunter Nimrod,--found between
the winged bulls, in the great court of the Palace of Khorsabad, is
represented strangling a young lion, which he presses against his
chest with his left arm, while he holds in his right hand a weapon of
the chase, supposed to be analogous to the Australian boomerang. On
the walls of the same palace the great king appears with his staff in
his right hand, while his left hand rests on the pommel of his sword.
Behind him a eunuch holds in his right hand, over the king’s head, a
fan or fly-flapper; and so with other officers in attendance. Soldiers
bear their swords and axes in the right hand, and their shields on the
left arm. A prisoner is being flayed alive by an operator who holds
the knife in the right hand. The king himself puts out the eyes of
another captive, holding the spear in his right hand, while he retains
in his left the end of a cord attached to his victim. Similar evidence
abounds throughout the elaborate series of sculptures in the British
Museum and in the Louvre. Everywhere gods and men are represented as
“discerning between their right hand and their left,” and giving the
preference to the former.
It has been already shown that in languages of the American continent,
as in those of the Algonquins and the Iroquois, the recognition of
the distinction between the right and left hand is apparent; and on
turning to the monuments of a native American civilisation, evidence
similar to that derived from the sculptures of Egypt and Assyria
serves to show that the same hand had the preference in the New World
as in the Old. In the Palenque hieroglyphics of Central America, for
example, in which human and animal heads frequently occur among the
sculptured characters, it is noticeable that they invariably look
towards the left, indicating, as it appears to me, that they are
the graven inscriptions of a lettered people who were accustomed
to write the same characters from left to right on paper or skins.
Indeed, the pictorial groups on the Copan statues seem to be the true
hieroglyphic characters; while the Palenque inscriptions correspond
to the abbreviated hieratic writing. The direction of the profile
was a matter of no moment to the sculptor, but if the scribe held
his pen or style in his right hand, like the modern clerk, he would
as naturally draw the left profile as the penman slopes his current
hand to the right. In the pictorial hieroglyphics, reproduced in Lord
Kingsborough’s _Mexican Antiquities_, as in other illustrations of
the arts of Mexico and Central America, it is also apparent that the
battle-axe and other weapons and implements are most frequently held
in the right hand. But to this exceptions occur; and it is obvious
that there also the crude perspective of the artist influenced the
disposition of the tools, or weapons, according to the action designed
to be represented, and the direction in which the actor looked. Such
are some of the indications which seem to point to a uniform usage,
in so far as we can recover evidence of the practice among ancient
nations; while far behind their most venerable records lie the
chronicles of palæolithic ages: of the men of the drift and of the
caves of Europe’s prehistoric dawn.
So far, then, it seems to be proved that not only among cultured
and civilised races, but among the barbarous tribes of both
hemispheres,--in Australia, Polynesia, among the Arctic tribes of our
northern hemisphere at the present day, and among the palæolithic men
of Europe’s post-pliocene times,--not only has a habitual preference
been manifested for the use of one hand rather than the other, but
among all alike the same hand has been preferred. Yet, also, it is
no less noteworthy that this prevailing uniformity of practice has
always been accompanied by some very pronounced exceptions. Not only
are cases of exceptional facility in the use of both hands of frequent
occurrence, but while right-handedness everywhere predominates,
left-handedness is nowhere unknown. The skill of the combatant
in hitting with both hands is indeed a favourite topic of poetic
laudation, though this is characteristic of every well-trained boxer.
In the combat between Entellus and Dares (_Æn._ v. 456), the passionate
Entellus strikes now with his right hand and again with his left--
Præcipitemque Daren ardens agit æquore toto,
Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra.
But the more general duty assigned to the left hand is as the guard or
the shield-bearer, as where Æneas gives the signal to his comrades, in
sight of the Trojans (_Æn._ x. 261)--
Stans celsa in puppi; clipeum cum delude sinistra
Extulit ardentem.
The right hand may be said to express all active volition and all
beneficent action, as in _Æn._ vi. 370, “Da dextram misero,” “Give thy
right hand to the wretched,” _i.e._ give him aid; and so in many other
examples, all indicative of right-handedness as the rule. The only
exception I have been able to discover occurs in a curious passage in
the _Eclogues_ of Stobæus Περὶ ψυχῆς, in a dialogue between Horus and
Isis, where, after describing a variety of races of men, and their
peculiarities, it thus proceeds: “An indication of this is found in
the circumstance that southern races, that is, those who dwell on
the earth’s summit, have fine heads and good hair; eastern races are
prompt to battle, and skilled in archery, for the right hand is the
seat of these qualities. Western races are cautious, and for the most
part left-handed; and whilst the activity which other men display
belongs to their right side, these races favour the left.” Stobæus,
the Macedonian, belongs, at earliest, to the end of the fifth century
of our era, but he collected diligently from numerous ancient authors,
some of whom would otherwise be unknown; but the passage is part of
a description in which he speaks of the earth as having its apex or
head to the south, the right shoulder to the east, and the left to the
south-west; and the left-handed races of the west may be so merely
in a figurative sense. This description, at any rate, is the only
indication, vague and dubious as it is, of a belief in the existence of
a left-handed race.
Thus all evidence appears to conflict with the idea that the
preferential employment of one hand can be accounted for by a mere
general compliance with prevailing custom. Everywhere, in all ages,
and in the most diverse conditions of civilised and savage life, the
predominant usage is the same. Not that there are not everywhere
marked exceptions to the prevailing practice, in left-handed athletes,
handi-craftsmen, artificers, and artists, generally characterised by
unusual dexterity; but the farther research is carried, it becomes the
more apparent that these are exceptional deviations from the normal
usage of humanity.