THE Phoenicians, who were the neighbours of the Jews, were a Semitic
tribe which at a very early age had settled along the shores of the
Mediterranean. They had built themselves two well-fortified towns, Tyre
and Sidon, and within a short time they had gained a monopoly of the
trade of the western seas. Their ships went regularly to Greece and
Italy and Spain and they even ventured beyond the straits of Gibraltar
to visit the Scilly islands where they could buy tin. Wherever they
went, they built themselves small trading stations, which they called
colonies. Many of these were the origin of modern cities, such as Cadiz
and Marseilles.
They bought and sold whatever promised to bring them a good profit.
They were not troubled by a conscience. If we are to believe all their
neighbours they did not know what the words honesty or integrity meant.
They regarded a well-filled treasure chest the highest ideal of all good
citizens. Indeed they were very unpleasant people and did not have a
single friend. Nevertheless they have rendered all coming generations
one service of the greatest possible value. They gave us our alphabet.
The Phoenicians had been familiar with the art of writing, invented by
the Sumerians. But they regarded these pothooks as a clumsy waste
of time. They were practical business men and could not spend hours
engraving two or three letters. They set to work and invented a new
system of writing which was greatly superior to the old one. They
borrowed a few pictures from the Egyptians and they simplified a number
of the wedge-shaped figures of the Sumerians. They sacrificed the pretty
looks of the older system for the advantage of speed and they reduced
the thousands of different images to a short and handy alphabet of
twenty-two letters.
In due course of time, this alphabet travelled across the AEgean Sea and
entered Greece. The Greeks added a few letters of their own and carried
the improved system to Italy. The Romans modified the figures somewhat
and in turn taught them to the wild barbarians of western Europe. Those
wild barbarians were our own ancestors, and that is the reason why this
book is written in characters that are of Phoenician origin and not
in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians or in the nail-script of the
Sumerians.