IN THE PATH OF THE ALPHABET.
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[Illustration: ‘Frances D Jermain’]
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IN THE PATH OF
THE ALPHABET
AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE
ANCIENT BEGINNINGS AND EVOLUTION
OF THE MODERN ALPHABET
BY FRANCES D. JERMAIN
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FORT WAYNE, IND.
WILLIAM D. PAGE, PUBLISHER
1906
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Copyright, 1906
BY S. P. JERMAIN
Published in December
Fort Wayne [Publishers logo] Indiana
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PREFACE.
In one of the closing days of August, 1905, the author of this work,
FRANCES D. JERMAIN, received the summons of her Maker to join the Silent
Majority. The call came suddenly, finding her in the full possession of
her ever remarkable intellectual powers, and with the ambition for much
yet to do.
For nearly twenty-five years, she had been at the head of the Toledo
Public Library, in the upbuilding of which she was ever the inspiration
and the guiding spirit.
With more than the ordinary capacity for organization and the practical,
she planned and carried out the working details of all notable
improvements, in that thoroughly modern library.
Others, who took up the work from which she retired about a year before
her death, will carry it forward with that devotion and capacity which
it should inspire; but they will but build additions to the edifice
which she reared.
Her death brought forth a remarkable outpouring of voluntary tributes to
her worth and work. From these has come the realization that by her
death Toledo has lost one whose influence upon its intellectual life was
the most potent and far reaching of any citizen it has ever lost.
Living and working nobly in public as in her ideally perfect domestic
life, her loss is profoundly felt.
Political administrations came and went, party triumphs and party
defeats lived out “their little day” and are long since forgot; but year
after year, until a quarter of a century had nearly gone, this brave and
learned little woman ruled, with gentle power and kindly wisdom, the
destinies of the Toledo Public Library.
In the growth and development of this notable public institution,
selecting its contents, the literary advisor of lawyers, journalists,
educators and students, she acquired, with her discriminating judgment
and retentive memory, a remarkable knowledge of the contents of books. A
subject practically never arose upon which she could not at once give,
either the needed reference or the full information required, and the
library contained seventy thousand volumes!
In this reference work, she became deeply impressed with the need of a
concise history of the beginnings and development of our modern
alphabet.
The information on the subject was widely scattered and very great. It
was found nowhere in a condensed and yet adequate form. She knew from
experience what the value to libraries, educators and students
generally, a concise history upon the subject would be.
This she undertook and finally completed. Not confining her account to
information gathered from works already published dealing with the
subject, she kept in constant correspondence with the leading
archæologists carrying on researches in both Egypt and the valley of the
Tigris and Euphrates.
Thus she literally walked with these great scholars “In the Path of the
Alphabet,” and her work took on that original and valuable character
based upon those most recent and wonderful discoveries which have
forever silenced the voice of “The Higher Criticism.”
This work, which we now reverently give to public print, is therefore
based upon her broad and deep knowledge upon the subject—from original
sources; a work of patient labor; of a profound Christian faith; a work
begun and finished in that spirit by which alone the best work of God’s
laborers needs must be done.
Upon her behalf, grateful acknowledgment is here made to Professor A. H.
SAYCE, Professor H. V. HILPRECHT, Professor JAMES A. CRAIG and Professor
C. R. CONDOR, who walked with her “In the Path of the Alphabet.”
S. P. J.
Toledo, Ohio, December, 1906.
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——————————————————————————
In Memorium
From the loving hands
of those to whom her life
was an inspiration which
shall abide.
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CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS, 9
II. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS, 21
III. PHONETISM, 27
IV. SYLLABISM, 41
V. ARCHAIC LIBRARIES, 55
VI. THE CHALDEAN FIELD, 67
VII. MESOPOTAMIAN INFLUENCE, 85
VIII. BABYLONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS, 99
IX. THE TEL-EL-AMARNA LETTERS, 113
X. PROTO-MEDIC ALPHABET, 134
XI. ZOROASTER AND MAHOMET, 147
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ILLUSTRATIONS.
MRS. FRANCES D. JERMAIN, Frontispiece
The Rosetta Stone, Opp. Page 9
Hieratic and Hieroglyphic Writings, “ 20
Cuneiform Vowels and Consonants, “ 26
Form of Rebus Script, “ 34
Hieroglyphic and Hieratic Figures, “ 40
Hieroglyphic Translation, “ 54
Hieroglyphic Hymn of Praise, “ 66
Hieroglyphic Signs and Equivalents, “ 98
Hieroglyphs and Translation, “ 112
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[Illustration: THE ROSETTA STONE.]
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CHAPTER I.
OF all the splendid achievements of archæological research during the
present century, there are none of more universal interest and
importance than those which are revealing the origin and history of
letters; this, not alone for the historic values of these discoveries,
for their illumination of a past of which hitherto there was but a faint
conception; but also for what letters have to tell us in explanation or
confirmation of Biblical narrative, of their bearing upon our most
sacred beliefs.
At the beginning of the present century the great mass of testimony now
laid open before us was an apparently impenetrable mystery. Egyptian
hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions yet remained, for the most
part, but confusion of ornament and meaningless signs. Some little
advance, it is true, had been reached during the latter part of the
eighteenth century, as to the signification of certain hieroglyphic
characters, but these were as yet but conjecture; a groping in the dark,
with no means to verify, uncertain, unassured.
With the opening of the present century two events occurred which were
to place in the hands of scholars the keys to these mysteries. The first
in date of these discoveries, though not in results, was the finding of
the Rosetta Stone in 1799.
This was an outcome of the French scientific expedition to Egypt under
the first Napoleon. At this date, a French artillery officer, named
Boussard, while digging among some ruins at Fort St. Julian, near
Rosetta, discovered a large stone, of black basalt, covered with
inscriptions. This tablet, now known as “The Rosetta Stone,” was of
irregular shape, portions having been broken from the top and sides. The
inscriptions were in three kinds of writing; the upper text in
hieroglyphic characters, the second in a later form of Egyptian writing,
called enchorial or demotic, and the third was in Greek. No one of these
had been entirely preserved. Of the hieroglyphic text, a considerable
portion was lacking; perhaps thirteen or fourteen lines at the
beginning. From the demotic, the ends of about half the lines were lost,
while the Greek text was nearly perfect, with the exception of a few
words at the end.
The immediate inferences were that these three inscriptions were but
different forms of the same decree, and that in the Greek would be found
some clew for the decipherment of the others. It was first presented to
the French Institute at Cairo where it was destined not long to remain.
The surrender of Alexandria to the British, in 1801, placed the Rosetta
Stone, by the terms of the treaty, in the hands of the British
Commissioner. This gentleman, himself a zealous scholar and keenly alive
to the importance of the treasure, at once dispatched it to England,
where it was presented by George III to the British Museum.
A fac simile of the inscriptions was made in 1802, by the “Society of
Antiquaries,” of London, and copies were soon distributed among the
scholars of Europe. When the Greek inscription was read, it was found to
be a decree by the priests of Memphis in honor of King Ptolemy
Epiphanes; B. C. 198;
That, in acknowledgment of many and great benefits conferred upon
them by this king, they had ordered this decree should be engraved
upon a tablet of hard stone in hieroglyphic, enchorial and Greek
characters; the first, the writing sacred to the priests; the
second, the language or script of the people, and the third that of
the Greeks, their rulers.
Also, that this decree, so engraved, should be set up in the temples
of the first, second and third orders, near the image of the ever
living King.
It might be supposed that with this clew the work of decipherment would
be readily accomplished. On the contrary, many of the most distinguished
scholars of Europe tried, during the twenty following years, without
success.
The chief obstacle in the way was the prevailing opinion that the
pictorial forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs were mainly ideographic symbols
of things. In consequence, the absurd conceptions read into these
characters, led all who attempted the decipherment of these far away
from the truth.
It is true that Zoega, a Danish archæologist, and Thomas Young, an
English scholar, each independently, about 1787, had made the discovery
that the hieroglyphs in the ovals represented royal names, and were
perhaps alphabetic; but the signification of these characters were never
fully comprehended by either of these great scholars.
The claim made by the friends of Mr. Young as the first discoverer of
the true methods of decipherment, rests upon the fact that he gave the
true phonetic values to five of these characters in the spelling of the
names of certain royal personages, and in 1819 published an article
announcing this discovery. He seems, however, to have had so little
confidence in this conception that he went no farther with it, and still
later, in 1823, lost the prestige he might have gained, by the
publication as his belief, that the Egyptians never made use of signs to
express sound until the time of the Roman and Greek invasions of Egypt.
The real work of decipherment was reserved for Champollion, who, born at
Grenoble, in 1790, was but nine years old when the famous stone was
discovered which later on was to yield to him the long lost language of
the hieroglyphs.
Among the characters on the Rosetta Stone, in the hieroglyphic text,
were to be found certain pictorial forms enclosed in an oval. It had
hitherto been suggested that these ovals contained characters signifying
royal names. Were these symbolic signs, or how were they to be
interpreted? Champollion concluded that some of these signs expressed
sound and were alphabetic in character. Thus, if the signs in the
cartouche supposed to signify Ptolemy, could be found to be identical,
letter for letter, with the _Ptolemaios_ of the Greek inscription, an
important proof would be obtained. It so happened that on an obelisk
found at Philæ there was a hieroglyphic inscription, which, according to
a Greek text on the same shaft should be that of Cleopatra. If, then,
the signs for _P_, _t_ and _l_ in Ptolemaios corresponded with the signs
for _p_, _t_ and _l_ in Cleopatra, the identity of these as alphabetic
signs would be confirmed. The comparison fully justified his theory, and
further confirmation was supplied by further comparisons, until he
finally came into possession of hieroglyphic signs for all the
consonants.
Again; certain indications convinced him that these characters appearing
in proper names must be also initial letters or initial sounds of
Egyptian words of which these signs were the pictorial representations.
If this was so, the sign for the letter _L_, which in the royal names
was the picture of a lion, must be the beginning of some word signifying
“lion,” which in old Egyptian would begin with the letter or first
syllabic sound of _L_.
The pictorial sign for the letter _R_ was the mouth. The word for mouth,
then, in Egyptian must begin with the letter or syllabic sign for _R_,
and so forth.
The early opportunities which Champollion had enjoyed for the
preparation of his great work were peculiarly significant. He was
educated by his elder brother, a man of great learning, professor of
Greek in the Academy of Grenoble, whose companionship early influenced
the direction of his younger brother to linguistic studies. In addition
to this, the intense interest aroused throughout Europe by the vast
collection of antiquities brought thither by the men of letters and
science who accompanied Napoleon’s army in Egypt, had compelled the
attention of scholars to this special field of research as never before.
With this guidance, and moved by the spirit of the times, Champollion’s
studies in ancient Greek led him to an early acquaintance with the
Coptic language. It is said that, as a result of this study, at the age
of sixteen he read a paper before his academy, maintaining that the
Coptic was the language of the ancient Egyptians. This is not now a
spoken language, having been supplanted by the Arabic since the
seventeenth century, A. D. It, however, survives in the service ritual
of the Coptic churches of to-day, and, though written in old Greek
characters, the ancient language is still heard, though but few
understand it.
As Champollion made use of his hieroglyphic alphabet for the spelling of
other words than proper names, his satisfaction may be imagined when he
found that these were Coptic words. Thus, the sign for “mouth” for the
letter _R_, was the initial letter or syllabic sign of the Coptic word
_Ro_, signifying mouth. The picture of a lion for the letter _L_ also
represented the initial letter or initial syllable of _Lavo_, the Coptic
for lion. The picture of an eagle, representing the sign for the letter
_A_, is also the sign for the initial sound or letter in _Ahem_, the
Coptic for eagle, and so on.
The language, then, of the Hieroglyphs was Coptic, or rather in the
Coptic we have a survival of the ancient Egyptian, the language of the
pyramid builders. More correctly speaking, it is the Egyptian language
of the Ptolemaic period, corrupted with Arabic and Greek idioms, but
still including the language of old Egypt.
It was, indeed, a thing which might have been expected, that the
language expressed by the ancient Hieroglyphs should bear a resemblance
to Coptic, but that the resemblance should be as close as it has proved
could scarcely have been expected.
Again, of special interest in this connection, is the fact that in the
Greek the writing and language of Egypt should be thus preserved.
[1]“The romance of language could go no further,” says Mr. Butler, “than
to join the speech of Pharaoh and the writing of Homer in the service
book of an Egyptian Christian.”
At this point, a brief reference, bridging the centuries from the
decline of the use of hieroglyphics to the later appearance of the
language in its Coptic and Greek forms, should have a place.
The extensive use of Phœnician and Greek alphabets in Egypt and
throughout the Orient, for some centuries before the Christian era, had
affected the Egyptian script as a social and commercial medium. The
hieroglyphics, however, held their own with the priesthood, for sacred
and secular uses, until the time of the Emperor Trajanus Decius,
249-252, A. D., which is the latest period in which we find them
employed for monumental purposes.
A little over a century later,—with the spread of Christianity, the
decline of paganism, the destruction of the Egyptian temples and the
dispersion of the priesthood under the Emperor Theodosius,—the
interpretation of the hieroglyphics was gradually lost, not again to be
read and understood until the discovery and interpretation of the
Rosetta Stone.
In 1822 Champollion announced the results of his studies to the “Academy
of Inscriptions” of Paris, and followed this by the publication of his
work on the “Hieroglyphic System of the Ancient Egyptians,” in which he
discussed the proofs that the phonetic alphabet was used in the royal
legends of all ages and is the key to the whole hieroglyphic system.
It will be remembered that those who before Champollion had undertaken
the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, had based their efforts
on the theory that these signs were mainly ideographic. With this as a
working theory, all advance was impossible. Champollion, on the
contrary, finding the Egyptian system including a phonetic structure,
made this a basis for research, achieving a brilliant success. He never
fully recognized the composite character of these phonetic signs. From
these he constructed an alphabet of nearly two hundred signs, to which
his pupil, Salvolini, added one hundred more, thus producing an alphabet
of nearly three hundred characters. As Lepsius was to show a little
later, while these signs are all phonetic, only a small
number—thirty-four in all—are alphabetic, the remainder representing
syllables.
It is impossible, in this brief survey, to refer to the special
advancements made by other distinguished scholars in this field of
research. Since the death of Champollion the work of decipherment has
progressed steadily on until the life, the literature and the language
of the old Egyptians are open pages which all may read.
There are, however, many things not yet fully understood. Of the Rosetta
Stone, two of the texts may now be said to be fully translated; namely,
the Greek and the hieroglyphic. This has not been possible until
recently, in consequence of the mutilated condition of the tablet, a
considerable portion of the hieroglyphic text and part of the demotic,
being included in the fragment broken off and lost. Not long ago,
however, another stele was found at En Nobeira, near Dammamour,
containing a duplicate copy of the Rosetta texts in perfect condition.
This is now in the museum at Boulak.
The demotic text has never yet been fully translated. This writing is a
cursive script, developed from the hieratic to express the vulgar
dialect spoken by the people. As hieratic bears the same relation to
hieroglyphic that ordinary writing does to printing, so the demotic,
which is a further abridgment of the hieratic, is compared to the latter
as bearing the same relation which short-hand does to writing. Some of
these latent signs have been identified, but not all.
The first five lines of a Papyrus (containing 75 lines),
being the beginning of an ancient hymn addressed to the
Deity, are added in the original Hieratic, with the
transcription in Hieroglyphic characters. The Hieratic is
read from right to left, the Hieroglyphic from left to
right. The dots in the middle or end of the lines, written
in red ink in the original manuscript, indicate that this is
a poetic composition.
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[Illustration: HIERATIC AND HIEROGLYPHIC WRITINGS.]
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Footnote 1:
Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt. Vol. II. P. 47.