[Illustration: TOTEMIC WRITING
INDIAN PETITION TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS
(_see page 68_)]
THE STORY OF THE ALPHABET
BY EDWARD CLODD
AUTHOR OF
"THE STORY OF PRIMITIVE MAN",
"PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION",
"THE STORY OF CREATION",
ETC. ETC.
"_The two greatest inventions of the human mind_
_are writing and money--the common language of intelligence_,
_and the common language of self-interest._"--
MARQUIS DE MIRABEAU.
WITH NINETY ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED
SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND
1900
THIS LITTLE HISTORY OF A B C
IS DEDICATED TO DOROTHY DAY
BY HER LOVING GRANDFATHER
PREFACE
If this little book does not supply a want, it fills, however
imperfectly, a gap; for the only work in the English language on the
subject--Canon Isaac Taylor's "History of the Alphabet"--is necessarily
charged with a mass of technical detail which is stiff reading even
for the student of graphiology. Moreover, invaluable and indispensable
as is that work, it furnishes only a meagre account of those primitive
stages of the art of writing, knowledge of which is essential for
tracing the development of that art, so that its place in the general
evolution of human inventions is made clear. Prominence is therefore
given to this branch of the subject in the following pages.
In the recent reprint of Canon Taylor's book no reference occurs to
the important materials collected by Professor Flinders Petrie and
Mr. Arthur J. Evans in Egypt and Crete, the result of which is to
revolutionise the old theory of the source of the Alphabet whence our
own and others are derived. This opens up a big question for experts
to settle; and here it must suffice to present a statement of the new
evidence, and to point out its significance, so that the reader be
not taken into the troubled atmosphere of controversy. That he may,
further, not be distracted by footnotes, references to the authorities
cited are printed in the text.
E. C.
ROSEMONT, 19 CARLETON ROAD,
TUFNELL PARK, N.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 9
II. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ALPHABET 23
III. MEMORY-AIDS AND PICTURE-WRITING 37
(_a_) Mnemonic 39
(_b_) Pictorial 51
(_c_) Ideographic 72
(_d_) Phonetic 79
IV. CHINESE, JAPANESE, AND COREAN SCRIPTS 82
V. CUNEIFORM WRITING 89
VI. EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS 113
(_a_) Hieroglyphic Writing 115
(_b_) Hieratic Writing 125
(_c_) Demotic Writing 127
VII. THE ROSETTA STONE 128
VIII. EGYPTIAN WRITING IN ITS RELATION
TO OTHER SCRIPTS 134
IX. CRETAN AND ALLIED SCRIPTS 157
X. GREEK PAPYRI 198
The Diffusion of the "Phœnician" Alphabet--
(_a_) Aramean 207
(_b_) Sabean 212
(_c_) Hellenic 213
XI. RUNES AND OGAMS 223
INDEX 229
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_Indian Petition to the United States Congress_ Frontispiece
FIG. PAGE
1. _Magical Pictograph against Stings_ 18
2. _Magical Device against Skin Disease_ 20
3. _Aboriginal Rock Carvings (Australia)_ 27
3a. _Aboriginal Rock Paintings (Australia)_ 28
4. _Bushman Paintings_ 30
4a. _Bushman Paintings_ 31
4b. _Specimen of Bushmen Rock Sculptures_ 32
4c. _Engravings found on Rocks in Algeria_ 33
5. _Bushman Rain-Charm_ 34
6. _Semang Rain-Charm_ 35
6a. _Record of Expedition_ 35
6b. _Various Types of the Human Form_ 36
7. _Quipu, for Reckoning, &c._ 40
8. _Double Calumet Wampum_ 48
9. _Double Calumet Council Hearth_ 48
10. _Jesuit Missionary Wampum_ 49
11. _Four Nations' Alliance Wampum_ 49
11a. _Penn Wampum_ 50
12,13. _Indian Grave-posts_ 53
14. _Tomb-board of Indian Chief_ 54
15. _Hunter's Grave-post_ 55
16. _A Cadger's Map of a Begging District_ 57
17. _Ojibwa Love-letter_ 58
18. _Love-song_ 58
19. _Mnemonic Song of an Ojibwa Medicine-man_ 59
20. _Wâbeno destroying an Enemy_ 61
21. _Etching on Innuit Drill-bow_ 62
22. _Ojibwa Hunting Record_ 62
23. _Hidatsa Pictograph on a Buffalo Shoulder-blade_ 63
24. _Alaskan Hunting Record_ 64
25. _Record of Starving Hunter_ 64
26. _Alaskan Hunting Life_ 66
27. _Indian Expedition_ 67
28. _Biography of Indian Chief_ 67
29. _War-song_ 68
30. _Letter offering Treaty of Peace_ 70
31. _Census Roll of an Indian Band_ 71
32. _Record of Departure (Innuit)_ 72
33. _Statue from Palenque_ 76
34. _Itzcoatl_ 80
35. _Rebus of Itzcoatl_ 80
36. _Paternoster Rebus_ 81
37. _Chinese Picture-writing and Later Uncial_ 83
38. _Chinese and Tibetan Triglot_ 88
39. _Rock Inscription at Behistun_ 95
40. _Cylinder Seal of Sargon I._ 107
41. _Tell-el-Amarna Tablet_ 109
42. _First Creation Tablet_ 110
43,44. _Deluge Tablet_ (_Chaldean Epic_) 111
45. _Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic Signs for Man_ 115
46. _Comparative Ideographs_ 122
47. _Ptolemy_ 131
48. _Cleopatra_ 131
49. _Kaisars_ (_Cæsar_)--_A. Takrtr_ (_Autokrator_) 131
50. _Facsimile of Hieratic Papyrus Prisse_ 140
51. _Inscription on the Eshmunazar Sarcophagus_ 141
52. _Inscription on Sacred Bowls_ (_Baal Lebanon_) 146
53. _The Moabite Stone_ 147
54. _Maneh Weight_ 150
55. _Vase with Incised Characters_ (_Crete_) 161
56. _Incised Characters on Cup_ (_Crete_) 161
57. _Characters on Vase_ (_Crete_) 162
58. _Signs on Bronze Axe (Delphi)_ 162
59. _Signs on Blocks of Mycenæan Buildings_ (_Knôsos_) 163
60. _Symbols on Three-sided Cornelian_ (_Crete_) 165
61. _Symbols on Four-sided Stone_ (_Crete_) 165
62. _Symbols on Four-sided Stones, with larger faces_
(_Central Crete_) 166
63. _Symbol on Single-faced Cornelian_ (_Eastern Crete_) 166
64. _Symbol on Stone of ordinary Mycenæan type_ (_Athens_) 166
65. _Egyptian Scarabs, XIIth Dynasty_
--_Early Cretan Seal-stones_ 178
66. _Signs on Potsherds at Tell-el-Hesy_
_compared with Ægean Forms_ 179
67. _Hittite Inscription at Hamah_ 181
68. _Signs on Vase-handle_ (_Mycenæ_) 183
69. _Signs on Amphora-handle_ (_Mycenæ_) 183
Acknowledgments are gratefully tendered to Messrs. Macmillan, Messrs.
Longmans, Mr. John Murray, Messrs. Eyre & Spottiswoode, Mr. Edward
Arnold, Messrs. Witherby, the Cambridge University Press, and the
Anthropological Institute for permission to reproduce Illustrations
from their several publications.
THE STORY OF THE ALPHABET
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
"What is ever seen is never seen," and it may be questioned if one
in ten thousand of the readers of to-day ever pauses to ask what is
the history of the conventional signs called the ALPHABET,
which, in their varying changes of position, make up the symbols of the
hundred thousand words and more contained in a comprehensive dictionary
of the English tongue.
Professor Max Müller says that "by putting together twenty-three or
twenty-four letters in every possible variety. We might produce every
word that has ever been used in any language of the world. The number
of these words, taking twenty-three letters as the basis, would be
25,852,016,738,884,976,640,000, or, if we took twenty-four, would be
620,448,401,733,239,439,360,000; but," as the Professor warns us,
in words the force of which will be manifest later on, "even these
trillions, billions, and millions of sounds would not be words,
because they would lack the most important ingredient--that which makes
a word to be a word--namely, the different ideas by which they were
called into life, and which are expressed differently in different
languages."
(_Lectures on Language_, ii. 81.)
These words themselves, as will also be shown concerning the
ear-pictures by which they are represented, reveal in their analysis a
story of the deepest interest. In the happy simile quoted by the late
Archbishop Trench in his _Study of Words_, they are "fossil history,"
and, as he adds, "fossil poetry and fossil ethics" also. To cite a few
examples, more or less apposite to our subject, "book" is probably from
the Anglo-Saxon _bóc_, a "beech," tablets of the bark of that tree
being one of the substances on which written characters were inscribed.
Parallel to this are the words "library" and "libel," both derived from
the Latin _liber_, the inner bark or rind of a tree used for paper;
while, as everybody knows, the word "paper" preserves the history of
the manufacture of writing material in Egypt from the pith of the
papyrus reed, the use of which goes back, as will be shown hereafter,
to a high antiquity, and the classic name of which, _biblos_, has
been applied to "bible." "Code" is derived from the Latin _codex_,
"a tree-trunk"; "letters" comes through the French _lettre_ from the
Latin _lino_, _litum_, "to daub" or "besmear," an early mode of writing
being the graving of characters on tablets smeared with wax. "Tablet"
is the diminutive of "table," which comes from the Latin _tabula_,
"a board," and the ancient writing instrument, called a _stylus_,
illustrates the passage of language from the concrete to the abstract
in its application to the way in which a writer expresses his ideas.
We speak of his "style," just as we say "he wields an able pen," this
word being derived from the Latin _penna_, "a feather." The phrase
_lapsus calami_, "a slip of the pen," preserves record of the use of
the reed (Latin _calamus_), which also survives in "quill," from Old
English _quylle_, "a reed." But the metal pen has a longer history than
was suspected, since Dr. Waldstein has found one, cut and slit like
our modern specimens, in a tomb of the third century B.C.,
at Eretria in the island of Eubœa in the Ægean. "Volume," from Latin
_volumen_, "a roll," tells us what was the usual form of books in
ancient times, the old form of preservation and custody of legal
records surviving in "Rolls of Court," "Master of the Rolls," and so
forth. So in "diploma," which, literally, is a paper folded double,
from Greek _diploō_, "to fold." Both "diplomacy" and "duplicity" mean
"doubling," but the force of the parallel may not be pursued here.
Finally--for the list might be extended indefinitely--"parchment" is
borrowed from Pergamus, a town in Asia Minor, where skin came into
general use, Ptolemy V. (205-185 B.C.), so runs a doubtful
story told by Pliny, having prohibited the export of papyrus from Egypt.
As words, under the analyses now indicated, yield the history of their
origin and of the changes both in spelling and meaning which follow
their passage from older forms, and likewise reveal the reasons which
governed the choice of them, so the letters of which they are made
up bear witness to similar laws of development. The story which it
is the purpose of this little book to endeavour to extract from them
has mutilated and imperfect chapters, and, moreover, missing chapters
which may never be recovered. But sufficing material survives for
piecing together a narrative of the triumph of the human mind over
one of the most difficult tasks to which it could apply itself; a
task which, unwrought, would have made advance in the highest sense
impossible beyond a certain point. In the highest sense, because man
has gone a long way without knowledge either of reading or writing.
These "two R's" are not necessary in matters of personal contact with
his fellows, while in other ways progress is independent of them. An
illiterate man may be an accomplished landscape artist, a skilful
engineer, a successful farmer or trader, and prosperous in many ways
where the aim of life is to "live by bread alone." It is true that
much of the intellectual and spiritual record of man's past was long
preserved in the form of oral tradition. But to the volume of such
record there is a limit, while time and caprice alike work havoc in
it. Memory, great as was its capacity of old, before dependence on
books impaired it, was not infallible, nor, as the world's stock of
knowledge increased, could it "pull down its barns and build greater
wherein to bestow its goods." We have, by an effort of the imagination
well-nigh impossible to make, only to assume the absence of any means
of material record of the involved and myriad events which fill the
world's past, to conceive the intellectual poverty of the present.
We have only to assume the absence of any medium whereby we could
communicate with friends at a distance, or whereby the now complex and
countless dealings between man and man could be set down and every
transaction thus "brought to book," to realise the hopeless tangle of
our social life. All that memory failed to overlap would be an absolute
blank; the dateless and otherwise uninscribed monuments which the past
had left behind would but deepen the darkness; all knowledge of the
strivings and speculations of men of old would have been unattainable;
all observation and experience through which science has advanced from
guesses to certainties irretrievably lost; life could have been lived
only from "hand to mouth," and the spectacle presented of an arrested
world of sentient beings. Save in fragmentary echoes repeated by
fugitive bards, the great epics of East and West would have perished,
and the immortal literatures of successive ages never have existed. The
invention of writing alone made possible the passage from barbarism to
civilisation, and secured the continuous progress of the human race.
It is solely through the marvellous perfecting, through stages of slow
advance, of a scripture that "cannot be broken," that the past is as
eloquent, as real, as the present. "The pen is mightier than the sword"
in accumulating and preserving for both gentle and simple the store of
the world's intellectual wealth, unto which "all the things that can be
desired are not to be compared."
These reflections are commonplace enough, but they may not be wholly
needless, and an example or two of the impression made on the barbaric
mind by written symbols may help us the better to appreciate what our
case would be without them. In the narrative of his adventures in the
Tonga Islands, published about ninety years ago, William Mariner tells
how anxiety to escape from the place where, on the wreck of the ship
_Port au Prince_, he and some other Englishmen had been cast ashore,
led him to write, by means of a solution of gunpowder and a little
mucilage for ink, a letter which he entrusted to a friendly native to
give to the captain of any vessel that might happen to touch at Tonga.
Finow, the king, came to hear of this, and got hold of the letter. But
he could make "neither head nor tail" of it. However, by threats of
death if he refused, one of Mariner's shipmates was made to interpret
the mystic signs to Finow, who, still puzzled, sent for Mariner and
ordered him to write down something else, saying, when Mariner asked
for a subject, "Put down me." This done, Finow sent for another
sailor, who read the royal name aloud, whereupon the king appeared
more bewildered than ever, exclaiming. "This not like me; where are
my legs?" Then it slowly dawned upon him that it was possible to make
signs of things which both the writer and the interpreter had seen.
But the bewilderment returned when Mariner told him that he could
write down a description of any one whom he had never seen, or of an
event which happened long ago or far away, when these were told him.
Thereupon Finow whispered to him the name of Tongoo Aho, a former king
of Tonga, who, it had come to Mariner's knowledge, was blind in one
eye. When Mariner set these things down, and the king had them read
to him, it was explained that "in several parts of the world messages
were sent to great distances through the same medium, and, being folded
and fastened up, the bearer could know nothing of the contents; and
that the histories of whole nations were thus handed down to posterity
without spoiling by being kept. Finow acknowledged this to be a most
noble invention, but added that it would not at all do for the Tonga
Islands; that there would be nothing but disturbances and conspiracies,
and he should not be sure of his life perhaps another month. He said,
however, jocularly, that he should like to know it himself, and for
all the women to know it, that he might make love with less risk
of discovery, and not so much chance of incurring the vengeance of
their husbands." (Mariner's _Tonga Islands_, i. 116, ed. 1827.) The
_Smithsonian Reports_, 1864, tell a story of an Indian who was sent by
a missionary to a colleague with four loaves of bread, accompanied by
a letter stating their number. The Indian ate one of the loaves, and
was, of course, found out. He was sent on a similar errand and repeated
the theft, but took the precaution to hide the letter under a stone
while he was eating the bread, so that it might not see him!
Barbaric ideas fall into fundamentally-related groups, and the examples
just given are connected with the widespread belief in the efficacy
of written characters to work black or white magic, to effect cures,
and otherwise act as charms--a belief largely derived from the legends
which ascribe the origin of writing to the gods--legends themselves
the product of Ignorance, the mother of Mystery. In an Assyrian
inscription, Sardanapalus V. speaks of the cuneiform or wedge-shaped
characters as a revelation to his royal ancestors from the god Nebo;
among the Egyptians, Thoth was the scribe of the gods, and their oldest
forms of writing were named "the divine." Chinese tradition ascribes
the invention of writing to the dragon-faced, four-eyed sage Ts'ang
Chien, who saw in the stars of heaven, the footprints of birds, and the
marks on the back of the tortoise, the models on which he formed the
written characters. At this invention "heaven caused showers of grain
to descend from on high; the disembodied spirits wept in the darkness,
and the dragons withdrew themselves from sight." On the altars raised
to Ts'ang Chien throughout the Celestial Land, every scrap of fugitive
paper which has writing on it is burned in his honour. In Hindu legend,
Brahma, the supreme god of the Indian Trinity, gives knowledge of
letters to men; and Nâgari, in which alphabet the sacred books are
written, is spoken of as "belonging to the city of the gods." The
handwriting of Brahma, legend further says, is seen in the serrated
sutures of men's skulls; and as Yahweh or Jehovah wrote the "Ten Words"
with his own finger, so Brahma inscribed the holy texts of the Veda
on leaves of gold. The story of the culture-hero, Cadmus, introducing
the alphabet from Phœnicia into Greece is well known; while in Irish
legend, Ogmios, the Gaelish Hercules, is familiar as the inventor of
writing. But perhaps less familiar is that in the Northern Saga which
attributes the invention of runes to Odin:--
"Thought-runes shalt thou deal with
If thou wilt be of all men
Fairest-souled, wight and wisest.
These are ded,
These first cut,
These first took to heart high Hropt." (Odin.)
Belief in the power of the spoken word, notably as a curse, has
world-wide illustration; and not less is that in the power of the
written word or of the pictorial symbol. Cabalistic formulæ and
texts from sacred writings play a large part; the virtue in Jewish
phylacteries and frontlets was believed to depend on the texts which
they enclosed; the amulets worn by Abyssinians to avert the evil
eye and ward off demons have the secret name of God chased on them;
passages from the Koran are enclosed in bags and hung on Turkish and
Arab horses to protect them against like maleficence; prayers to the
Madonna are slipped into charm-cases to be worn by the Neapolitans;
while not so many years back (indeed, so persistent are superstitions,
that kindred practices obtain throughout Europe to this day) sick folk
in the Highlands were fanned with the leaves of the Bible.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Magical Pictograph against Stings]
In his instructive and entertaining book on _Evolution in Art_,
Professor Haddon refers to a series of valuable observations on the
use of picture-writing as a charm against diseases and stings of
venomous animals, among the Semang tribes of East Malacca, made by Mr.
H. Vaughan Stevens, and edited by Mr. A. Grünwedel. The women wear
bamboo combs on which are drawn patterns of flowers or parts of flowers
believed to be antidotes to fevers and other invisible diseases; for
injuries and wounds such as those caused by a falling bough in the
jungle, or the bite of a centipede, other means are employed. Among the
magic-working devices incised in bamboo staves by the Semang magicians,
Mr. Vaughan Stevens gives illustrations of one against the stings
of scorpions and centipedes (fig. 1), and of another against a skin
disease (fig. 2).
In the first-named there is depicted the figure of an Argus pheasant,
the wheel-like patterns beneath which represent the eye-marks in the
tail-feathers. On the left is an orange-coloured centipede, the head
of which points to the tail of the pheasant. The dotted lines round
the centipede are tracks which it leaves on a man's skin. On the other
side of the Argus are two blue scorpions, the figures at the end of
their tails representing a swelling in the flesh of the persons stung
by them. The female of this kind of scorpion is more poisonous than the
male, and is said to cause double stings, which are denoted by the two
rows of dots in the top figure. "The significance of this bamboo is
that as the Argus pheasant feeds on centipedes and scorpions, so its
help is invoked against them by striking the bamboo against the ground."
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Magical Device against Skin Disease]
The other example, which exhibits a much more complicated and
conventionalised device, is designed as a charm against two kinds of
skin disease, the one represented by fish scales indicating leprous
white ulcers, the other represented by oval figures indicating hard
knots on and under the skin. The rows stand for the several parts
of the body which are affected, and the figures increase in size to
show that the disease will spread if not cured. Although the way in
which the charm is applied is not clear, there is no doubt that belief
in its virtue belongs to the large class of barbaric ideas grouped
under sympathetic magic, _i.e._ that things outwardly resembling
one another are thought by the barbaric or illiterate to possess
the same qualities. The result is that effects are brought about
in the individual himself by the production of similar effects in
things belonging to him, or, what is more to the purpose, in images
or effigies of him. Here it suffices to say that the most familiar
examples of "sympathetic magic" are the making of an image of the
person whose destruction is sought, of wax, clay, or other substance,
so that as the wax is melted, or the clay dissolved in running water,
his life may decline or wear away to its doom. Such examples are
gathered alike from civilised and barbaric folk, from Devonshire and
the Highlands to North America and Borneo.
Things are invested with mystery in the degree that their origins and
causes are unknown; and the beliefs and customs, of which a few among
the teeming illustrations have been given, invite the reflection that,
had writing remained the monopoly of any caste or class, it would
have remained an engine of enslavement, instead of becoming an engine
of liberation of the mind. "Knowledge is power," and whatever has
ensured the possession and the retention of power over his fellows has
been seized upon by man--notably by man as priest, from medicine-man
to Pope, as wielder of weapons of authority, the more dreaded when
unseen or intangible. Signs which were unadapted, and, things being
what they then were, impossible, for general use, and moreover needing
great expenditure of time and labour to master them, would come under
this head, and it was only through their ultimate simplification
that they could become serviceable to the many, and made vehicles of
the diffusion of knowledge. How monstrous and penal an instrument of
inequality learning itself long continued among ourselves is shown in
the fact that "benefit of clergy"--one among many evidences of the old
conflict between the civil and the sacerdotal powers--was not wholly
repealed until the year 1827. Under this statute, exemption from trial
for criminal offences before secular courts was extended, by law passed
in the reign of Edward I., not only to ecclesiastics, but to any man
who could read. A prisoner sentenced to death might be claimed by
the bishop of the diocese as a clerk and haled before him, when the
ordinary gave the man a Latin book from which to read a verse or two.
If the ordinary said "Legit ut clericus"--_i.e._ "he reads like a
clerk"--the offender was only burnt in the hand, and then set free.