EGYPTIAN WRITING IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER SCRIPTS
The interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics being thus settled
once and for all, the next problem to be attacked was their relation,
if any, to the sound-signs whence are derived the alphabets of the
civilised world. We travel backwards along clearly-marked lines from
our alphabet to the Roman, and thence to the Greek, which tradition
attributed to the Phœnicians. Herodotus says upon this matter: "Now
these Phœnicians who came with Cadmos, of whom were the Gephyraians,
brought in among the Hellenes many arts when they settled in this
land of Bœotia, and especially letters, which did not exist, as it
appears to me, among the Hellenes before this time; and at first they
brought in those which are used by the Phœnician race generally, but
afterwards, as time went on, they changed with their speech the form
of the letters also. During this time the Ionians were the race of
Hellenes who dwelt near them in most of the places where they were;
and these, having received letters by instruction of the Phœnicians,
changed their form slightly and so made use of them, and in doing so
they declared them to be called 'phœnicians,' as was just, seeing that
the Phœnicians had introduced them into Hellas. Also, the Ionians from
ancient time call paper 'skins,' because formerly, paper being scarce,
they used skins of goats and sheep; nay, even in my own time many of
the Barbarians wrote on such skins" (v. 58).
Pliny, in his _Natural History_ (v. 12, 13), gives the credit of
the invention of the alphabet to the Phœnicians, and other ancient
authors repeat what must have been an old tradition. The honesty of
these writers is unimpeachable, however much their competency may be
questioned; and no slight confirmation of their testimony appears,
in the judgment of many modern scholars, to be furnished by the
correspondence in number, name (the sibilants _s_ and _z_ excepted),
and order, although not in form, between the letters of the Greek and
the Semitic alphabets. "In default of further evidence, the very word
ALPHABET," Canon Taylor remarks, "might suffice to disclose
the secret of its origin. It is obviously derived from the names of the
two letters _alpha_ and _beta_, which stand at the head of the Greek
alphabet, and which are plainly identical with the names _aleph_ and
_beth_ borne by the corresponding Semitic characters. These names,
which are meaningless in Greek, are significant Semitic words, _aleph_
denoting an 'ox,' and _beth_ a 'house.'" The following table shows the
names and order of the Greek and Semitic letters, the Hebrew being
selected as the type of a Semitic alphabet, because it is more familiar
than any other (_cf._ Taylor's _History of the Alphabet_, vol. i. p.
75).
+-----------------------+-----------------------------------+
| HEBREW. | GREEK. |
+------------+----------+-----------------------------------+
| Name. | Meaning. | Name. |
+------------+----------+-----------------------------------+
| א Aleph | ox | A α Alpha |
| ב Beth | house | B β ϐ Beta |
| ג Gimel | camel | Γ γ Gamma |
| ד Daleth | door | Δ δ Delta |
| ה He | window | E ε Epsilon |
| ו Vau | hook | (Vau--obsolete) |
| ז Zayin | weapons | Z ζ Zeta |
| ח Cheth | fence | H η Eta |
| ט Teth | serpent? | Θ ϑ θ Theta |
| י Yod | hand | I ι Iota |
| ך Kaph | palm of | K κ Kappa |
| | hand | |
| ל Lamed | ox-goad | Λ λ Lambda |
| ם Mem | waters | M μ Mu |
| נ Nun | fish | N ν Nu |
| ס Samekh | post | Ξ ξ Xi |
| ע 'Ayin | eye | O ο Omicron |
| פ Pe | mouth | Π π Pi |
| צ Tsade | javelin? | (San--lost) |
| ק Qoph | knot? | (Koppa--obsolete) |
| ר Resh | head | Ρ ρ Rho |
| ש Shin | teeth | Σ σ ς Sigma |
| ת Tau | mark | T τ Tau |
| | | Υ υ Upsilon} |
| | | Φ φ Phi } of |
| | | Χ χ Chi } later |
| | | Ψ ψ Psi } origin.|
| | | Ω ω Omega } |
+------------+----------+-----------------------------------+
Assuming the theory of the Phœnician origin of the alphabet to be
established, the next question is, was that alphabet an independent
invention, or was it adapted from another set of characters? As has
been seen, all evidence goes to show that sound-signs have been derived
from pictographs, and, if the Phœnician script be no exception to this,
search must be made for its earlier forms. Tradition asserted that "the
Phœnicians did not claim to be themselves the inventors of the art of
writing, but admitted that it was obtained by them from Egypt." So says
Eusebius, and the same tradition has currency among classic authorities
from Plato to Tacitus, while the fact of the active intercourse which
long prevailed between Phœnicia and Egypt goes far in its support. The
Phœnicians were of Semitic race, "dwelling in ancient time, as they
themselves report, upon the Erythrean Sea" (_i.e._ in the neighbourhood
of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf), "and thence they passed over and
dwelt in the country along the sea coast of Syria; and this part of
Syria and all as far as Egypt is called Palestine" (Herodotus, vii.
89). But of their origin and primitive migrations, in truth, little is
known. Tyre, whose king, Hiram, gave Solomon aid in the building of his
famous temple, and Sidon, are familiar names in the Bible, but that of
the "Phœnicians" does not once occur, reference to them being probably
included in the term "Canaanite." Professor Huxley, always felicitous
in his phrases as he was supreme in exposition, aptly called them the
"colossal pedlars" of the ancient world. The narrow strip of Syrian
seaboard which they occupied when we first meet them in history was
a meeting-place between East and West, and the nursery of a maritime
enterprise which looms large in history. Their ships traded westward
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and eastward to the Indian Ocean; their
colonists settled on both shores of the Mediterranean, on the Euxine,
and were scattered over Asia Minor. Like the Romans, the Phœnicians
had little creative instinct. Designing or discovering little, but
skilfully manufacturing and circulating much, they were distributors of
the wares of their own and neighbouring countries, and founded emporia
in many a city of the ancient world, as _e.g._ at Memphis, "round about
whose sacred enclosure, on that side of the temple of Hephaistos which
faces the north wind, dwell Phœnicians of Tyre, this whole region being
called the camp of the Tyrians," or, as we should say, the Tyrian
quarter (Herodotus, ii. 112).
Obviously, one of the pressing needs of a people thus brimful of
commercial activity, to whom "time was money," would be some swift
and concise mode of record of transactions. Hence the supersession
or abbreviation of cumbrous and elaborated characters, with their
apparatus of determinatives, ideograms, and the like, by a simple
"shorthand" sort of script. But of _what_ characters? Influenced partly
by the traditions already referred to, partly by the fact of the
intimate relations between Phœnicia and Egypt, and doubtless by that
principle of development the application of which was extending in
all directions, a French Egyptologist, Emanuel de Rougé, read a paper
on the history of the alphabet before the Académie des Inscriptions
in 1859 (the year of publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_),
which, in the judgment of many scholars, appeared conclusive as to
the derivation of the Phœnician (and, through that, of all other
alphabets now in use) from the Egyptian characters. The success which
appeared to attend M. de Rougé's researches "must be attributed to his
clear perception of the fact, itself antecedently probable, that the
immediate prototypes of the Semitic letters must be sought, not, as
had hitherto been vainly attempted, among the hieroglyphic pictures
of the Egyptian monuments, but among the cursive characters which
the Egyptians had developed out of their hieroglyphs, and which were
employed for literary and secular purposes, the hieroglyphic writing
being reserved for monumental and sacred uses" (Taylor, i. p. 90).
The method which he adopted was admirable. He took the oldest known
forms of the Semitic letters that he could discover, and compared
these with the oldest known forms of hieratic writing, confining that
comparison to the twenty-five letters of the so-called "Egyptian
Alphabet." The materials at his command were of the scantiest. On the
_Egyptian_ side hieratic papyri of the new Empire (which began about
1587 B.C.) existed in plenty, but the characters in which
they are written are comparatively late. Fortunately, however, among
the very few examples of the oldest form of hieratic was the _Papyrus
Prisse_ (fig. 50), and this precious relic supplied M. de Rougé with
the cursive characters which made formulation of his theory possible.
On the _Semitic_ side there are the Egyptian words which are given in
Semitic form in the Old Testament, and the Semitic names of Syrian
towns which are found in the Egyptian annals of conquests under the new
Empire, through which the sounds severally represented by the Semitic
and hieratic characters are arrived at. The chief source of epigraphic
evidence was an inscription (fig. 51) on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar,
king of Sidon, dating from the fifth century B.C., or about
two thousand years later than the _Papyrus Prisse_, and therefore
representing a late form of the Phœnician alphabet.
[Illustration: Fig. 50.--Facsimile of Hieratic Papyrus Prisse]
The sarcophagus, which is preserved in the Louvre, was found in a
rock-tomb near the site of ancient Sidon. The interpretation of the
inscription upon it has exercised the skill of a host of scholars,
and given rise to an enormous body of literature. Eshmunazar, whose
mask and mummy are sculptured on the sarcophagus, speaks in the first
person. He calls himself "king of the Sidonians, son of Tabnit," and
tells how he and his mother, the priestess of Ashtaroth, had built
temples to Baal Sidon, Ashtaroth, and Emun. He beseeches the favour
of the gods, and prays that Dora, Joppa, and the fertile corn-lands
of Sharon may ever remain part of his kingdom. Well-nigh in the words
of Shakespeare's epitaph, he lays a curse upon him who would molest
his grave; such an one "shall have no funeral couch with the Rephaim,"
that haunt the vasty halls of death. "I am cut off before my time; few
have been my days, and I am lying in this coffin and in this tomb in
the place which I have built. Oh, then, remember this! may no royal
race, may no man open my funeral couch, and may they not seek after
treasure, for no one has hidden treasures here, nor move the coffin out
of my funeral couch, nor molest me in this funeral bed by putting in it
another tomb." (_Records of the Past_, vol. ix.)
[Illustration: Fig. 51.--Inscription on the Eshmunazar Sarcophagus]
Such, broadly speaking, were M. de Rougé's materials for observation
and comparison, and there have been few more striking examples of
ingenuity of classification and inference than those which, his
work supplies. In his excellent summary of that work which Canon
Taylor gives in the first volume of his indispensable _History of
the Alphabet_ (pp. 98-116), he refers the student who desires full
details to M. de Rougé's posthumous _Mémoire sur l'origine Égyptienne
de l'alphabet Phénicien_, and suggests that those readers who care
only for results may even skip his summary. That summary necessarily
includes much technical matter which will interest only the trained
philologist; and in the superficial survey of the subject which is only
possible, and perhaps desirable, in these pages, any details would be
out of place. Nevertheless, the accompanying tabulated form of M. de
Rougé's results may be followed by an example or two of the method
which secured them, and also by reference to some earlier Semitic
inscriptions which have come to light since 1859.
M. DE ROUGÉ'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ALPHABET.
I. Egyptian Hieroglyphics, facing to the left.
II. Egyptian Hieratic characters, facing to the right.
III. The oldest Phœnician letters, mostly from the Baal
Lebanon inscription.
IV. The oldest Greek letters, from inscriptions at Thera
and Athens, reading from right to left.
V. The lapidary Greek alphabet at the time of the Persian
war, reading from left to right.
VI. Greek uncials, from the Codex Alexandrinus, about 400 A.D.
VII. Greek minuscules.
VIII. The old alphabet of Italy.
IX. Lapidary Latin alphabet at the time of Cicero.
X. Latin uncials and minuscules.
XI. Modern square Hebrew, derived from the Phœnician
letters in Col. III.
[Illustration: Egyptian, Pœnician, Greek Latin and Hebrew Alphabet
symbols.]
Our examples of M. de Rougé's method may be taken from the letters _b_
and _h_.
_b._ The Egyptians had two signs for this, the "leg," [Symbol] which
is the normal sign, and the "crane" (see fig. 2 in foregoing table),
which letter should be taken as the prototype of the Phœnician (see
fig. 2, col. iii.). The reason may be that the sound of the first
symbol seems to have been nearer to _v_ than to _b_, the "crane" being
used as the equivalent of _beth_ in the translation of several Semitic
names, such as Berytus (Beyrout) and Khirba. The hieratic trace of
the "leg" would, moreover, be easily confused with that of some other
letters, such as the "chick" and the "arm," and would therefore be
inconvenient for adoption. The Semitic character [Symbol] differs from
its hieratic prototype [Symbol] in having acquired a closed loop. The
closed form is so much easier to write that the change presents no
difficulty. But there is a curious bit of indirect evidence which seems
to show that the Semitic in its earlier form was open, something in the
shape of an [Symbol]. The Greek alphabet used at Corinth, one of the
earliest Phœnician colonies in Hellas, must have been derived from a
type of the Semitic alphabet more archaic than that which appears on
the Moabite Stone (see p. 147). Now, in the old Corinthian alphabet the
letter _beta_ is not closed, but open, [Symbol], its form being almost
identical with the hieratic prototype.
_h._ The letter _he_ corresponds to the "mæander" and the "knotted
cord." The hieratic forms show that the former must be taken as the
prototype. In the _Papyrus Prisse_ there are two of this character;
one, which is comparatively rare, is open at the bottom, [Symbol], and
corresponds to the Moabite [Symbol]. It is much more usual, however, to
find the character completely closed. The name of the Semitic letter,
which is generally supposed to mean a "window," would indicate that the
previous form of the letter agreed with the more usual hieratic trace.
This conjecture is curiously confirmed by the evidence afforded by the
early inscriptions of Corinth, which, as we have seen in the case of
_beta_, occasionally preserve alphabetic forms of a more archaic type
than those found on the Moabite Stone itself. Now, in the primitive
alphabet of Corinth we find, instead of the usual form of _epsilon_, a
closed character [Symbol] which is nearly identical with the form of
the "mæander," most usual in the _Papyrus Prisse_. (Taylor, i. pp. 102,
114.)
Among the more important Semitic inscriptions, other than that on the
Eshmunazar sarcophagus, are: (1) the inscription on fragments of sacred
vessels of bronze from the temple of Baal Lebanon, which is assigned
to the eleventh century B.C.; (2) the inscription of Mesha,
king of Moab, on a slab of black basalt, known as the Moabite Stone,
which is assigned to the ninth century B.C.; (3) the lion
weights from Nineveh, bearing the names of Assyrian kings who reigned
during the second half of the eighth century B.C.; and (4)
the inscription on a tablet in a tunnel which conveys water from
the Virgin's Pool in the Kedron Valley to the Pool of Siloam in the
Tyropæon. The date of this inscription lies between the eighth and the
sixth centuries B.C.
[Illustration: Fig. 52.--Inscription on Sacred Bowls (Baal Lebanon)]
1. _The Baal Lebanon Vessels._ In 1876 M. Clermont-Ganneau bought from
a Cypriote dealer some fragments of bronze plates bearing Phœnician
characters (fig. 52). They were traced to a peasant who had found them
when digging, and who had broken up the metal in the hope that it was
of gold. The industry and skill of MM. Renan and Clermont-Ganneau
pieced the fragments together in such wise as to warrant the inference
that they were portions of sacred bowls, an inference confirmed by the
longest of the inscriptions, which declared that "this vessel of good
bronze was offered by a citizen of Carthage, servant of Hiram, king of
the Sidonians, to Baal Lebanon, his Lord," whose temple was one of the
"high places" dedicated to the god.
[Illustration: Fig. 53.--The Moabite Stone]
2. _The Moabite Stone_ (fig. 53). This, perhaps the most famous, and,
certainly, one of the most important, of Semitic relics, was discovered
in 1868 by Dr. Klein, a German missionary, during his travels in Moab.
The Arabs who escorted him took him to see an inscribed stone, the
Phœnician characters on which were beautifully cut in thirty-four
lines. The doctor copied a few words, and resumed his journey. On
reaching Jerusalem he made known his discovery, whereupon competition
was started between the French and German Consulates for purchase of
the coveted treasure. This aroused the suspicion of the Arabs, to whom
the stone had become a sort of talisman on which the fertility of
their crops depended--that is, when they had industry enough to plant
them. Messengers sent by M. Clermont-Ganneau succeeded in taking a
squeeze of the inscription, which made the Arabs still more hostile,
and in the end, after the Turkish governor of Nablus had vainly tried
to secure the stone for himself--of course to sell at a profit to the
"infidel"--the Arabs put a fire under it, then poured cold water over
it, and smashed it into fragments, which were distributed as charms
among the tribe. But the tact of M. Clermont-Ganneau recovered nearly
all the pieces, so that, a few lines excepted, the inscription is
complete. The original is preserved in the Louvre, and a very good cast
of it may be seen in the Phœnician department of the British Museum.
The inscription, which is written in a language resembling closely the
Hebrew of the Old Testament, gives Mesha's account of his rebellion
against the King of Israel, to whom he had hitherto paid yearly tribute
of the wool of a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams.
Historically the monument is of high value. Mesha speaks of himself
as the son of Chemoshmelek, whose position as the national god of
the petty kingdom of Moab corresponds to that of Yahweh or Jehovah
among the Israelites. The reference to Chemosh throws light on the
correspondences in belief between the several Semitic peoples. The
"high place" or altar of the god, his anthropomorphic character as
angry, as urging his votaries to battle and to slaughter of their
foes, giving them no quarter--all this is identical with the Hebrew
conception of deity, so that the inscription, _mutatis mutandis_,
reads like a transcript from the warlike annals of the Old Testament.
From the epigraphic standpoint, which alone concerns us here, the
inscription is regarded by Canon Taylor and other scholars as
supporting the theory of M. de Rougé.
3. _The Lion Weights_ (fig. 54). Several examples of these were found
by the late Sir Austin Layard in his first excavations at Nineveh.
They are bilingual, the names of the Assyrian kings being usually
in cuneiform writing, while the weights are indicated in Phœnician
characters. Of course this evidences intimate trading relations
between Assyria and Phœnicia, and the commercial dominance of the
latter in the adoption of its weights and measures as the metrical
standard of the former, and in the general use of the Phœnician
alphabet for business purposes. The action of time has largely
obliterated the inscriptions, but among the names of Assyrian kings
which have been identified are Tiglath-Peser, Shalmaneser IV.,
Sargon II., and Sennacherib. The similarity between the Phœnician
and Assyrian characters is shown in the inscription here reproduced,
which is to scale of the original. It is on the eleventh lion,
which weighs a little over twenty ounces, and therefore represents
a maneh, a Hebrew weight used in estimating gold and silver, and
believed to contain one hundred shekels of the former and sixty of
the latter. The reading is M_a_N_e_H M_e_L_e_K, "a maneh of the king."
The name is not very legible, but is read by Professor Sayce as
Shalmaneser, who reigned in the seventh century B.C.
[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Maneh Weight]
4. _The Siloam Inscription._--The tunnel in which this was found was
doubtless constructed to secure the water supply of Jerusalem in the
event of a siege, the Virgin's Pool being outside the city walls,
while the Pool of Siloam is inside the boundaries of the old rampart.
Encrustations of carbonate of lime made the decipherment of the letters
very difficult on their first discovery in 1880, but enough was seen
to prove their high importance for the study of the development of
the Hebrew alphabet in its passage from the Phœnician to the Aramean
type, whence the modern characters are derived. "It was recognised at
once that a Hebrew inscription of a date prior to the Captivity had
at last been discovered, and that the uncertainties as to the nature
of the alphabet of Israel would now be set at rest." The letters were
carefully cleared of their accretion; squeezes, tracings, and casts
were obtained, and the Hebrew record, engraved in Phœnician characters
nearly resembling those on the Moabite Stone, thus Englished, of course
more or less conjecturally in detail, by Professor Sayce:--
(1) (Behold the) excavation! Now this is the history of the tunnel.
While the excavators (were lifting up)
(2) the pick each to his neighbour, and while there were yet three
cubits (to be broken through) ... the voice of one call-
(3)-ed to his neighbour, for there was (an excess?) in the rock on
the right. They rose up ... they struck on the west of the
(4) excavation, the excavators struck each to meet his neighbour pick
to pick, and there flowed
(5) the waters from their outlet to the Pool for the distance of 1000
cubits and (three-fourths?)
(6) of a cubit was the height of the rock at the head of the
excavation here.
The inscription is interesting if only as showing how modern methods
of tunnelling were anticipated by these ancient engineers. One gang
of men began boring at one end and another gang at the other end,
thus advancing till both met, and the failure to make the connection
which is spoken of in "the (excess) in the rock on the right" has
confirmation in the existence of two "blind alleys" in the tunnel,
showing how the borings overlapped. The accuracy with which, aided
by the most recent appliances worked by compressed air, the passages
through miles of rock have been bored until the men at either end meet
face to face in the middle, is among the romantic achievements of
modern science. The Samaritan alphabet is the sole surviving lineal
descendant of the Phœnician, which in whatever degree the parent of all
extant alphabets, became extinct with the decline of Phœnicia herself,
and the characters are now recoverable only through the inscriptions of
which examples have been given.
M. de Rougé's theory of the source of that alphabet, and of the
variants to which it has given rise, has not passed unchallenged.
It belongs to the class of hypotheses which lend themselves to the
straining of facts in their support, and therefore demand evidence
amounting to demonstration. The superficial resemblances between the
written characters are cited as proof of relation, no play being given
to that independence of origin of which numerous examples occur in
other branches of human development. In his article on Hieroglyphics
in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, Mr. Reginald Poole remarks that "the
hieratic forms vary, like all cursive forms of writing, with the hand
of each scribe. Consequently, the writers who desire to establish their
identity with Phœnician can scarcely avoid straining the evidence."
Moreover, the long lapse of time between the materials for comparison
invites caution. The _Papyrus Prisse_ is, at least, two thousand years
older than the Eshmunazar inscription, and on these two hang the
validity of M. de Rougé's theory. Another contention is that certain
Semitic letters represent sounds which are peculiar to that language,
and for which no equivalent signs could be adopted from the Egyptian,
to which, however, the reply is that in the borrowing of characters it
suffices to select those representing similar, although not the same,
sounds. The objection that the names of the Semitic letters are not
those of the hieroglyphs is met by the principle of acrology (see pp.
86, 104). The question is also asked, Why did not the Phœnicians borrow
the hieroglyphic instead of the hieratic characters? Mr. Arthur Evans
thinks that in some cases this was done, a few of the letters of the
Phœnician alphabet coming direct from the pictorial symbols, as _Alpha_
(_Alef_ = an ox), from the hieroglyph of an ox's head; _Zeta_ (_zayin_
= weapons), from the two-edged axe; _Sigma_ (_samech_ = a post), from
the sign of a tree; _Omikron_ (_Ain_ = an eye), from the circle used
to represent the eye; _Eta_ and _E-psilon_ (_cheth_ = a fence and _He_
= a window), from signs for a wall or door or window. Canon Taylor,
however, argues that the derivation must have been on the lines laid
down by M. de Rougé, the Semitic alphabet originating among a colony of
aliens of that race settled in Lower Egypt, either as slaves, traders,
frontier guards, or conquerors. In any case these intruders would be
strangers to the religion and the language of the Egyptians. It would,
therefore, be more likely that they should make use of the cursive and
easy hieratic, which was ordinarily employed in Egypt for secular and
commercial purposes, than that they should adopt the difficult sacred
script which was reserved by the Egyptian priesthood for monumental
and religious uses. This supposition is confirmed by the singular
absence of any hieroglyphic monument which can be assigned to the three
dynasties of Semitic rulers known as the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings, who
were expelled from Lower Egypt by the Theban Ramesides.
Canon Taylor admits that if, among the objections raised by Professor
Lagarde, that based on the want of adequate resemblance between
the Semitic letters and the hieratic forms can be sustained, M. de
Rougé's theory falls to the ground. The Canon, a staunch, although
perfectly candid, supporter of that theory, very properly lays stress
on the tendency of things borrowed to partake of the character of the
borrower. That they are borrowed at all implies a certain adaptableness
in them which permits modification of type, especially when the writing
has to be inscribed on another kind of material. The early hieratic
writing was traced on papyrus with a soft reed-stump, while the Semitic
was cut upon a stone with a chisel, to the loss of flowing lines and
curves. "Looking broadly at the two scripts, Hieratic and Moabite,
we see in the first place that the Semitic writing is distinguished
by greater symmetry and greater simplicity. The letters have become
more regular and uniform: more angular, more firm, and more erect;
the differences in relative size have diminished; the complicated and
difficult characters especially being straightened or curtailed."
(_History of the Alphabet_, i. 125.) Summing up the several objections,
of which only the more important have been noted here, Canon Taylor,
amending nothing in the recent reprint of his book, remains satisfied
as to the soundness of M. de Rougé's theory. "Not only is it on _a
priori_ grounds the probable solution, not only does it agree with the
ancient tradition, not only does it supply a possible and reasonable
explanation of the facts, not only is it confirmed by all sorts of
curious coincidences, but no objection has been urged against it to
which a sufficient answer cannot be found. If we reject M. de Rougé's
explanation of the origin of the alphabet, there is practically no
rival theory on which to fall back. There are only three other possible
sources, none of which can, at present, be regarded in any higher light
than as a mere guess. If the Semitic letters were not derived from
Egypt they must have been invented by the Phœnicians, or they must have
been developed either out of the Hittite hieroglyphics, or out of one
of the cuneiform syllabaries." (_Ib._, p. 130.) The possible relation
of the still undeciphered Hittite hieroglyphs to other scripts will
have reference presently, and perhaps Deecke's theory of the derivation
of the Phœnician from the Assyrian cuneiform has some measure of truth
in it. For cuneiform appears to be essentially a Semitic script, and
the Phœnicians in their contact with other Semitic peoples would, it
may be assumed, have retained and adapted some, if not all, of the
cuneiform characters long before they became familiar with Egyptian
hieroglyphic or hieratic. Granting, however, all that the upholders
of M. de Rougé's theory may demand, their inference as to the direct
connection between the Greek and other alphabets and the Phœnician
alphabet is not necessarily to be accepted. On this question of
relation new and important light is thrown by recent discoveries, whose
significance will be dealt with in the following section.