Handbook of Universal Literature | Page 6

or thoughts, which afterwards became the
symbols of sounds. For instance, the letter M is traced down from the

conventionalized picture of an owl in the ancient language of Egypt,
Mulak. This was used first to denote the bird itself; then it stood for the
name of the bird; then gradually became a syllabic sign to express the
sound "mu," the first syllable of the name, and ultimately to denote
"M," the initial sound of that syllable.
In like manner A can be shown to be originally the picture of an eagle,
D of a hand, F of the horned asp, R, of the mouth, and so on.
Five systems of picture writing have been independently invented,--the
Egyptian, the Cuneiform, the Chinese, the Mexican, and the Hittite.
The tradition of the ancient world, which assigned to the Phoenicians
the glory of the invention of letters, declared that it was from Egypt that
they originally derived the art of writing, which they afterwards carried
into Greece, and the latest investigations have confirmed this tradition.
2. THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET.--Of the Phoenician alphabet the
Samaritan is the only living representative, the Sacred Script of the few
families who still worship on Mount Gerizim. With this exception, it is
only known to us by inscriptions, of which several hundred have been
discovered. They form two well-marked varieties, the Moabite and the
Sidonian. The most important monument of the first is the celebrated
Moabite stone, discovered in 1868 on the site of the ancient capital of
the land of Moab, portions of which are preserved in the Louvre. It
gives an account of the revolt of the King of Moab against Jehoram,
King of Israel, 890 B.C. The most important inscription of the Sidonian
type is that on the magnificent sarcophagus of a king of Sidon, now one
of the glories of the Louvre.
A monument of the early Hebrew alphabet, another offshoot of the
Phoenician, was discovered in 1880 in an inscription in the ancient
tunnel which conveys water to the pool of Siloam.
3. THE GREEK ALPHABET.--The names, number, order, and forms
of the primitive Greek alphabet attest its Semitic origin. Of the many
inscriptions which remain, the earliest has been discovered, not in
Greece, but upon the colossal portrait statues carved by Rameses the
Great, in front of the stupendous cave temple at Abou-Simbel, at the
time when the Hebrews were still in Egyptian bondage. In the seventh
century B. C., certain Greek mercenaries in the service of an Egyptian
king inscribed a record of their visit in five precious lines of writing,
which the dry Nubian atmosphere has preserved almost in their pristine

sharpness.
The legend, according to which Cadmus the Tyrian sailed for Greece in
search of Europa, the damsel who personified the West, designates the
island of Thera as the earliest site of Phoenician colonization in the
Aegean, and from inscriptions found there this may be regarded as the
first spot of European soil on which words were written, and they
exhibit better than any others the progressive form of the Cadmean
alphabet. The oldest inscriptions found on Hellenic soil bearing a
definite date are those cut on the pedestals of the statues which lined
the sacred way leading to the temple of Apollo, near Miletus. Several
of those, now in the British Museum, range in date over the sixth
century B.C. They belong, not to the primitive alphabet, but to the
Ionian, one of the local varieties which mark the second stage, which
may be called the epoch of transition, which began in the seventh and
lasted to the close of the fifth century B.C. It is not till the middle of the
fifth century that we have any dated monuments belonging to the
Western types. Among these are the names of the allied states of Hellas,
inscribed on the coils of the three-headed bronze serpent which
supported the gold tripod dedicated to the Delphian Apollo, 476 B.C.
This famous monument was transported to Byzantium by Constantine
the Great, and still stands in the Hippodrome at Constantinople. Of
equal interest is the bronze Etruscan helmet in the British Museum,
dedicated to the Olympian Zeus, in commemoration of the great victory
off Cumae, which destroyed the naval supremacy of the Etruscans, 474
B.C., and is celebrated in an ode by Pindar.
The third epoch witnessed the emergence of the classical alphabets of
European culture, the Ionian and the Italic.
The Ionian has been the source of the Eastern scripts, Romaic, Coptic,
Slavic, and others. The Italic became the parent of the modern
alphabets of Western Europe.
4. THE MEDIAEVAL SCRIPTS.--A variety of national scripts arose
in the establishment of the Teutonic kingdoms upon the ruins of the
Roman Empire. But the most magnificent of all mediaeval scripts was
the Irish, which