At a time so remote as to antedate all remains of Egyptian oivilization, a writing of the true pictorial type seems to have suggested the systems of three different races—Egyp tians, who may have been African and Indo-German; the men of the center of Arabia Shemites; and the men of the Tigris valley, apparently Uraltaic. The identity of origin, necessarily difficult to prove where the deductions result very differently, aria where the sign has a different meaning in four languages, is inferred from the choice of the same thing to represent the same metaphor, and from the identity of secondary forms through out. The accepted derivation of Phenician from XVIII. dynasty hieratic is wrongly based on a necessary resemblance; both are the conventional representations of the same thing, but by far-separated routes. For latest collations of cuueatic and Shetnitic, see Deecke, Z.M.G. The hieroglyphs are true word-pictures, and the language being one they change into alphabetic. The writing is chiseled, direct or columnar, with always a determinative sign. The hieratic or priests' system, modified about the time of the Hyksos, is a graphic variety of the same, reversed, written with a brush on linen or papyrus. The demotic, in another dialect, direct, quickly formed, filially becomes cursive. The hieroglyphs were still read in Trajan's time, and a bas tard demotic was written long after the Arab conquest. The Greeks of Alexandria introduced a beautiful graphic variety of the Greek alphabet, and, written direct, with demotic signs added, it served as the vehicle of a living dialect of Egyptian till modern times. The third race, that best known to us as leaves its first records of the 20 c. n.c. (?) in a few names of kings on bricks, on stone, on seals. Very quickly the character, a singular series of outline pictures, syllabic, direct, with determinative signs, appears accompanied by an east Shemitic idiom, the Babylonian; and the signs are com posed of many lines each in shape of an arrow or wedge, whence the name, cuneiform, or better enneatie, for all such inscriptions. Now follow a northern dialect, that of Nineveh, with fewer lines to the signs and a growing syllabary; the Babylonian contin ues; the mountaineers to the north-east, not Shemites nor Aryans, borrowed a distorted copy, the Susian; and lastly, the Persian or, as we .now know it, the Bactrian, makes an alphabet of forty curtailed and legible characters, with almost no determinative signs—an alphabet thereafter to record the glories of the conquerors of Greece. Front the Nine vite comes the rude and scanty Armenian hardly yet enough deciphered to be classified as to language; the old Assyrian commences, the fine elear-eut language of the old inscriptions and gems; the Babylonian soon falls under its power, but still continues for local use; and from the Susian, apparently, but with traces of all, is generated still a new system, that of the Uraltaic Medes. All thus far are cuneatic, all are direct, and all divide their words. The Assyrian, first in glory and spread in the 10th c. n.c., is the first of all Shemitic languages to generate a regular syllabary of twenty-two letters; but this itself bears traces of a late arrangement, and only thirteen of them appear in full form. After the fall of the Assyrian empire, the Babylonian character, debased and with more or less Assyrian influence, continues to be written until the Sassanian era, also in dialect to Aramaic. But from the true standard cuneatic syllabary are gendered, at some date probably long preceding the 10th c. sac., a new series of systems no longer euneatic, but more or less approaching to the type of our own letter. One of these, 13, the Kypriot, only lately deciphered, has a syllabary of four vowels in combina tion with ten consonants, occurs as an antiquated Greek dialect in connection with pure Greek and Phenician inscriptions, principally in Cyprus, and supposedly- as late as the times of Alexander. It remains to speak of the thiid or center variety of the three early types, the • Yoktanld Family.
The original inhabitants of the center of Arabia—in Hebrew, B'nai Yuktan; in Arabic Beal Kahtan—have long spread from the n.w., touching Palestine as far s. as Nubia,
and w. to Barbary. We have called them doubtfully Khittim or Hittites, though the Bible name would indicate Cyprus as one of their colonies, and identification is hin dered by our not knowing who the Hittites were, nor what language they spoke. At any rate, Ramses II. found them in Palestine, and they then had scribes. The curious inscribed stones of Hamath appear to belong to the center or Himyari variety of letter; and the western, the Ghassani, has been found mixed with late Moabite legends. The Hilnyari, the Musnad of Arabic writers, was supplanted in the s. of Arabia by the modern Arabic. It adds 0 letters to the Phenician, and is a curious humped kind of alphabet, written reversed or woven. The Gheez, extinct in the 4th c. A.D., is an enormous syllabary of 33 letters, combined by differentiation with 6 vowels and with additional diphthongs. The other divisions are the old and the new systems of the Barbary tribes. The peculiar vowel treatment of Ethiopic—its fullness, its direct writing, and an identity of signs, all pointing to an Indian rather than a Shemitic rela tion—led Lenormant to derive the old Indian or Magadhi from a supposed primitive alphabet of Yemen. We follow an apparently conclusive German authority in referring the Indian D to the cuneatic. But the systems of this whole A family are Very unlike, and there may be a supposition possible. The Libyan may represent n true Arabic alphabet, rudely formed from the hieratic syllabary, and of which the Himyari would be an enlargement under outside influence. The Hittites may have been, as often argued, a foreign race, who made a complicated and flexible syllabary out of the cuneatic as a basis, and from them the Indians may have obtained their own rich alpha. bet, and the forms which vary almost beyond recognition.
hinc archaic Plienician, of 22 letters, is the parent of all the alphabets, properly so named first letters. It is founl iu connection with cuneatic in the 10th c. B.C.; descends by a regular process of greater and greater curtailment through all the colonies of that sea-faring race; mixed with Libyan it formed the script of the rivals of Rome; and, still further debased, passed over to the and the mixed race of Bastulo poen i 11 ear cape Trafalgar. It is distinguished by its abominable execution. Seldom chis eled, usually scratched, often merely smeared or painted, the letters finally become almost indecipherable, and we see for the first time the quick and careless workmanship of a race of traders and clerks., Let it be understood that all inscriptions down to the fall of Babylon are never Aramaic, or of the northern Shemitic branch; they are all of the cen tral band—either western, Kenzani or Ychudith, or eastern, Atlimith or Babli. The Hebrew branch, E, must never then be confounded with the Chaldee jargon of the later prophets, so often understood by that term; it differs, in company with Moabite, from the Phenician, only in its being better executed and having a scriptio plenior. After the captivity the Samaritans retained the old alphabet,which passed through transition down to the present Samaritan type-letters and the late manuscript. The Hebrew letters I were used on the coins of the Maccabees, and again, during the last flicker of independ ence, durbg the revolt of Bar Kokhabas. G, the Aramaic family, like all true Shemitic alphabets, 1.3 written reversed, and in modern times pointed for vowels and precessed letters.
Aramaic Branch. G.
Old Aramaic. Secondarr Aramaic.
Aramaic of the Papyri. • I elyrine. Jewish. Persian.
It varies from a type evidently influenced, by the local cuneatic found on the Babylonian tablets, to a coarse style on the demotic papyri. It supplanted all the old. alpha bets in western Asia by the time of the last Achemenians, and results in The Mandaite differentiates for vowels; but most Syrian letters are cursive, or bound by a bottom line. Final letters are the rule, and the best differentiate for place in the word. The Syrians of Malabar have a slightly changed Nestorian alphabet.