When and how our present alphabet was invented has been matter of speculation from the earliest times. The myths of antiquity ascribed it to Thoth (q.v.) or to Cad mus, which only denotes their belief in its being brought from the east (Kedem), or being perhaps primeval. The Talmud ascribes it to a special revelation. It has been a question whether there were several original alphabetical systems, or whether one is to lie assumed as having given rise to the various modes of writing now in use. Thus, three principal sources—Semitic, Chinese, Indian—are given by Klaproth. It is, how ever, now agreed on all hands that it is the Phenician character, as we now know it, to which we directly owe our own. See PIIENICIA. From it many streams have flowed out. The principal of these appear to have been—first, the Semitic, in which the values of the letters have remained almost identical with those of the original Phenician, with exception, perhaps, of a few sounds added to them in Persian, for the purpose of expressing certain Indo-Germanic sounds not existing in Phenician. This class has further been subdivided into Harsco-Samaritan and Aramaic, the latter embracing the square or modern Hebrew, which is closely allied to the Palmyrene, the Estranghelo or Syriac, the Sabian, the Arabic in its different forms, the Mongol, the Pehlvi, Anne man, etc.. The second or central division embraces the writing of Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy, from the zEolo-Doric, Etruscan, Umbrian, Oscan, and other but little known kinds, to the late Pompeian Graffiti. A further group would include the " ite" characters, and seems to have originated in central Arabia, wh,-nce it appears to have spread to Africa and India,where the Magadbi—the oldest variation the Phenician assumed here—gave rise to the five families of Devanaghari, Pali, Dravidian, Oceanian. and Thibetan.
Yet, when we speak of the Phenician as being the mother of all our known alpha bets, we must not be understood finally to ascribe to the Phenicians the original inven tion of it in the first instance. We shall only indicate here that the theory to that effect, held by Gesenius and others, will probably, sooner or later, have to give way to the more recent results of De Rouge's investigations, who, with great show of proba bility, believes it to have been borrowed, or rather adapted from certain archaic hiero glyphics of 'Egypt. It would appear as if at some very afchaic period the Phenicians
had borrowed the hieratic signs then in use; as, indeed. the prisse papyrus, the oldest in existence, exhibits striking similarities with the Phenician characters. Instead, how ever, of simultaneously taking the Egyptian names for these characters, they invented new ones according to their own fancy, and to the supposed similarity of the characters to some particular thing. The Egyptian origin of the Phenician character, if con firmed by further researches, would be a striking instance of the correctness of the tra dition to that effect, which Tacitus has preserved (Annat. xi. 14).
We have in the course of this work treated at full length several points of this subject. See HIEROGLYPHICS, CUNEIFORM, ALPHABET, etc. We may therefore, for a fuller elucidation of the details, refer to those articles. We shall only add in this place that the manner of writing is very different with many nations. The Mexican picture writing begins at the bottom; the Chinese and Japanese, as well as the Mongols, write in columns beginning from the top, and going from right to left. The Egyptian hiero glyphics have no fixed direction; but the hieratic and demotic, though the single letters are formed from right to left, always run from left to right; as is also the case in Ethi opic, cuneiform, and Indo-Germanic languages generally. The Semitic languages have retained the Phenician mode of writing from right to left—all but the numerals—a mode still retained in archaic Hellenic and Etruscan. By degrees, however, the writer not wishing to return to the beginning of the line, and continuing right underneath the last word penned, a double mode was introduced, called the boustrophedon—as the ox plows. Finally, this too was abandoned, and the direction from left to right was fol lowed. About the many various styles of modification our characters have undergone iu the course of time, the punctuation of the words, and the rest, we refer to ALPHA BET. The materials and the instruments (see PArvnus, PEN, etc.) differed much at vari ous times. Consult Steinthal, Die Entwickelung der Schrift (1852); Wuttke, Geschichte der Schrift (1872).