ALPHABET. The origin of alphabetical writing belongs to a period long antecedent to the date of any historical testimonies, or ancient monu ments, which have come down to us. This want of documentary evidence, however, has left a wider field for conjecture ; and a mistaken and sometimes disingenuous zeal for the honour of the Scriptures has not only led many learned men to ascribe the invention of letters to Adam, Seth, Enoch, and Noah, but to produce copies of the very alphabets they employed. Several such alphabets, derived chiefly from Bonaventura, Hepburn, Roccha, and Athanasius Kircher, may be seen in Bangii Ccelunt Orientis (or, according to the new title which was subsequently prefixed to it, Exercitationes de Ortu et Progresso Literarum), Hafnim, 1657, p. 99, sqq. Our own time also has produced an attempt to prove, from the astrological character of the Hebrew alphabet—i. e., from its representing the relations of the zodiac and seven planets—that it was discovered probably by Noah, on the 7th Sept. E. C. 3446 (Seyffart's Unser Alphabet ein Abbild des Thierkreises, Leipz. 1834).
The earliest and surest data, however, on which any sound speculation on this subject can be based, are found in the genuine palaeographical monuments of the Phoenicians ; in the manifest derivation of all other Syro-Arabian and almost all European characters from that type ; and in the testimony which history bears to the use and transmission of alphabetical writing.
The true principles of comparative Syro-Arabian palaeography are a discovery of almost modern date. Bochart, Bernard, and others, in their early attempts, did not even possess the Phcenician alphabet at all, but only the Samaritan of printed books or of the Hasmonman coins ; for Rhenferd was the first that produced the genuine alphabet, in 1705. Besides, there was a very general pre judice that our present square Hebrew character was the primitive type (a list of some of the champions of which opinion is given in Carpzov's Crit. Sacr. p. 227) ; and the want of documents long concurred with that notion in hindering any important effort in the right direction. It was reserved for Kopp to make (in his Bilder rand Schriften der Vorzeit, Mannheim, 1819) the first systematic representation of the genealogy of ancient Syro-Arabian alphabets. The latter portion of his second volume contains elaborate tabular views of the characters of a wide ethnographical circle, arranged according to their proximity to the parent type ; and, by the breadth of his comparison, as well as by his deductions from the laws affecting the art of writing, he first succeeded in establishing a number of new and unexpected truths, which have had a permanent influence on all subsequent inquiries. Lastly, Gesenius, who possesses infinite philological advantages over Kopp, and who has also long devoted a more exclusive attention to Phcenician remains, has recently given accurate copies of the completest collection of them ever published, and has illustrated the characters and the language of the monuments themselves, and the general subject of palaeography, with great learning and acumen : Seripura Linguayue Hue nicite Ilfonumenta, P. III., Lips. 1837—to which this article has many obligations.
Seventy-seven inscriptions and numerous coins —found chiefly at Tyre and Sidon, in Malta and Cyprus, in Sicily, the north of Africa, and on the coast of Spain—have preserved to us the earliest form of that alphabet from which all others have been derived. These remains themselves belong
generally to the period between Alexander the Great and the reign of Augustus ; yet one is sup posed to belong to the year 13. C. 394, and the latest to be of the year A. D. 203. They are thus much later than the oldest Greek inscriptions ; but that, nevertheless, does not affect their claim of preserving the most ancient known form of the primitive alphabet.
The characters of this alphabet, as seen on these monuments, are remarkable for their very angular and comparatively complex shape. This is an evidence of their antiquity ; as this is just that feature which the tachygraphy and softer writing materials of later times would naturally tend to obliterate. They also approach nearer to rude resemblances of the physical objects after which they are named, than those in any other Syro Arabian alphabet, and, as another confirmation, resemble most their nearest descendant, the oldest Greek letters. This alphabet may be said to con sist solely of consonants ; as in it ' 1 tt do not, except under the very narrowest limitations, possess the power of denoting the place and quality of a vowel, as they do in Hebrew. The mode of writing is, to use a technical term, in every respect much more defective than in Hebrew, especially in the middle of a word. There are no vestiges of vowel points nor of final letters. Words are chiefly written continuously, yet sometimes with intervals, and with a rudimental interpunction. The use of diacritical marks seems to have been known ; and that of abbreviations is very frequent. The course of the writing is from right to left, and there are no traces of the alternate or 14ovcrrpo0AP order. This alphabet was evidently invented, or first used, by a people speaking a Syro-Arabian language ; as an alphabet consisting so exclusively of consonants is possible only in that family of language in which the vowels express merely the accidental part, the modifications and relations of the idea, and not its essence. It is, moreover, fully adequate to denote all the sounds of their speech ; for it distinguishes that remarkable series of gutturals which is peculiar to the Syro-Arabians ; and is able to express every sound without compound letters, to which other nations, who adapted Phoenician characters to their own native sounds, have been obliged to have recourse. The names of the twenty-two characters, and the order of their arrangement, can only be gathered (but then with considerable certainty) from the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. The names are evidently Syro-Arabian ; and, as they appear in Hebrew, belong, as to their form, to a period anterior to the development of that language as we find it in the earliest books of the Old Testament : and, as they appear in the Greek, they have undergone modifications which (although some have considered them to betray signs of the Aramaic status enrphaticus) are explained by Gesenius to be chiefly the effect of an influence which is seen in other words &13, vcif3Xa ; thn, ,EcciX0a) which the Greeks derived from the Phoenicians.