In tracing the derivation of all other alphabets from this type, the records of the intercourse of nations with each other and of their gradual acqui sition of the arts of civilization furnish indeed an important evidence ; but the eye, especially when trained in the school of such observation, is alone qualified to test the truth of even historical de ductions on such a subject. It is, therefore, only the attentive view of accurate plates which will enable the reader fully to understand the following, genealogical table of alphabets, which is taken from Gesenius. To give it entire is, nevertheless, the shortest way of laying before the student the results of a tedious inquiry; and will, at the same time, secure the opportunity of subsequent reference, by which the treatment of the several Syro-Arabian languages, under their respective heads, may be materially facilitated.
The lines which run between the different names are intended to mark the channel, and sometimes the distinct yet convergent channels through which any given character has been derived. Thus, to give an illustration, the square Hebrew of our printed books is shewn to descend from the old Aramman of Egypt, but to be modified by the in fluence of the Palmyrene.
This primitive alphabet underwent various changes in its transmission to cognate and alien nations. The former class will be incidentally noticed when treating of the Syro-Arabian lan guages separately. Among the latter, those modi fications which were necessary to adapt it to the Greek language are the most remarkable. The ancient Greek alphabet is an immediate descen dant of the Phoenician ; and its letters correspond, in name, figure, and order, to those of its proto type. Even the course of the writing, from right to left, was at first observed in short inscriptions ; and then half retained in the But as the characters were reversed in the alternate lines of the 6oucrrpocb77569, and the order from left to right became at length the standard one, the systematic reversal of the characters became the law. This of itself was a striking departure from the Phcenician mode of writing. A more impor tant change was produced by the nature of the lan guage. The Greeks found the numerous gutturals superfluous, and at the same time felt tIle indis pensable necessity of characters to denote their vowels. Accordingly, they converted Altph, He, 7ed, and Ain into A, E, I, O. This last trans mutation (which is the only surprising one) is accounted for by Gesenius, on the ground that the Phoenician Ain leaned so much to the 0 sound, that it was written in Phcenician inscriptions to express that vowel (in cases when it arose from the fusion of the sounds A and I), and that the Greeks, when writing a Phoenician word in their ,own way, represented it by 0, as BceXa6Y2s = +1153,2. Moreover, the LXX. appear to have felt the same influence, as Mayd for n:jm, Gen. xxii. 24 ( Vide Gesenii Moituntenta, p. 431). Chtth also became the rough breathing, and subsequently was appropriated to the long E.
The two alphabets correspond as follows : There is evidence that the Greeks received all these letters.(except Tsade), because they continued to employ them as numerals after they had ceased to use them as letters. The loss of Tsade, however, affected the numerical value of all letters below its place in the series. They subsequently rejected three letters in writing; ga0, the Roman F ; clurra, the Roman Q; and one of the sibilants. Gesenius explains the last case thus: The ancient alphabet had adopted Zeta for Zain, Sigma properly for Samech, and San for Shin. As the sound sh was disagreeable to the ear of the Greeks, it was dropped. Having thus no need of two characters to express their single S, the two letters gradually coalesced, and were indiscriminately called Sigma and San. But the S retained the position of the Shin, and not of the Samech; and when Xi was introduced, it usurped the place of the Samech.
He also thinks that, in the statement of Pliny (Hist. NaG vii. 56), about sixteen or eighteen Cadmean letters, the first number is decidedly too small ; but finds some ground for the eighteen of Aristotle, in the facts that the Greeks rejected three, and so rarely used Z, that the actual number of current letters was reduced to that amount.
The historical testimonies respecting the use and transmission of letters disagree much as to the nation to which the discovery is to be ascribed.
There are, however, only three nations which can compete for the honour—the Babylonians, the Phcenicians, and the Egyptians. Many eminent men, among whom are Kopp and Hoffmann, sup port the Babylonian claim to the priority of use. The chief arguments, as stated by them (Gilder end Schriften, ii. 147; Gram. Syr. p. 61), are based on the very early civilization of Babylon ; on numerous passages which attribute the dis covery to the 26pot, Syri, and XaXadios (quoted in Hoffmann, 4 c.); and especially on the existence of a Babylonian brick containing an inscription in characters resembling the Phoenician. To these arguments Gesenius has replied most at length in the article Palreogmfihie, in Ersch and Gruber's A Ilgemeine .Encyclopddie. He especially endea vours to invalidate the evidence drawn from the brick (of which Kopp possessed an inaccurate transcript, and was only able to give an unsatis factory interpretation), and asserts that the characters are Phoenician, but by no means those of the most antique shape. He considers the language of the inscription to be Aramaic ; and maintains that the only conclusion which can fairly be drawn from the existence of such an inscription there, is, that during the time of the Persian kings the Babylonians possessed a common alphabet almost entirely agreeing with the Phoenician. And, indeed, as this inscription only contains seven letters, its claim to originality is not a matter of much mo ment ; for, in the only practical question of palm. graphy, the Phoenician alphabet still continues to be, to us at least, the primitive one. He also objects that it is, in itself, improbable that the al phabet was invented by the Aramacans, on the ground that, in their dialect, as far as it is known to us, I 31 ti are very weak and indistinct ; where as the existence of such letters in the primitive alphabet at all, is an evidence that they were well marked consonants, at least to the people who felt the necessity of denoting them by separate signs.
Nearly an equal number of ancient authorities might be cited as testimonies that the discovery of letters was ascribed to the Phoenicians and to the Egyptians (see Walton's Pnilegomena,ii. 2). And, indeed, there is .a view, suggested by Gesenius (Pak.ographie, 1. c.), by which their rival claims might, to a certain extent, be reconciled : that is, by the supposition that the hieroglyphical was, in deed, the earliest kind of all writing ; but that the Phcenicians, whose commerce led them to Egypt, may have borrowed the first germ of alphabetical writing from the ,phonetic hieroglyphs. There is at least a remarkable coincidence between the Syro Arabian alphabet and thephonetic hieroglyphs, in that in both the figure of a material object was made the sign of that sound with which the name of the object began. To follow this further would lead beyond the object of this article. But, if this theory were true, it would still leave the Phoeni cians the possibility of having actually developed the first alphabetical writing ; and that, together with the fact that the earliest monuments of the Syro-Arabians have preserved their characters, and the unanimous consent with which ancient writers ascribe to them the transmission of the alphabet to the Greeks (Herod v. 58; Diod. Sic. v. 74), may make the probabilities preponderate in their favour. [WRITING.]—J. N.