EGYPTIAN WRITING. 405 CHAPTER LXIII. EGYPTIAN WRITING. Pictorial-Symbolic-Rosetta Stone-Their Interpretation. THE Egyptian mode of writing, as gathered from walls and coffins, pyramids and papyrus-rolls found by the side of mummies has already been described as a mere picture-writing. The ypáμμara ipá of Herodotus (II. 36) belongs to a time when the so-called hieroglyphics had already ceased to be the language of Egypt and were known only to Hierophants. They were mere copies of outward objects, and showed most distinctly the origin of language. His ypáμμaтa dηpotikά were already on the way to become phonetic, and represented not only words but sounds also, by pictures. The first light thrown upon this apparent mystery was due to two slight accidents, characteristic of the manner in which such investigations are often aided by apparently trifling circumstances. The so-called Rosetta Stone was found to contain a trilingual inscription in Greek, Coptic and hieroglyphics. Clemens Alexandrinus, moreover, in his Σrpúμатα, πρŵтα ΣтоIкoîs, lib. IV. ch. 4., gave, in quoting some inscriptions, fortunately a few proper names, dissected as it were into their elementary sounds. He knew already the difference referred to before, and divides them into Kuρloyλoyin (διὰ τῶν στράτων στοικαίων) viz., alphabetic and κυριολογικὴ κατὰ ouveow, figurative signs. The Ancients-The Canaanites and the Hebrew-The Arabic. THE greatest progress in the art of writing was undoubtedly made when the Phoenicians, rejecting the unbounded number and the variety of signs, for each sign which characterized the Egyptian picture-writing limited each sound to one character. This gave at once a simple and determined mode of writing, easy in itself, and still applicable to all purposes. Tacitus (Annal: xI., 14) states that they received it from Egypt; Lucan (III. 220), on the contrary, says that they invented it themselves. However that may be a decision is neither soon to be expected nor very anxiously to be desired-the Phoenician alphabet is the prototype of all alphabets of ancient and modern Europe. There is good reason to believe that it was the same as that of the Canaanites of the Old Testament; and that it presents probably the form of letters in which part of our Sacred Scriptures (the Pentateuch) was originally written. Barthélemy gave probably the first impulse to the study of these remarkable letters. Ulrich, Fr. Kopp and Hanacker, of Leyden, have since added largely to our stock of information. Used in Tyre and Sidon, it was written from right to left, originally without vowels, afterwards marking their place by dots. The Hebrew is presumed to have differed but little from Phoenician, as the Israelites lived so long in Egypt and were, as is well known, early acquainted with the art of writing. The earliest mention of writing on record is that of Moses, after the defeat of Amalek and before the laws of Mount Sinai, when he was commanded "to write this for a memorial in a book," whilst afterwards God is said to have written those laws Himself. In Christian times, however, a new writing had superseded the old, and in the third century the New Testament, according to Origenes, was written with these letters, except the name of Jehovah. This alphabet consists of 22 letters, without vowels but including a sign for a spiritus lenis, and is written from right to left. The Arabic has, through the powerful race by whom it is used, exercised a permanent and extensive influence on all the idioms and modes of writing of the East. It has 28 letters with Syriac names but in different order; the so-called Arabic numbers, used by all European nations, were derived from India, the ancient Arabic using its own letters, like the Greek, for that purpose. CHAPTER LXV. GREEK WRITING. Older and later letters-Variety of lines, &c.-Roman writing-Etruscan-Greek -Older and later forms-Romance writing. NEAR the Phoenicians there arose a flourishing Greek colony, Ionia, which the Greeks called "Pelasgi," wanderers by sea, the Romans, "Etruscans," and the Hebrews "Canaanites." These men settled in the Egean Sea, improved the Phoenician letters and carried them into Greece. This most plausible explanation was, of course, not palatable to the Greeks, who were reluctant to acknowledge any such obligation, and, therefore, Herodotus (v. 58), Plutarch (Symp. ix. 3), and after them Tacitus (xi. 14), ascribed the original invention to a Greek. Modern researches have exhibited the accounts of Cadmus, Palamedes, Simonides, and Epicharmus as fables. The olde Greek letters were known in Greece as Phoenician signs; Herodotus himself calls them distinctly γράμματα οι σημεία posvika; they retained both Phoenician forms and names. At a later period they were renamed and much modified, so that between the "classical" letters and even the latest Phoenician there is but a very faint resemblance. The original community, however, has been clearly established by a comparison of Phoenician letters with the oldest Greek inscriptions. It is probable, moreover, that the Greeks either borrowed a simpler alphabet of the Phoenicians or dropped some sounds not suitable for their language or pleasant to their fastidious ear. Whilst the Shemitic alphabet counted 22 letters and no vowels, the oldest Greek of 16 letters has already vowels: they must, therefore, have changed certain consonants into vowels and added to these the spiritus lenis of the Hebrew and Arabic. The last five letters of the Greek alphabet, alone, were original, but the exact period of their introduction is still obscure and uncertain. The series was complete at the time of the Persian war; it seems to have been first used in Ionia, and in the year 402 (Olymp. 94, archon Euclides) in Athens; a few Shemitic signs remained, even then, as numbers, especially the so-called digamma, the Latin f, with the value of six, the "Koppa," between and p, like the Latin q (qo) and the "sampi" at the end of the alphabet, representing nine hundred. The Greeks wrote originally in a greater variety of ways than other nations; inscriptions are known, in which the words are arranged in columns, ταποικον oι μοναιδον; others where they go from east to west, or from north to south, and back again, Bovoтpópndov; sometimes they are circular, opaipaidov, and in a few instances cuneiform. Afterwards they preferred, like all Eastern nations, the direction from right to left, though it is said that there exist as old inscriptions, written from left to right, a form which was generally adopted since the Persian war. Even in the rudest and most ancient inscriptions, however, the vowels are already written. The conviction that the Romans, so far from owing every thing to the Greeks, were even their seniors, has gained no |