28 -MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



be taken as the real origin of this system, whether the scribes in 

 question were Akkadians, Egyptians, Minaeans or Europeans, 

 that is, whether the Phoenician alphabet had a cuneiform, a hiero- 

 glyphic, a South Arabian, a Cretan (^Egean), Ligurian or Iberian 

 origin, for all these and perhaps other peoples have been credited 

 with the invention. On this point there will be more to say 

 when we come to discuss Himyaritic, pre-Mykenaean,- and Italic 

 origins. 



But whatever be the source of the Phoenician, that of the 

 Persian system current under the Achaemenides 



The Persian . . . t . 



and other is clear enough. It is a true alphabet of 37 cna- 



Cuneiform racters, derived by some selective process directly 



from the Babylonian cuneiforms, without any at- 

 tempt at a modification of their shapes. Hence although simple 

 compared with its prototype, it is clumsy enough compared with 

 the Phoenician script, several of the letters requiring groups of as 

 many as four or even five "wedges" for their expression. None 

 of the other cuneiform systems also derived from the Akkadian 

 (the Assyrian, Elamite, Vannic, Medic) appear to have reached 

 the pure alphabetic state, all being still encumbered with numerous 

 complex syllabic characters. The subjoined table, for which I have 

 to thank Mr T. G. Pinches, will help to show the genesis of the 

 cuneiform combinations from the earliest known pictographs. 

 These pictographs themselves are already reduced to the merest 

 outlines of the original pictorial representations. But no earlier 

 forms, showing the gradual transition from the primitive picture 

 writing to the degraded pictographs here given, have yet come to 

 light. 



Here it may be asked, what is to be thought of the already- 

 mentioned pebble-markings from the Mas-d'Azil 

 Cave of the Madelenian (late Old Stone) Age? If 



they are truly phonetic, then we must suppose that 

 Palaeolithic man not only invented an alphabetic writing system, 

 but did this right off by intuition, as it were, without any previous 

 knowledge of letters. At least no one will suggest that the 

 Dordogne cave-dwellers were already in possession of pictographic 

 or other crude systems, from which the Mas-d'Azil " script " 

 might have been slowly evolved. Yet M. Piette, who groups 



