XIII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 493 



the Semites to the "Aryans," is not necessary, and cannot be 

 proved. The syllabary stands apart, as an independent or 

 separate development, while the eastern origin of the "Alphabet" 

 is for ever attested by the forms, the order, and very names of the 

 letters, the Greek alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. being the Semitic 

 aleph, ox ; beth, house ; gimel, camel ; dakth, door, names them- 

 selves suggestive of the ultimate pictorial or hieroglyphic origin of 

 the system 1 . Early forms or prototypes of these letters have been 

 sought, with but partial success, amongst the Egyptian hieroglyphs, 

 the Babylonian cuneiforms, and the rock-inscriptions of the 

 Minaeans and Sabaeans in South Arabia. 



These rock-inscriptions, great numbers of which have been 

 recovered in recent years by Halevy, Glaser and others, show that 

 in very remote times South Arabia, presumable cradle of the 

 Semitic race, " was a land of culture and literature, a seat of 

 powerful kingdoms and wealthy commerce, which cannot fail to 

 have exercised an influence upon the general history of the world 2 ." 

 Everything points to Sab a (Sabcea), i.e. Yemen, as the Sheba of 

 Scripture, which, in the time of Solomon, had extensive trading 

 relations with Tyre, probably also with India and 

 the east coast of Africa from Abyssinia to Sofala 

 beyond the Zambesi. That the gold brought by the Tyrians and 

 the Queen of Sheba came through Sofala from the neighbouring 

 mines worked by the Sabaean Semites has been all but proved by 

 the investigations of Bent amid the ruins of Zimbabwe and other 

 parts of Manica and Matabililand. Sabaea is shown by Assyrian 

 inscriptions to have been a powerful state in the 8th century B.C., 

 when it was conterminous northwards with the Ninevite empire 

 under Tigleth-Pileser and Sargon III. Like the Egypt of Menes, 

 it was formed by the fusion of several Himyarite principalities 

 ruled by the so-called Makarib, " Blessed," or high-priest of Saba, 

 who gave his name to the land, as Ashiir did to that of the kindred 

 Assyrian Semites of Nineveh. 



1 Cadmus also, despite the great authority of Aug. Fick (Die Griechischen 

 Personennamen, 2nd ed. 1894), is a Phoenician name occurring in the form of 

 Qadmu, with the sense of godlike, on a cuneiform tablet quoted by Sayce in 

 Acad. Sept. 22, 1894, p. 217. 



- Sayce, quoted by S. Laing, to whom I am indebted for some of these data 

 Human Origins, passim}. 



