THE EVOLUTION OF THE ALPHABET. 243 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE ALPHABET. 



By M. G. VALBEET. 



STUDENTS of considerable merit have published solid and 

 important studies on the writings of the Oriental world and 

 the alphabet. Their work is now supplemented by the Histoire 

 de Vecriture dans Vaniiquite, of M. Philippe Berger (Paris, 1891), 

 in which the attempt is made to give a comprehensive view of 

 the whole subject. M. Berger has long been a careful student of 

 Semitic languages and religions, and is engaged in the editorial 

 work of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. He is habitu- 

 ally careful in investigation, attentive to the facts alone, and is 

 scrupulous to distinguish between what is proved and what is 

 only half proved or has only begun to be proved. While he gives 

 the highest credit for the introduction of the alphabet to the 

 Phoenicians, he goes beyond them to the origin of writing in the 

 primitive and crude processes to which thinking or almost think- 

 ing beings resorted in order to represent their mental concep- 

 tions by material and visible signs. He speaks of the notched 

 sticks used by the Scythians and the Germans for correspondence 

 and divining ; of the wampum of the Iroquois — belts or necklaces 

 of shells, the combinations of which formed geometrical figures, 

 and which sometimes included as many as seven thousand pieces ; 

 of the quippos of the Peruvians — collections of woolen cords of 

 different colors, in which knots were tied at different distances. 

 Each color, and every peculiarity in the form of the knots, had 

 its meaning. The Peruvians had employed another method be- 

 fore inventing the quippos. " It is curious," wrote the Spanish 

 Jesuit Acosta, in the sixteenth century, " to see decrepit old men 

 learning the Pater Noster with one round of pebbles, the Ave 

 Maria with another, and the Credo with a third, and to know 

 that that stone means ' conceived of the Holy Ghost/ and that 

 other ' suffered under Pontius Pilate ' ; and then, when they make 

 a mistake, taking them up again, looking only at the pebbles." 

 The Iroquois made as good use of their wampum. The shells 

 stood to them for ideas and phrases. Their messengers could con- 

 vey with the aid of wampum entire speeches, which they would 

 recite word for word on reaching their destination. But these, 

 as M. Berger remarks, are not writing, but mnemonic expedients, 

 methods by which an artificial memory was created. We do not 

 write when we tie a knot in our handkerchief to keep from forget- 

 ting anything. 



A closer approach to writing is pictography, or the art of ex- 

 hibiting to the eyes what the mind sees or believes it sees. Man 

 of the Quaternary epoch already practiced this art. We possess 



