Brintou.] 4^ [Feb. 7, 



§ 3. The Libyan Alphabet. 



The ancient Libyan or Numidian alphabet, preserved in the 

 tifinagh and tiddebakin of the Touaregs, was composed of twenty- 

 three letters, five of which served both as vowels and consonants. 

 As in the Etruscan alphabet, all letters could act as either initial or 

 terminal sounds. Two letters are in the Libyan which do not 

 appear in the Etruscan — b and 0. It is a notable coincidence, 

 however, that not only was the former sound usually rendered by 

 the ancient Roman writers by an f* but it is absent or rare in the 

 Ghdames, Rif, Bougie and Mzab dialects of modern Berber. f 

 Evidently the Etruscan in its omission of this phonetic element is 

 brought into closer relations to a large part of the Libyan speech. 



Diphthongs, double consonants, guttural and sibilant sounds are 

 of frequent recurrence in Libyan as they were in Etruscan, the 

 former trait being a similarity which separates both from pure 

 Semitic tongues. J 



The most frequent permutations of the Libyan letters, both in 

 the ancient and modern dialects, are as follows : 



b into/". 



k into x (guttural), or ch. 



I into d, or r. 



s into z, or ch, or sh. 



t into d, or dj, or dh. 



tch into k. 



ts into sh. 



th (0) into /. 



§ 4. Names of Divinities. 



The religion both of the Libyans and Etruscans resembled that 

 of most of their neighbors in being a marked polytheism. It is 

 said that more than two hundred Etruscan divinities have been dis- 

 criminated ;§ but I do not find the names of anything like this num- 

 ber. Otfried Miiller and Dr. Deecke give about fifty, of which 



* "Le changement de b et/ est tres frequent dans les dialectes berbers." llalevy, ftssai, 

 p. 21. " Le 6 libyque est souvent transcrit par / eu latin." Ibid., p. 15G. 

 t Basset, Manuel de tongue Kabyle, p. 0. 

 X Louis Rinn, Les OHgines Berberes, p. 59. 

 g Richard Burton, Etruscan Bologna, p. 192. 



