692 ORIENTAL SCHOLARSHIP DURING THE PRESENT CENTURY. 



Hiucks, x)ai"ticiilarly to his paper on the P^gyptiau alphabet published in 

 " The Transactions of the Irish Academy in 1847." All the facts coucerii- 

 iiig" the history of the alphabet have been carefully put together in 

 Lenormant's great work, ^^JEssai snr la Propagation de V Alphabet Phent- 

 C'?e»." Here, then, we have a clear line of communication between 

 Egypt, Phenicia, and Greece, which Oriental scholarship has laid bare 

 before our eyes. To judge from the character of the hieratic letters as 

 copied by the Phenicians, the copying must have taken place about the 

 nineteenth century b. c.*; accordiug to others, even at an earlier date. 

 It is well known that hieroglyphic writing for monumental purposes 

 goes back in Egypt to the Fourth, or even the Second Dyuastyt, and on 

 these earliest inscriptions we not oidy tind the hieroglyphic system of 

 writing fully develoi>ed, but we actually see hieroglyphic i)ictures of 

 paper| and books, of inkstands and pens. But here again the beginnings 

 escape us, and the origin of writing, though we know the conditions under 

 which it took place withdraws itself from our sight almost as nnich as 

 the origin of language itself. The question has been asked whether, as 

 the oldest cuneiform writing clearly betrays an ideographic origin, its 

 first germs could be traced back to the ideographic alphabet of Egypt. 

 This would make Egypt the schoolmaster, or at least the older school- 

 fellow of the Mesopotamian Kingdoms. But, whatever the future may 

 disclose, at present Oriental scholarship has no evidence with which to 

 confirm such a hypothesis. 



The same applies to another hypothesis which has been advocated 

 with great ingenuity by one of the members of our Congress, M. Terrien 

 de Lacouperie. He thiidcs it possil)le to show that the oldest Chinese 

 letters, which, as is generally admitted, had an ideogi'ai)hic beginning 

 like that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, owed their first origin to 

 Babylon. It is generally supposed that the cuneiform alphabet used 

 by the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria was invented by 

 a non-Semitic race called Sumerians and Accadians. AVhether the 

 Chinese borrowed from these races or from the Babylonians is difficult 

 to decide. It nuist likewise remain for the present an open <piestion 

 whether these Sumerians and Accadians can be identified with a race 

 dwelling originally in the North and East of Asia. There are scholars 

 who place the original home of the Accadians on the Persian Gulf, 

 though the evidence for this view also is very weak. We nnist not 

 forget that ideographs, such as i)ictures of the sun and moon or of the 

 superincumbent skj', of mountains and plants, of the mouth and nose, 

 of eyes and ears, must of necessity share certain features in common 

 in whatever country they are used for hieroglyphic purposes. The 

 scholar has the same feeling with regard to these very general ideo- 

 graphic pictures which he has with regard to the very indefinite roots of 



*.J. de Rouge Memoire sitr I'Origine Egypiienne de V Alphabet Phe'nicieii, 1874, p. 108. 

 tlu the Aslinioleau Museum at Oxford is a monument of the Sei-oud Dynasty. 

 |: Roug6, /. c, p. 103. 



