VITA SINE LITERIS. 31 



towed the alphabet on the Greeks. With less assurance, the Phœnicians were said to have 

 obtained the privilege from Egypt. " Primi per figuras animalinm," writes Tacitus/ 

 " iEo-yptii sensus mentis efRngebant, (ea antiquissima momimenia memori;e humanœ 

 impressa saxis cernuntur,) et literarum semet inventores perhibent ; inde Phœnicas, 

 quia mari prcxpollebant, intulisse G-rcecisB, gloriamque adeptos, tauquam reppererint quœ 

 acceperant." But Tacitus hardly does justice to the Phœnicians, wh(Mi he represents them 

 as merely handing on what they had received If, indeed, (for that point has iirst to be 

 settled) it was the Egyptian system of writing that the Phoenicians had adopted into their 

 Aleph-Belh, which the G-reeks in turn were to further modify into their Alpha-Beta, the 

 praise of inventors, and not merely of common carriers, is their due. What they gave to 

 the Greeks was something quite different from what the Egyptians had to give them. If 

 Egypt gave them the hint, they made such excellent use of it that it is not beyond their 

 deserts to honour them as original inventors, as their representative, Cadmus, has for ages 

 been honoured. What is the evidence, in the first place, that they made the Egytian 

 symbols even their model ? 



" The two alphabets," says Isaac Taylor, " agree neither as to the numberj the 

 order, the manner, nor the forms of the respective letters. Till a A^ery recent period these 

 difficiilties led scholars of repute to the conc^lusion that classical tradition was at fault in 

 asserting that the Phoenician letters were originally obtained from Egypt."' In the fifth 

 edition of his "Histoire Générale et Système Comparé des Langues Sémitiques," Ernest 

 Eenan wrote that "the origin of writing, with the Semites, as with all other peoples, was 

 hidden in profound night. Then, after asking whether it was derived from the hierogly- 

 phics of Egypt or from the cuneiform characters of Assyria, or from both, or whether its 

 phonetic stage was reached through the Hyksos, he thus proceeds : " To affirm that the 

 Semitic alphabet, such as we know it, is really a creation of the Semites, it is not necessary 

 to insist that the Semites, in creating it, did not avail themselves of any previous experi- 

 ment." And in a note he adds : "It has long been observed that in the ancient Semitic 

 alphabets the form of each letter re]3resents what the name of the letter signifies. But it 

 may be that these names were given to characters already formed, and indicate nothing as 

 to their formation. The resemblances of name and form, which have been shown to exist 

 between certain Semitic and Egyptian characters, are more significant. But we must wait 

 till M. de Eougé has published his researches on this subject in a complete form." - The 

 distinguished scholar, to whom M. Renan so hopefully refers, died before the purposed 

 revision of his work could be carried out. But fifteen years later, his son, M. Jacques de 

 Rongé, worthily performed the task, and the Avorld was placed in possession of information 

 which left little doixbt as to the debt of Phoenicia and therefore of all western civilization 

 to the ancient Egyptians. Hitherto, the comparison had been fruitlessly made between 

 the Phoenician characters and the hieroglyphics. While those symbols were devoted to 

 monumental and sacred uses, there had been, at an early date, developed out of them 

 a series of cursive characters which were employed for secular and literary purposes. 

 Until recently, the hieratic of the New Empire and the demotic derived from it were the 

 only cursive forms known. But exploration haA'ing opportunely brought to light speci- 

 mens of a very much older form of hieratic, which arose during the early empire 



' Annal, xi. ch. 14. - Hist, des Langues Sémitiques, p. 114, footnote. 



