1885.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 83 



pointing ont tlic manner in which the Eunes or letters were 

 written. Wiiile our ancestors scratched lines and curves, the 

 ancient Egyptians took up the chisel and engraved pictures in 

 stone. This ])oints directly to inscriptions in stone as the first in 

 use, and the oldest we know for certain are the Hierogly[)hical 

 Inscriptions of Egypt. 



liunning jiarallel witli the tradition that Cadmus (also Cecrops, 

 Linns, Pahiniedes) and Simonides were inventors of the Greek 

 alphabet, and that it had its origin from the PhcBnicians, is a 

 tradition of aucient writers which claims that the alphabet was 

 of Egyptian origin. Sanchoniathon (Eusebius, ''Prep. Ev.,"l, 10, 

 p. 22), the Phosnician historian, says that Thoth, the Egyptian 

 Mercury, was the first who instructed the Phoenicians in "the 

 art of painting the articulations of the human voice." Plato 

 ("Plia3drus," 59), Diodorus (1,69), Plutarch ("Quest, conv.,'* 

 IX., ;3), and Aulus Gellius ("Nocc. Att. ") also mention this 

 tradition; while Tacitus says in his "Annals" (XL, 14): "The 

 Egyptians were the first who represented the perceptions of the 

 mind by the figures of animals (these, the most ancient monu- 

 ments of human memory imprinted on stone, are still to be seen), 

 and thus proclaimed tliemselves as inventors of the alphabet; 

 thereupon the Phoenicians, who excelled on the ocean, intro- 

 duced it into Greece, and gained glory just as though they had 

 invented what they merely received from others. ^^ It is strange 

 that this passage never received the attention of investigators on 

 the origin of our alphabet, as it might have turned their eyes in 

 the true direction. The latest testimony is that of an Arabic 

 writer, Ibn 'Abi Jaqiib, who wrote the first Arabic history of 

 literature (987 a.d.), and who says that the Greeks received only 

 sixteen letters min misri, i. o., from Egyiit, and that eight new 

 letters were added in Greece. What tradition hinted at and sur- 

 mised, it was the work of Egyptology to prove and establish 

 beyond a doubt. 



Picture-writing need not necessarily include jilionetic writing. 

 For instance, our Indians drew pictures which gave the sense of 

 their writing; but the Egyptians gave their pictures exact sylla- 

 bles or words. They soon found, however, that such a writing 

 would require too many pictures, so they selected twenty-seven 

 (or, if we count the variants, thirty-three) of these pictures to 

 represent simple letters. This was a step whose great import- 

 ance in the history of writing can now be fully realized. But 

 they also retained their syllabic writing (/. e., they could write a 

 word rud, " to blossom," with a syllable-sign rud, or spell it 

 out in simple letters, r-u-d). As they conceived their writing 

 to be an invention of the gods, and therefore of itself divine, 

 they engraved these pictures on stone, or used them on papyrus 



