598 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
five syllabic signs are attached to each consonant, it would not be 
uncommon to find here and there a certain similarity to a Canaanite 
sign with a corresponding sound. This aspect was also pointed out by 
Arkwright in his unsuccessful attempt to derive the exotic portions 
of the Lycian alphabets from Cypriote forms: “In spite of the 
very large range of comparison afforded by a syllabary in which 
every consonant appears in five distinct forms,” ete.t This abundance 
of signs is offset by some serious deficiencies. In the first place, 
the Cypriote writing does not distinguish between k, k’, and g, t, t’, 
and d, p, p", and b. In transcribing Cypriote signs the conventional 
usage is to employ merely k,t,and p. Futhermore, the Cypriote writ- 
ing has but one surd sibilant and no gutturals at all. But fortunately 
our discussion is only made easier by these deficiencies; for in the 
five syllabic signs for k, k", and g we may look for the Canaanite 
k as well as for the Canaanite g, and in the five syllabic signs for 
t, t®, and d we may look for the Canaanite t as well as for the Canaan- 
ite d, ete. And to what can we attach the origin of the gutturals? 
Notwithstanding the great danger of deceptive coincidence, it 
nevertheless seems to me that some Canaanite characters exhibit 
such a great resemblance to Cypriote signs of a corresponding sound 
that I wonder why nobody, so far as I know, has yet called attention 
to it. I repeat here that in all probability it was not the Cypriote 
system that we know that came to the Canaanites, but an earlier 
form of the same family of writing systems, so that it is quite natural 
that we should be able to follow only in part the process of adapta- 
tion and development. As a possibility, though a remote one, I 
would mention that the origin of the Canaanite alphabet in its en- 
tirety should be looked for somewhere else, though the Cypriote 
system of Asia Minor may have supplied it with a large contingent, 
just as such contingents from it entered into the Greek alphabet of 
the peoples of Asia Minor. 
T begin with the vowel signs. In the same degree that the Cypriote 
writing makes little distinction between long and short open syllables, 
so there is little distinction between signs for long and short vowels. 
It has only the quantitatively indifferent vowel signs a, e, 1, 0, and u. 
Nor does it add these vowel signs to a syllabic sign of an open syllable 
ending in a, e, 1, 0, or u, in order to thus mark such an open syllable 
as a long one. In fact, the use of these vowel signs is very limited; 
they are employed only when the vowel begins a syllable, that is, 
when the vowel sign is at the same time the sign of an open syllable. 
The signs i and u are used, besides, as second components of a diph- 
thong, which components are considered in the Cypriote system of 
writing as separate open syllables. Examples of the use of the 
4 Jahreshefte des oesterreichischen archaeologischen Institutes, vol. 2, p. 74. 
