CANAANITE ALPHABET—PRATORIUS. 599 
ae signs: K +1 & X., i. e., a-mu-ko-lo- t= Apv«doot (Amy kloi) 
pales AX ME TIE KICK TORE e., me-ma-na-me-no-7 | e- 
u-we-re-ke-si-a-se= Méuvapevor evFepyecias “Gaeiiennociu euver- 
gesias); XK I X& x, i. ¢., a--we-t=aiFé (aivei); HL! K W Y,i. e., te- 
0-i-se= Yéo%s (theois). > 
Since the Canaanites modified the Cypriote syllabic writing to the 
extent that for the five open syllables inherent in a consonant and for 
that consonant itself they retained only one sign, it was but consist- 
ent that for all the five syllables not inherent in a consonant, for all 
the five syllables which begin with a vowel, and for all the syllable- 
forming vowels they lkewise retained only one sign. Five mono- 
phone syllabic signs between exclusively polyphone signs would have 
been too great a contradiction. The Canaanites obtained this poly- 
phone sign for the syllable-forming vowels from the Cypriote x, 
ees, a 
The sign for a in Cypriote is *, that is, a six-pointed star, the ver- 
tical stroke of which usually rises considerably above the others. > is 
the prototype of the Canaanite 4. In order to write the Cypriote x 
the pen had to set in thrice; the sign was therefore cursively abbrevi- 
ated by beginning above to the right and writing the two nonvertical 
points of the star in a single stroke. As a result the picture of the 
star was defaced. Whether the beginning of this cursive transforma- 
tion was already made in Asia Minor, Cyprus or in Canaan we can 
not know. 
By employing the Cypriote syllabic sign for a as a polyphone sign 
for syllable-forming vowels in general (x, x, 8, 8, and 8 = a, e, 1, 0, 
and u), the Canaanites achieved something besides. They learned 
through this mode of writing, something which was perhaps espe- 
cially suggested to them by the phonetic system of all the Semitic 
languages—that every vowel which begins a syllable is introduced or 
can be introduced by a very weak consonant, such as the Arabic 
hamza; they gained through this mode of writing an understanding 
of this weak consonant itself. < (y) was for them no more a polyphone © 
vowel sign, but became a syllabic sign for /amza with inherent a, e, 1, 
o, and u, and also a sign for mere hamza. The uniformity of the 
Canaanite system of writing was not broken up: x stood on the same 
level with 3, 3,5 (b, g, d), ete. 
I consider it merely a coincidence that the 4 migrated then as @ 
(a) to the Greeks. It certainly has nothing to do with the original 
Cypriote sound value, for the sound value of the sign in Greek was 
rather the name of the character; the name a/ef pushed aside other 
possibilities, and the sound value of a was logically (that is, after the 
first letter of the word) established, the hamza not being felt or being 
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