CANAANITE ALPHABET—PRATORIUS. 603 
retain but one sign for all the syllables attached to a consonant and 
for this consonant itself, it seems but natural that they should have 
preferred those syllabic signs which were least fixed and most in- 
different, such as those terminating in e. Thus we recognized above 
in the Cypriote syllabic sign ué the prototype of the lost Canaanite 
digamma. 
And it seems indeed as if the Canaanites had preferred the Cypriote 
syllabic signs ine. I shall quote for the present the Canaanite 5, the 
angles of which are not everywhere as pointed as in the Moabite Stone. 
In Cypriote the sign for ne is 1$:._ Discarding the two short strokes 
on either side, there remains only the Canaanite sign. 
The Canaanite letter “7 I would declare as a cursive abbreviation 
of the Cypriote syllabic sign for me. Its usual form is &X, ®; but 
there also occur forms like >< and 4. It seems to me that from 
_ these, especially from the latter forms, the Canaanite sign could 
have easily originated. The insertion in the middle below was com- 
bined with the ray to the right above to one long bar to which the 
two left rays were cursively attached and straightened. The ray to 
the right below vanished. Something like -¥, W. 
I must confess, however, that I do not here feel quite on solid 
ground, and the wealth of Cypriote signs that offer themselves for 
selection is disquieting. The Cypriote syllabic sign for mi is J’, 
sometimes also T, T and M. I do not think that the Canaanite sign 
‘/ originated from it ; but the possibility can not be absolutely denied. 
Likewise the slender Canaanite sign 6 might have originated from 
the Cypriote syllabic sign for le, i.e., 8. Occasional forms like 8 
and XY are more similar to the Canaanite sign. But here also Z, li, 
which might also be considered as the prototype of Canaanite 6, is 
disturbing. | 
As for Canaanite 9 (r), the Cypriote syllabic sign for re, (c) and (\\, 
hardly comes into consideration, but the Canaanite sign 9 could 
easily have originated from Q, D, ra, as well as from 2, ro. The 
fact that the letter is named ro can hardly be adduced in favor of 
its derivation from Q, ro. 
As the Cypriote writing unfortunately does not distinguish between 
tenuis, media, and aspirata, the idea suggests itself that the Ca- 
naanites availed themselves of the vocalic variety of these syllabic 
signs in order to more precisely distinguish the character of their 
consonants. We have already seen that they selected the syllabic 
signs tu, su, and ku in order to obtain a definite designation for the 
specifically Semitic “emphatic ” consonants. We have also seen that 
the choice of the syllabic ending in u was not merely a conventional 
matter, but had its origin in the sound-color. This origin can, how- 
ever, hardly be discerned elsewhere. 
I would again suggest that the Cypriote sign for pe (p*e, be), 
4,4, § and similar ones might be the prototype of the Canaanite 
