146 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
Aryans adopted the Semitic alphabet, which had been borrowed from 
the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, we have no evidence that 
Turanian peoples ever did so. Granting that Semites and Turanians 
equally borrowed from the hieroglyphics of Egypt their phonographs, 
it does not follow that they assigned the same values to the hiero- 
glyphics and their later attenuations or letters. The fact that the 
Hebrews took the hieroglyphics representing an ox, a house, a camel, 
and a door, to set forth the sounds A, B, G, and D, because these 
are the initials of aleph, beth, gimel, and daleth, the Hebrew words 
for ox, house, camel, and door, rather tends to make it probable 
that a Turanian people would assign to these characters the sounds 
of the initial letters or syllables of the words denoting the same 
things in their own language. I say letters or syllables, because, of 
the ancient systems of writing known to us, many, such as the 
Assyrian, Chaldean, Median, were syllabic, not alphabetic, and such 
originally was the Persian.? The late origin of the vowel points in 
the Semitic languages seems to indicate that their alphabets were at. 
on the joint testimony of Herodotus I. 94, Strabo V. 220, Tacitus Ann. I. iv. 55. See, however, 
on the other side Rawlinson’s Herodotus, Book I., Essay 1. The labours of Professor Sayce 
and others have established beyond a doubt the early occupation of Lydia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, 
and other countries of Asia Minor by a Turanian Hittite people: The Monuments of the 
Hittites, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, Vol. VII., p. 248. Professor 
Sayce says, (p. 249), “‘ The chief monuments of the class to which I refer (Hittite) are found 
carved upon the rocks at Boghaz Keui, supposed to represent the classical Pteria, and at 
Eyuk, both of which are situated on the eastern bank of the Halys, and in the line of the high. 
road from Sardis to Armenia. Besides these, others are met with at Ghiaour-Kalessi, in 
Phrygia, near Frahtin, and on the summit of one of the mountains of the Bulghar Dagh, in 
Lykaonia ; and above all at Karabel, on the road between Ephesus and Sardis.” Such are 
the two pseudo-Sesostris sculptures in Lydia. Further on (p. 272), Professor Sayce remarks = 
““The remains fonnd by Dr. Schliemann, at Hissarlik, show no traces of Assyrian, Egyptian, or 
Pheenician influence, but they point unmistakably to Babylonian and Hittite influence.” And 
on the same paye: ‘‘It is also possible that the Lydian tradition recounted by Herodotus, 
which derived the Heraklid dynasty from Ninus, the son of Belus, was an echo of the fact that 
Sardis had once been in Hittite hands.” The Lycian and Phrygian alphabets, which have been 
read in much the same way as the Etruscan, I include in my scheme of Turanian syllabaries. 
5 The cuneiform characters of Babylon, Nineveh, and Media, are accessible to the generak 
reader in Lenormant and Chevalier’s Ancient History of the East, vol. I., p. 436, seg. About 
90 such characters are there represented, having such values as ba, bi, bu, ga, gi, gu, da, di, 
du, akh, ikh, ukh, li, lu, al, il, ul, &e. For the Persian, see vol. IL, p. 122, where Lenormant 
says: ‘‘ Originally, it was probably syllabic.” The present Japanese syllabaries called Hira- 
gana and Katakana, which superseded the old Corean about the end of the 9th century, repre- 
sent each 47 syllables—the latter by the same number of modified Chinese characters, the 
former by about three hundred such characters. See Aston’s Grammar of the Japanese 
Written Language, p. 8, seg. The following are among the syllables represented: ka, ki, ku, 
ke, ko, ta, chi, tsu, te, to, ma, mi, mu, me, mo. The Tamul alphabet is really a syllabary, but 
of a kind similar to the Semitic alphabets taken together with the vowel points, although in 
the case of the Tamul the vowel indicators are incorporated with the consonantal character. 
