514 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN 
tradition as to Cadmus having brought over from 
Tyre, and subsequently taught the primitive 
Greeks their alphabet, which at that early period 
consisted of sixteen capital letters, to my inmex- 
pressible delight I found, on reference to some 
of the most ancient Greek inscriptions in the 
British Museum, that most of the capital letters 
were composed of absolute elementary arrow- 
heads! The source from whence the primitive 
Greek alphabet was derived, at once substantiated 
historically the conjecture Ihad formed. Cadmus 
was from Tyre, being a Pheenician, and skilled in 
the learning of the Chaldeans, who were the 
most enlightened and learned of the Babylonians; 
hence it is, that historically speaking, we ought 
to find an arrow-headed or Babylonian feature in 
the characters which he gave to the primitive 
Greeks as their alphabet. That this is the case, 
we have only to refer to any ancient Greek 
inscription, which we shall find to abound with 
ocular demonstration of the most substantial de- 
scription, as may be seen on reference to the 
figure annexed, which is a most careful and rigidly 
faithful representation of some of the letters 
comprising a most ancient Greek inscription now 
in the British Museum, among which there exists 
numberless examples, all of which bear out in 
