ALPHABET. 



AI.PHABKT. 



forms show the progress of degradation between the Greek and t In- 

 corrupted Hebrew. The forma of r an chiefly remarkable fur the 

 different position* of the angle which constitute the letter. The 

 ruund form in 6, 10, and 16, u abu found in the coins of the cities 

 leii, Agrigentum. and Regiuui. The third letter of the Latin 

 alphabet ha* this form, and once poaeaaed the same power. Hence, 

 the oldoat orthography of that language present* m<icatrat<a, Itfionn, for 

 , Imoin*. and it is known that the common name Caitu was 

 t Gaiia, and indeed wan so written by the Greeks. The 

 i of the Hebrew dalelk may be traced through the Samaritan from 

 the Greek, in precisely the same way as the belk. The diflVi. n, . 

 between the Samaritan or PhvnicUn letters for tlalrlk and those fur 



PLAT* IV. 



Roman Letters. 



I'ariiutt 

 from Attlf 



SIUTOM, 

 ,Y.9&, Sic. 



10 



11 19 13 



Additional Saxon Letteri. 



th; 



w. 



fcelA consists m.lcly in the lower stroke thrown out 1 from 



the perpendicular, and the same is the case with the Hebrew letters; 

 in both, the triangular or circular top has degenerated into a tliuk 

 line. The form of E in 10 is very anomalous and very rare. Of the 

 other forms the Samaritan is again purer than the Hebrew. The next 

 l.-ti.-r luu been the subject of much controversy. The form in 8, 10, 

 and 15, may perh| lie considered as the parent of all the rent; and 

 again the Phenician has the advantage over the Hebrew, the form in - 

 being intermediate between 4 and 1. The tain bears a faint resemblance 

 to f of No. 9, which is the oldest form of that Greek letter, and from 

 which the late forum are derived, II|H>II the xintplr principle above 

 mentioned, of completing a letter at one movement, and th> 

 substituting the diagonal stroke for the perpendicular. 



The next letter has gone through violent changes, both in form and 

 power. Its original power seems to have been a guttural rli, \vhi.-h 

 would naturally wear away into an ordinary aspirate ; or perhaps more 

 correctly it may be stated, that it* first power, as in the other letters, 

 was syllabic, namely, ehe, which became he, and in the Greek language 

 eventually only e. The two Hebrew names of the letters, rA<M, Art*, 

 and the Greek form cla, all bear evidence in favour of such a suppo- 

 sition, and it would be difficult otherwise to account for the singular 

 fact, that the same character H was at one time the Greek repre- 

 sentative of an aspirate, afterwards of an initial lie, and linally of a long 

 r. In No. 26 of Plate 11. H ix the long vowel i, and so in 30 of Plate 

 HI. and those which follow. In all the others which precede, it is an 

 aspirated consonant. With regard to the various forms, the character 

 in 3, 4, 6, 9, 22 being supposed to be the purest, No. 2 is half-way 

 between the Hebrew on the one hand, and 18 on the other. But the 

 Greek form did not stop here. When the letter H was appropriated 

 as a vowel, the aspirate gradually lost its second pillar, until at last it 

 appeared in the first of the two forms given in the Heraclean tablet, 

 the second in that column being, as we have just stated, the repre- 

 sentative of the long vowel This form of the aspirate appears in many 

 manuscripts above the initial letter of the word, but was eventually 

 further corrupted into a mere comma, thus ('). There exists, it should 

 be stated, a story, that the Greeks derived their aspirate in a mode 

 somewhat different from the above statement. The letter H. we are 

 told, was cut into two parts, each consisting of a pillar and half the 

 cross stroke ; the first half being employed as on aspirate, the second 

 as what they call a soft breathing, by which is meant simply the 

 absence of an aspirate. A character to denote the absence of a sound 

 is, it has been justly remarked, something new in alphabetic writing ; 

 and in fact it is now a common belief, that the soft breathing and its 

 supposed representative are the mere creation of grammarians : at any 

 rate, the supposed character for the soft breathing is found in no 

 inscription whatever, and in no manuscript of any antiquity. Of the 

 next letter it need only be stated, that the Hebrew character is generally 

 considered by modern Hebraists as a mere T, and it is often called 

 teth. Of the iod the Samaritan form seems even more perfect than the 

 Greek in 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17. The third of these, however, bears 

 a close affinity to the Hebrew. The forms in 12 and 16 are gradually 

 approaching the straight line, which afterwards prevailed. The kappa 

 in 21 is a mean between the more perfect in No. 9 and the Hebrew 

 caph. The next letter has a great uniformity throughout, the chief 

 difference turning upon the different position of the angle as in the 

 yamma ; but it may be observed, that the forms in 27 and 28 closely 

 approximate to the Phenician and Hebrew in 1,2, 3. Of /a and v we 

 have spoken before. The samech and Greek { present many difficulties. 

 Their forms, in the first place, have no similarity ; the Greek letter is 

 rarely met with in old inscriptions, as it was common to employ in it* 

 place the \ and <r, as may be seen in 23 and 29 (the KIT in the Nauian 

 column is open to much suspicion.) The X given in !', though found 

 in Greek, is more common in Latin ; yet even in this language the old 

 inscriptions generally have XS, rather than X alone ; so that it would 

 seem that here, too, the X had originally the jfower of the Greek %. 

 The reason why the Greeks generally wrote XS rather than K3 ur f2, 

 was most probably because the letter tiyma has something of de- 

 nature of an aspirate, as Payne Knight contends. Upon the same 

 principle they wrote *3E for "V, not 113. (Column 29.) The letter //;' 

 is the subject of controversy, some calling it a nasal consonant, others 

 u guttural, others a vowel o. The first and third assertions seem more 

 at Yiiri.inee than they really are, for the close connection between the 

 two Mounds n and is well marked in the Portuguese tongue in the 

 pronunciation of Mich words OK Joao, the representative of our John or 

 Jobann. The Romans, too, thought it enough to write Plato, where 

 the Greeks wrote Platon. Lastly, if the \,. \\.-l .mil liquid scales that 

 have been given above be applied to one another, it will be found that 

 the liquid n ought to have an affinity to the vowels o and ,* in the 

 same way that the lip liquid m is related to u and ir, and the palatal I 

 (witness the mouillt sound of the French //) to y, i, and e. But, to 

 1. the Hebrew jit has, it has already been observed, a iiok. -.<< 

 the Ivotfom which appears to have something of tl..- nature of a 

 Mom i-h. HenioYc it, and the identity of the remainder with the Greek 

 is self-apparent The diflen -if i (. ,-n the Greek n and the Roman 



The connection between a and the ttnal naulx 1 exhibited In the Ionic 

 plurals of pusire rertx, the double form of the accuutivea of the third declen. 

 Ion, and the Greek numerals Si KO, 7rra &c., compared with the Latin. 



