172 



THE CENTURY BOOK OF FACTS. 



enchorial, and Coptic. The hieroglyphic was 

 probably in use before 4,000 B. C., and at 

 first was made up entirely of pictures ; but 

 about 2,000 B. C. the hieratic form was intro- 

 duced, in which the hieroglyphs were greatly 

 simplified, and developed into purely linear 

 forms. The enchorial form of writing was in 

 use from 700 B. C. to A. D. 200, and "was a 

 still further simplification of the earlier forms, 

 finally developing into the alphabetic form 

 known as the Coptic. The cuneiform writing 

 of the Assyrian empire disputes the honors of 

 antiquity with the Egyptian early forms. This 

 was probably hieroglyphic in its origin, but 

 became modified by the different nations occu- 

 pying the Assyrian empire until it assumed the 

 form of the inscriptions as known to archaeol- 

 ogists. The name of this writing is from a 

 Latin word meaning a wedge, and it is so 

 called because all the characters used are made 

 up of different arrangements of a single pointed 

 figure resembling a wedge in form. There 

 were three classes of cuneiform characters used 

 in the period of development of this form of 

 writing; first, the Assyrian or Babylonian, 

 which was very complicated, containing from 

 six hundred to seven hundred symbols ; the 

 Scythian or Median, having about one hundred 

 characters only ; and the third, the Persian, 

 which is purely alphabetic. The Chinese 

 gives an example of a written language which 

 was arrested in an early period of its develop- 

 ment, before the alphabetic stage had been 

 reached. The people of China still use a writ- 

 ten character for a word, as they did thou- 

 sands of years ago. The Egyptian is the most 

 important of those early systems, as from it 

 was probably derived the Phoenician alphabet, 

 which became the parent of all the graphic 

 systems of the modern world. The Egyptians 

 never fully separated the hieroglyphic and 

 phonetic symbols, but the Phoenicians adopted 

 the latter only, and thus originated the first 

 purely alphabetic plan of writing. The Phoe- 

 nician alphabet was the parent of five principal 

 branches of graphic forms, the most important 

 of which is the Greek, which was the parent 

 of the Roman alphabet, from which sprung 

 the alphabets of all modern European nations, 

 and those taken from them by the people who 

 now inhabit the Western hemisphere. 



Capital letters were first invented, and were 

 in use for many centuries before the invention 

 of small letters. The oldest manuscripts now 

 in use, dating as far back as the third century, 

 are written entirely in capitals, and without 

 spacing between the words, or marks of punc- 

 tuation. The small letters were first introduced 

 about the seventh century. 



Punctuation was unknown to the ancients. 



Aristophanes of Alexandria, about two and a 

 half centuries before the Christian era, intro- 

 duced some of the marks now used. But it 

 was not until about the year 1500 A. D., that 

 Aldus Manutius, a learned printer of Venice, 

 reduced the art of punctuation to a system. 



Surnames are so called from the early 

 practice of writing them over the Christian 

 names. In modern times they were first used 

 in France, particularly in Normandy, where 

 they can be traced to the latter part of the 

 tenth century. They were introduced into 

 England by the Normans after the conquest. 

 The ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, Syrians, Per- 

 sians, and others had but a single name which 

 was generally significant of some feature con- 

 nected with their birth. Thus, Rachel, dying, 

 had called her child Benoni, " the son of my 

 sorrow"; but Jacob gave him the name of 

 "Benjamin, " the son of my strength." These 

 simple names, however, soon became so com- 

 mon to many owners, that they failed to con- 

 vey individuality ; and this led to the addition 

 of other designations, now known to us as 

 surnames. Only about a thousand surnames 

 were taken up by the most noble families in 

 France and in England about the time of 

 Edward the Confessor. The lower nobility 

 did not follow this example before the twelf 1 h 

 century and the citizens and husbandmen had 

 no family names before the fourteenth cen- 

 tury. English names have recruits among 

 them from almost every race. 



The three most numerous patronymics of 

 Celtic origin now in use among the English 

 are the O, the Mac, and the Ap. The Irish O 

 originally meant grandson, the Scotch Mac 

 and the Welch Ap meaning son. 



The Jews were the last to adopt surnames, 

 and it is only within the past hundred years 

 that they were compelled by law to adopt them 

 in England. 



Sacred Books of the Hindus are of 

 great antiquity. The oldest of their sacred 

 books, the Vedas (knowledge or science), con- 

 tain the revelation of Brahma, and were pre- 

 served by tradition until collected by Vyasa. 

 The Vedas are three in number : first, the 

 Rig- Veda containing hymns and mystic pray- 

 ers ; second, the Yajur-Veda containing the 

 religious rites ; third, the Sama-Veda, with 

 prayers in the form of songs. The Vedas were 

 written in Sanskrit and were first translated 

 into English by Sir William Jones. The whole 

 life of Ancient India is found in the Vedas, 

 the Puranas, and the two great epics, called 

 the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. 



The Ramayana contains about 50,000 lines 

 describing the youth of Rama who is an in- 

 carnation of their God Vishnu ; his banish- 



