A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



that would doubtless in the course of generations have 

 been elaborated into alphabetical systems, had not the 

 Europeans cut off the civilization of which they were 

 the highest exponents. 



What the Aztec and Maya were striving towards in 

 the sixteenth century A.D., various Oriental nations 

 had attained at least five or six thousand years earlier. 

 In Egypt at the time of the pyramid-builders, and in 

 Babylonia at the same epoch, the people had developed 

 systems of writing that enabled them not merely to 

 present a limited range of ideas pictorially, but to 

 express in full elaboration and with finer shades of 

 meaning all the ideas that pertain to highly cultured 

 existence. The man of that time made records of 

 military achievements, recorded the transactions of 

 every-day business life, and gave expression to his 

 moral and spiritual aspirations in a way strangely com- 

 parable to the manner of our own time. He had 

 perfected highly elaborate systems of writing. 



EGYPTIAN WRITING 



Of the two ancient systems of writing just referred 

 to as being in vogue at the so - called dawnings of 

 history, the more picturesque and suggestive was the 

 hieroglyphic system of the Egyptians. This is a 

 curiously conglomerate system of writing, made up 

 in part of symbols reminiscent of the crudest stages of 

 picture-writing, in part of symbols having the phonetic 

 value of syllables, and in part of true alphabetical 

 letters. In a word, the Egyptian writing represents in 

 itself the elements of the various stages through which 

 the art of writing has developed. 4 We must conceive 



90 



