DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET 



after being spelled, has a picture of a quadruped, and 

 then the picture of a hide, which is the usual de- 

 terminative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes 

 to indicate the plural number. 



It must not be supposed, however, that it was a mere 

 whim which led the Egyptians to the use of this 

 system of determinatives. There was sound reason 

 back of it. It amounted to no more than the expe- 

 dient we adopt when we spell "to," "two," or "too," 

 in indication of a single sound with three different 

 meanings. The Egyptian language abounds in words 

 having more than one meaning, and in writing these 

 it is obvious that some means of distinction is desirable. 

 The same thing occurs even more frequently in the 

 Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese 

 adopt a more clumsy expedient, supplying a different 

 symbol for each of the meanings of a syllable ; so that 

 while the actual word-sounds of their speech are only 

 a few hundreds in number, the characters of their 

 written language mount high into the thousands. 



BABYLONIAN WRITING 



While the civilization of the Nile Valley was develop- 

 ing this extraordinary system of hieroglyphics, the in- 

 habitants of Babylonia were practising the art of 

 writing along somewhat different lines. It is certain 

 that they began with picture-making, and that in due 

 course they advanced to the development of the 

 syllabary ; but, unlike their Egyptian cousins, the men 

 of Babylonia saw fit to discard the old system when 

 they had perfected a better one. 5 So at a very early 

 day their writing as revealed to us now through the 



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