DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET 



titled to anything like equal credit. The Persians, 

 probably in the time of Cyrus the Great, used certain 

 characters of the Babylonian script for the con- 

 struction of an alphabet; but at this time the Phoeni- 

 cian alphabet had undoubtedly been in use for some 

 centuries, and it is more than probable that the 

 Persian borrowed his idea of an alphabet from a 

 Phoenician source. And that, of course, makes all 

 the difference. Granted the idea of an alphabet, it 

 requires no great reach of constructive genius to 

 supply a set of alphabetical characters; though even 

 here, it may be added parenthetically, a study of the 

 development of alphabets will show that mankind has 

 all along had a characteristic propensity to copy rather 

 than to invent. 



Regarding the Persian alphabet-maker, then, as a 

 copyist rather than a true inventor, it remains to turn 

 attention to the Phoenician source whence, as is com- 

 monly believed, the original alphabet which became 

 " the mother of all existing alphabets " came into being. 

 It must be admitted at the outset that evidence for the 

 Phoenician origin of this alphabet is traditional rather 

 than demonstrative. The Phoenicians were the great 

 traders of antiquity; undoubtedly they were largely 

 responsible for the transmission of the alphabet from 

 one part of the world to another, once it had been in- 

 vented. Too much credit cannot be given them for 

 this; and as the world always honors him who makes 

 an idea fertile rather than the originator of the idea, 

 there can be little injustice in continuing to speak of 

 the Phoenicians as the inventors of the alphabet. 

 But the actual facts of the case will probably never 



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