30 ANNUAL ADDRESS : 



was done. We see figured on the walls how they built ; 

 how they hewed colossal stones from the quarries and con- 

 veyed them to their appointed places; how they attacked 

 and captured fortresses ; how they treated captives ; and how 

 they used their slaves. I shall just select one or two of the 

 more striking examples of their genius. 



Origin of Alfhahetic Writinr/. 



The origin of our alphabet is one of the most interesting 

 and instructive studies. It has of late been pursued with vast 

 research and great success by Dr. Isaac Taylor. He has shown 

 that the alphabets of Europe, Africa, and Western Asia have 

 a common parentage ; and, strange as it may seem, he has 

 traced them back stage by stage to those hieroglyphics 

 which one sees on the earliest monuments of Egypt. Like the 

 different races of mankind, the alphabets have evolved from 

 one primeval source. Whether this is to be taken as an 

 additional proof of the unity of the human race, I do not 

 stop to inquire. I simply state it here as a fact — the result of 

 independent research. 



In ancient Egypt there were two distinct methods of 

 writing : the one hieroglyphic, or pictorial ; the other 

 hieratic, or alphabetical. In the former, all the forms 

 used are, or were intended to be, pictures of the objects 

 they represent. There are men, women, beasts, birds, 

 reptiles, insects, human hands, eyes, and suchlike; there 

 are also circles, squares, crescents, curved lines, &c. All 

 these are pictures, and the whole writing they make up 

 is a narrative picture. This was probably the most ancient 

 mode of writing. From it the alphabetic writing sprang. 

 Every letter had, so to speak, its germ in a picture or ideogram; 

 and " those pictures were gradually assumed as the represen- 

 tatives of words, and finally became the symbols of more or 

 less elementary sounds,'' that is, of letters. Dr. Taylor has 

 described the origin of alphabetic writing in a single terse 

 sentence. It began, he says, " with ideograms, which after- 

 wards developed into phonograms.'' This development is 

 illustrated in the eai-ly records of Egypt, where we find the 

 two systems subsisting side by side ; and in some cases, as in 

 the Rosetta Stone, the same inscription is written in both 

 forms. 



The date of the transition from the hieroglyphic to the 

 hieratic is unknown. It was antecedent to the historic age. 

 It is a remarkable fact, which, perhaps more even than her 



