TRiVNSACTlOi^S OF SECTION H. 667 



The demoDBtiation is, of course, incomplete ; no other word can be detected, 

 largely owing to the facts that the inscriptions are extremely badly preserved and 

 that no word-divider is employed. Still, when the date and place of origin are borne 

 in mind, it seems impossible not to believe that the new Sinai script is either the 

 proto-Semitic script itself or else one of several very closely related tentative Semitic 

 alphabets out of which the actual proto-Semitio alphabet waa ultimately selected. 



2. Cretan Analogies for the Origin of the Alphabet. 

 By Sir Arthur Evans, F.R.S. 



The great comparative value of the Cretan material in its bearing on the 

 origin of the alphabet is that we have not only a complete syllabary of pictorial 

 signs, but also, in many cases, their linear degenerations belonging to a later 

 age. This analogy, as pointed out by me some years since, is decisive agiainst 

 theories of the origin of the Semitic alphabet, such as that of De Rouge, who 

 derived it from certain hieratic Egyptian forms representing similar sounds, 

 but having no reference to the actual meaning of the letter names. 



So close is the analogy indeed that, as shown in a comparative table, both the 

 pictorial form answering to the name of the Phoenician letter and a linearised 

 version answering to its earliest known form constantly recur among the Cretan 

 signs. To a certain ext>ent the Minoan and Semitic characters appear to 

 belong to related systems. 



The fresh evidence adduced by Mr. Alan Gardiner purports to show that the 

 Semitic letters were evolved from an indigenous pictorial or hieroglyphic 

 source, and if the early forms go back before 1500 B.C. they cannot have been 

 introduced from Crete, either directly or by Phoenician mediation, tlie non- 

 Semitic character (also non-Egyptian) of about a third of the Phoenician letter 

 names has still to be explained. But the present view, which resembles that pro- 

 posed, though afterwards I'ejected, by Lenormant, that the Semitic letters were 

 derived from certain early Egyptian hieroglyphs of which they were literal trans- 

 lations, is not borne out by Cretan analogy. Neither is it by that of early 

 Babylonia. In both these cases the pictorial prototypes were indigenous. The 

 later cuneiform system of Assyria represents a selection from earlier Baby- 

 lonian characters that reveal their pictogi-aphic origin. It must also be ob- 

 served that the old simple theory of Gesenius, according to which Aleph 

 goes back to an early Semitic drawing of an ox, Beth of a house, and so 

 forth, is easily worked out, and does not involve the complication of calling in 

 Egyptian models. At the same time, in the Semitic, as in the Minoan case, we 

 may well trace some formative suggestion from the Egyptian side. 



3. Discussion on the .Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation on the 

 World's Culture, (a) Opening Statement by Professor G. Elliot 

 Smith, M.A., M.D.,F.R.S.^ 



This discussion is to be regarded as the logical extension of the argument 

 on Megalithic Monuments and their Builders with which I opened a debate 

 at the Dundee Meeting (British Association Report, for 1912, pp. 607-609), and 

 the further communications on the 'Origin of the Dolmen' (1913) and 'The 

 Origin and Spread of Certain Customs and Inventions ' " (1914) which I have 

 presented at the last two meetings of the Association. 



' Published in full in Bulletin John Hi/lands TJhrary, January 1916. 



^ The themes of these two communications have been developed at leiietli 

 ill ' The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the Dolmen,' Essays and Studies 

 presented to William Ridgeway. Cambridge, 1913, p. 493 ; and ' The Significance 

 of the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification : a Study 

 of the Migrations of People and the Spread of certain Customs and Beliefs,' 

 Manchester Memoirs (Literary and Philosophical Society), Vol. 59, 1915, the 

 latter of which includes a critical study of the evidence and a considerable 

 bibliography of the subject of the present discussion. 



