140 ON ERKATA RECEPTA. 



profile), the occiput, as distinguished from the face ; S, the teeth seen 

 in front ; T, a kind of dancing cobra ; U (V), a hook or tent-pole, as 

 said for F ; X, a combination of K and S ; Y (as J), a hand in right 

 position ; Z, a barbed hook, for catching fish. 



We cannot, of course, be sure that we thus track our letters to their 

 prototypes ; but human instincts everywhere developing themselves in 

 an analogous way, vv^e can easily conceive that all alphabets are picto- 

 rial in their origin ; that they represented objects to convey an idea 

 either of the objects absolutely, or of the sounds which the objects 

 represented were supposed to symbolize. What is, in fact, the mean- 

 ing of litei'a ? It is something delineated or drawn (lino) ; the idea 

 conveyed also by ypdcfua, which is to pencil or draw — though allied 

 to yXd(f)(i> and yXvcfi(D, to hew or carve, as scribo, to write, is to scalpo 

 and sculjjo ; and the English write is to writan, properly to cut or 

 engrave, and wrotan to ])lough or root up. 



Symbols inscribed by sharp instruments, are strictly not letters 

 {literce) but characters, -^^afydKryjp^s — from -^(ipdija-di — which expresses 

 " scratching," by its very sound. So that in the rude symbols of our 

 Indians, in the canoes, wigwams, and school-boy-fashion figures of 

 men and animals, charcoaled with a burnt stick, or indented with a 

 flint-arrow point on a sheet of birch-bark, we have the veritable 

 literce and characteres — the elementa elementorum — the simplest 

 forms and originals into which all letters and characters are to be re- 

 solved. Examples of the same also, were those sketches on cotton 

 cloth, of the ships, horses, and artillery of Cortez, made by the 

 Mexican Chiefs (1519), for the purpose of giving to Montezuma an 

 idea of the power of the fatal invader. 



Interesting specimens of picture -records in transitu to letters, may 

 be seen in the beautiful inscription-tablets of Copan and Palenque, 

 represented by Stephens, in his work on Central America. The Chi- 

 nese and Japanese characters still bear on the face of them the ap- 

 pearance of being sketches of objects, although now conventionally 

 rendered. And the Egyptian phonetic symbols and hieroglyphics, 

 with which we are all more or less familiar, are very slightly disguised. 

 Of these, the enchorial or demotic characters are declared to be 

 modifications. 



We can have little doubt, then, that the Chaldaic and Phoenician 

 characters, and with them, for the most part, the Greek and the 

 LatiB, — and, through these, the European letters generally have their 

 origin in pictures and sculptures. 



