102 PICTURE-WRITING AND WORD-WKITING. 



and from times earlier tlian the building of tlie pyramids up to 

 the present day. 



But as to tlie ultimate origin of most of the aljDhabets which 

 are or have been in use in the world, we have no such satis- 

 factory information as this. Thus, though the great family 

 of alphabets to which the Roman letters belong with the Greek, 

 the Grothicj the Northern Runes, etc., may be easily traced 

 back into connection with the Phcenician and Old Hebrew 

 characters, it is a very different question to tell how these 

 ancient Semitic letters came to be made. The theory main- 

 tained by Gesenius, that the Phoenician and Old Hebrew letters 

 are rude pictures of Aleph the Ox, Beth the House, Gimel the 

 Camel, etc., may, I think, be shown to be unsafe. Some of 

 the resemblances may possibly be real, though they are mostly 

 very slight and indefinite ; and while (after setting aside words 

 of very doubtful or fanciful etymology, as Zayin, Koph, He) 

 there appear to be some eleven letters which are more or less 

 like the meanings of their names, pure chance may be shown 

 to produce nearly as many coincidences as this. At least, if 

 we turn the list upside down, and put Tau against the letter 

 Aleph, and so on, it seems to me that there will be found some- 

 thing like eight resemblances of about the same strength, or 

 weakness. Again, the theory that the names of the letters 

 date from the time when these letters were first formed, and 

 thus record the very process of their formation, is a very bold 

 one, considering that we know by experience how slight the 

 bond is which may attach the name to the letter. Two alpha- 

 bets, which are actually descended from that which is also 

 represented by the Phoenician and Hebrew, have taken to 

 themselves new sets of names belonging to the languages they 

 were used to write, simply choosing for each letter a word 

 which began with it. The names of our Anglo-Saxon Runes 

 are Feoh (cattle, fee), Ur (urns, wild ox). Thorn (thorn), Hagl 

 (hail), Nead (need), and so on, for F, U, Th, H, N, etc., this 

 English list corresponding in great measure with those belong- 

 ing to the Scandinavian and German forms of the Runic alpha- 

 bet. Again, in the old Slavonic alphabet, the names of Dobro, 

 (good), Zemlja (land), Liode (people), Slovo (word), are given 

 to D, Z, L, S. 



