672 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890 



recognized in each, or at least in two of the writings, and thus caused the 

 discovery of their similarity and lead to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs 

 hy Chatnpolliou. Cast given hy the British Museum, which possesses the 

 original. 



ALPHABETIC WRITING. 



About the year 1500 B. C, that is about or before the time of Moses, 

 the alphabet made its appearance among the Phoenician and afterwards 

 among the Hebrew peoples on the Syrian coast. It would seem to have 

 been only a simplification of Egyptian writing, adapted to the needs of 

 commerce. The Phoenicians borrowed from the great mass of Egyptian 

 hieroglyphics about twenty signs corresponding to the principal articu- 

 lator sounds of human speech. This was a radical transformation of 

 the art of writing. We can believe that it was of much greater import 

 than supposed by its discoverers. It changed for all the world and for 

 all time the power of man over his civilization by giving him the ability 

 to record, communicate and perpetuate his knowledge. Monsieur Re- 

 nan declares the discovery of alphabetic writing to be the highest 

 testimony of the genius of man. Capacity to utter articulate sounds 

 is limited, so a very few characters were sufficient to record them, and 

 it was not difficult, the discovery once made, to render all of man's ideas 

 and to give every shade of his thought. These signs formed the al- 

 phabet of writing. 



The Phoenician alphabet was modest in its commencement, but it On- 

 ished by triumphing over all other systems, and has imposed itself upon 

 all civilized peoples. It gave birth to all the Semitic alphabets, from 

 the Hebrew to the Syrian and Arabic, yet they employed only the con- 

 sonants. It gave birth to the Greek alphabet in which was created the 

 vowels, and was thereupon communicated to the Etruscans, the Latins, 

 the Slav and Germanic peoples, and so all over Europe. 



The Greeks, after some hesitation and trial, finally determined for 

 all these languages and peoples the system of alphabetic writing from 

 left to right. The Phenician alphabet spread to the east and south, as 

 well as to the north and west. It gave birth to the Aramean, to the 

 ancient Hindoo, and so to the modern alphabets of India. Indeed, 

 with the exception of China and Japan, and their dependencies, to all 

 those of Asia. Whatever of ideographic or hieroglyphic writing these 

 peoples may have employed, they, with the exception noted, only used 

 an alphabet descended from the twenty-two letters of the Phenicians. 



The alphabetic writing descending from the Phoenician alphabet is 

 divided into three branches : 



(1) The Semitic alphabet, which is written from right to left and has 

 no vowel. The principal of these are the Phoenician, from which is de- 

 rived the Punic and Neopunic, the ancient Hebrew, the Aramean, which 

 gave birth to the Nabatean, the Palmyrenian, the Hebrew Carre, to 

 the Syriac and the Arabian, and finally the alphabet Himyarite and 

 Ethiopian, 



