172 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Sept. 



denotes, e, g. the oldest symbol for nun (fish) represents a fish; the 

 oldest symbol for beth, a house ; for aleph, (the head of) an ox, &c. 



4. The profiles of these rude drawings are drawn facing to the 

 left. This is most remarkable. 



5. There are no symbols for any vowel. For even aleph is rec- 

 koned in all Shemitic languages among the consonants. 



" It appears then that the inventors of the oldest Shemitic alphabet 

 selected from their language certain common words (there are 22), of 

 which each was to express that letter, with which the word com- 

 menced. They appear to have then drawn in rude outlines the 

 object, which each word denoted, and must have agreed moreover, to 

 use in future exclusively the symbol, which they had once fixed. 

 Thus they selected the word ' mm,' to express the letter n, they 

 represented the n sound by a fish, as the word nun means fish, 

 and agreed to take in future no other word of their language, com- 

 mencing with n, except nun, to represent the n sound. This ingenious 

 limiting of the symbols forms, in my opinion, the stepping-stone from 

 the hieroglyphics with its varying symbols, to our mode of writing. 



" I made just now the remark that the profiles of the symbols chosen 

 by the inventors of the oldest Shemitic alphabet, look always to the 

 left. The symbols are drawn from the right to the left. This is 

 exactly the way, in which every inexperienced draughtsman draws. 

 Ask any child to draw several heads of men or animals in a horizontal 

 line, at the side of each other. You will find, that all the heads look 

 to the left. Is it not therefore but natural, that the old inventors of 

 the Shemitic alphabet, unpractised as they were, should have likewise 

 drawn the figures towards the left, and in putting the symbols together 

 for the purpose of writing, have commenced from the right and passed 

 on towards the left. 



" We have abundant and striking proofs that the old Canaanitic 

 alphabet is the basis of our modern alphabets. Even the legends of 

 the Greeks and Romans prove it. The Phoenicians have been the 

 writing masters of all nations on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, 

 (trading nations and the pioneers of civilization), although, for very 

 strong reasons, they seem not to have been the inventors of the alpha- 

 bet which they propagated. 



Now we might conclude, a priori, that the nations whom the 



