Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/246

228 thus, ; the Chaldaic b was ; the Syriac sign for b was ; the Illyrian b was.

The Maya e is ; this became in time ; then (we see this form on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, : we even find in some of the ancient Phœnician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter e, thus, ; then we find the old Greek form, ; the old Hebrew, ; and the later Phœnician, : when the direction of the writing was changed this became. Dr. Schliemann found a form like this on inscriptions deep in the ruins of Troy,. This is exactly the form found on the American monuments.

The Maya i is ; this became in time ; this developed into a still simpler form, ; and this passed into the Phœnician form,. The Samaritan i was formed thus, ; the Egyptian letter i is : gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped, and we come to the figure used on the stone of Moab, and ; this in time became the old Hebrew  or ; and this developed into the Greek.

We have seen the complicated symbol for m reduced by the Mayas themselves into this figure, : if we attempt to write this rapidly, we find it very difficult to always keep the base lines horizontal; naturally we form something like this, : the distinctive figure within the sign for m in the Maya is or. We see this repeated in the Egyptian hieroglyphics for m,, and , and ; in the Chaldaic m, ; and in the Ethiopic. We find one form of the Phœnician where the m is made thus, ; and in the Punic it appears thus, ; and this is not unlike the m on the stone of Moab,, or the ancient Phœnician forms, , , and the old Greek , or the ancient Hebrew ,.