Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/247

Rh The, x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward, ; this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed something like this, or ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phœnician, ; or the Moab stone, ; or the later Phœnician, ; or the Hebrew, , ; or the old Greek, : the later Greek form was.

The Maya alphabet contains no sign for the letter s; there is, however, a symbol called ca immediately above the letter k; it is probable that the sign ca stands for the soft sound of c, as in our words citron, circle, civil, circus, etc. As it is written in the Maya alphabet ca, and not k, it evidently represents a different sound. The sign ca is this,. A somewhat similar sign is found in the body of the symbol for k, thus, ; this would appear to be a simplification of ca, but turned downward. If now we turn to the Egyptian letters we find the sign k represented by this figure, simplified again into ; while the sign for k in the Phœnician inscription on the stone of Moab is. If now we turn to the s sound, indicated by the Maya sign ca,, we find the resemblance still more striking to kindred European letters. The Phœnician s is ; in the Greek this becomes ; the Hebrew is ; the Samaritan,. The Egyptian hieroglyph for s is : the Egyptian letter s is ; the Ethiopic, ; the Chaldaic, ; and the Illyrian s c is.

We have thus traced back the forms of eighteen of the ancient letters to the Maya alphabet. In some cases the pedigree is so plain as to be indisputable.

For instance, take the h:

Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Hebrew, ; Phœnician,.

Or take the letter o:

Maya, o; old Greek, o; old Hebrew, o; Phœnician, o.

Or take the letter t:

Maya, ; old Greek, ; old Phœnician, and.