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Rh originated, there seems no doubt that its first importation in a form closely resembling that with which we are familiar in modern times was from the Phoenicians to the Greeks. The Phoenicians were certainly using it with freedom in the 9th century ; with so much freedom, indeed, that they must have been in possession of it for a considerable time before we can trace it. With the materials available up to August 1910 it would be idle here to attempt to trace its earlier history. Great discoveries in Cappadocia, Assyria and Egypt were then only at their beginning, and any statement was liable to be quickly disproved by the appearance of new evidence. The prevalent theory, universally accepted till a few years ago, was that of Vicomte Emmanuel de Rougé, first propounded to the Académie des Inscriptions in 1859, but unnoticed by the world at large till republished, after de Rougé’s death, by his son in 1874. According to this view the alphabet was borrowed by the Phoenicians from the cursive (hieratic) form of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The resemblances between some Egyptian symbols and some symbols of the Phoenician alphabet are striking; in other cases the differences are no less remarkable. As a matter of fact the Egyptians might have passed about thirty-five centuries from the picture writing of hieroglyphs to genuine alphabetic signs. They did not, however, profit by their discovery, because, amongst the Egyptians, writing was clearly a mystery in both senses—only possible at that period for masters in the craft, and also something, like the writing of medical prescriptions at the present day in Latin, which was not to be made too easily intelligible to the common people. At all periods, moreover, hieroglyphic writing was a branch of decorative art, and it may have been that the ancient Egyptian, like the modern Turk, resented too much lucidity, and liked his literary compositions to be veiled in a certain obscurity. The alphabet devised by the Egyptians consisted of twenty-four letters. Egyptologists are at variance on the question whether this alphabet was the original, or had any influence upon the development of the Phoenician alphabet. “With the papyrus paper,” says Professor Breasted, “the hand customarily written upon it in Egypt now made its way into Phoenicia, where before the 10th century it developed into an alphabet of consonants, which was quickly transmitted to the Ionian Greeks and thence to Europe.” On the other hand, Professor Spiegelberg, writing soon after Professor Breasted, says that investigation has not as yet furnished proof that the Phoenician alphabet is of Egyptian origin, though he admits that in some respects the development of the two alphabets, both without vowel signs, is curiously parallel.

The most recent view is that of Dr A. J. Evans, who argues ingeniously that the alphabet was taken over from Crete by the “Cherethites and Pelethites” or Philistines, who established for themselves settlements on the coast of Palestine. From them it passed to the Phoenicians, who were their near neighbours, if not their kinsfolk. Symbols like the letters of the alphabet have been found in European soil painted upon pebbles belonging to a stratum between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic age. This was in France at Mas d’Azil on the left bank of the Arize. Elsewhere several series of such symbols resembling inscriptions have been found scratched on bones of the same period. For the history of writing these may be important, but for the history of the alphabet, as we know it, they are not in question. The alphabet may have originated as Dr Evans thinks, but at present the proof is not conclusive. The Greek names of the letters, their forms, and the order of the symbols show that the Greek alphabet as we know it must have been imported by or from a Semitic people, and there is no evidence to contradict ancient tradition that this people was the Phoenicians. The view propounded by Deecke in 1877, that the Phoenician alphabet had developed out of the late Assyrian cuneiform, never met with much acceptance and has really no evidence in its favour.

The earliest alphabetic document which can be dated with comparative certainty is the famous Moabite stone, which was discovered in 1868, and after a controversy between rival claimants which led to its being broken in pieces by the Arabs, ultimately reached the Louvre, where in a restored form it remains. The long inscription upon it celebrates the achievements of Mesha, king of Moab, who had been a tributary of Ahab, king of Israel, and rebelled after his death (1 Kings iii. 4, 5). Though the chronology of the period is somewhat uncertain, the date must be in the first half of the 9th century It is to be remembered, however, that important as this monument is for the development of the alphabet, and because it can be dated with tolerable accuracy, the dialect and alphabet of Moab are not in themselves proof for the Phoenician forms which influenced the peoples of the Aegean, and through them Western Europe. The fragment of a bronze bowl discovered in Cyprus in 1876, which bears round its edge an inscription dedicating it to Baal-Lebanon as a gift from a servant of Hiram, king of the Sidonians, is probably the oldest Phoenician document which we possess. This bowl, though perhaps a little earlier than the Moabite stone, in all probability is not more than a century older, while some authorities think it is even later. The earliest alphabet consisted of twenty-two letters, and bears a very close resemblance to the earliest Greek alphabet from to. The symbols in the Greek alphabet from to, or in the numerical alphabet to, are not found in the Phoenician alphabet.

As already mentioned, the twenty-two symbols of the Phoenician alphabet indicate consonantal sounds only. Greek did not possess so many consonants. The Phoenician alphabet possessed many more aspirates than were required in Greek, which tended more and more to drop all its aspirates. Before history begins it had also lost, except sporadically in out-of-the-way dialects, the semi-vowel i (approximately English y.) It therefore made the aspirates, , and the semi-vowel  into vowels, and apparently converted the semi-vowel 𐤅 = w into the vowel = u, which it placed at the end of the alphabet and substituted for it as the sixth symbol of the alphabet the letter with the old value of w. The superfluous sibilants were also adapted in various ways (see below).

The discovery of a large number of very archaic inscriptions in the island of Thera, which was made by Freiherr Hiller von Gärtringen in 1896, has shown that the earliest Greek alphabet was even more like the Phoenician than had been heretofore believed. The symbol for in Thera  is nearer than any previously known to the Semitic letter (𐤁) though, as not infrequently happens in the transference of a symbol from one people to another, its position is inverted—a fate which in this alphabet has befallen also  (Semitic 𐤋, Thera ), and possibly  (Semitic 𐤑, Thera ). The era of excavation initiated by Dr Schliemann on the grand scale has increased our knowledge of Greek inscriptions beyond anything that was earlier dreamt of. Besides the excavations of Athens, Delos, Epidaurus and Delphi, the results of which are most important for the 5th century and later. the exploration of the sites of Olympia, of the Heraeum near Argos, of Naucratis in Egypt, and of various Cretan towns (above all the ancient Gortyn), has revolutionized our knowledge of the archaic alphabets of Greece. We can now see how long and laborious was the process by which the Greeks attained to uniformity in writing and in numeration. In no field, perhaps, was the centrifugal tendency of the Greeks more persistent than in such matters. In numeration, indeed, uniformity was not attained till at least the 2nd century of the Christian era. The differentiation of the local alphabets is found