Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/644

Rh GOG ALPHABET in which a symbol could be transferred from one object to another, because the names of the two had the same sound in the spoken language, are not very distinct, and have not been fully examined ; on this point we may hope for more light from M. Lenormant. He points out that the same symbol denotes &quot;holiness and a &quot;slave.&quot; No meta phorical explanation seems possible here ; but both are sounded hen in the spoken language, and the community of symbol becomes at once intelligible. In such a practice as this we see at once a cause of great confusion, especially when the same symbol was employed to denote two things the names of which were not exact homophones, and yet sufficiently near in sound to allow themselves to be ex pressed by the same symbol; e.g., when the circle which denoted the sun was also taken to denote the idea of day, the sun was called ra, the day hru, and so the symbol became a polyphone ; it had two not very different sounds. It is true that here the application of the symbol for the sun to denote the day was not caused only by the similarity of sound in the two words it was probably employed at first metaphorically ; but there can be little doubt that it was helped to its double use by the indistinctness of the Egyptian vowel-sounds, which caused the two words to be sounded nearly alike. From this and similar causes arose that polyphony which necessitated the use of the deter minatives described above. Vestiges of the syllabic stage in Egyptian exist beyond a doubt, and they point to a slowly- effected transition from the older to the newer form of writing. Thus the symbol of a fish represented at the syllabic stage the syllable an ; later on, the letter a alone came to be denoted by a reed, and n by a waving line. Now we find the syllable an represented not merely by its own simple exponent, the fish, but also by the reed and fish together, that is, in phonetic value, by A. an; by the reed above the waving line ; and even by all three [A. ) .. . N**/ *&/ (Lenormant, ii. 44). This surely points to a stage at which the alphabetic values of the reed and line were not yet so firmly fixed that the writer could dispense with the older and more familiar sign of the fish to specialise the other two. Of Egyptian alphabetism proper it is not necessary to give examples ; we are sufficiently acquainted with the use of letters pure and simple, and their use in Egypt is not denied. To what cause are we to assign the progress of the Egyptian beyond the Assyrian method of writing 1 What circumstances enabled the one nation to develop at least an imperfect alphabetism, while the other never advanced beyond syllabism? No certain answer can be given; but at least a probable suggestion 13 made by M. Lenormant. The Egyptian vowel-sounds were indistinct : the consonants were clear and definite. Therefore it was natural (as Lepsius pointed out) that in each syllable the consonant should come to be regarded as the important element, and should finally extrude the following vowel altogether. Thus a large number of symbols, which originally represented syllables beginning with the same consonant but followed by differ ent vowels, would become in time absolutely identical in value, the different representatives of the same consonant. And a great abundance of such homophones is actually found in Egyptian. The method, therefore, which was followed in passing from the syllable to the mere alphabetic sign,^was identical with that which we have already pointed out in Assyrian, by which the symbol of a polysyllabic word was taken to have the phonetic value of the first syllable of that word; in each case it denoted the first element of the name the syllable in Assyrian, the single sound in Egyptian. And in each language the symbol thus applied to a new use still retained for a long time its old value as the hieroglyphic or at least conventional exponent of a material object or of an idea. Thus in Egypt nefer meant good. This word in writing is expressed in two ways : first, by a single symbol which had originally been the pictorial representation of some material object, but was afterwards the conventional symbol of the idea of good ness ; secondly, by this same symbol followed by two others, which had also, from being originally hieroglyphs, acquired the phonetic values of / and r ; that is to say, one symbol could at will express the whole word nefer and its initial letter n. This is the natural, perhaps the only possible way of eliminating the single sound ; but it is obvious that great difficulties would attend it at the outset. There could be at first no convention to restrict the symbol for n to that of the particular word nefer; any other begin ning with n would have served. There was no law to prevent a writer taking as many symbols for n as took his fancy ; and in fact each letter in this way did have several different symbols. It follows that while Egypt must be credited with having first invented an alphabetic system, and must for ever claim for this the gratitude of the world, yet that system was far too imperfect to become the instrument of a popular literature. It suffered equally from the opposite diseases of homophony and polyphony, from the expression of the same sound by many different symbols, and from the use of one symbol to denote many different syllables. And each of these evils was only aggravated by time. The earlier Egyptian writing is much more simple than the later, wherein homophones increased to a degree to which there was practically no limit except the strength of the memory; and the numerous phonetic devices to unravel the confusions of polyphony must have been equally burden some. It might have been expected that polyphony at least would have become extinct with time; that the different symbols for the same syllable would all have been worn down into single letters, and thus, though homophony might have multiplied, polyphony would have perished. This might have been the case if these symbols had ever become perfectly clear of their originally pictorial or con ventional origin. But this was never the case. To the last, the employment of a symbol to express an object or idea continued side by side with its employment as a single letter. The spirit of hieroglyphism, real if not apparent, could not be vanquished by alphabetism ; and in order that icleography may be finally expelled, it would seem that circumstances are needed more favourable than can be often found combined at any period of any nation s history. In fact, a purely phonetic alphabet is most likely to be produced when one nation borrows from another such portion of that -nation s symbols as it requires for its own needs, and rejects that superfluity which only leads to confusion. We have already seen indications of this fact. Many circumstances combine to render it difficult for a nation to reach of itself pure phonetism in writing. There is the strong disinclination to change, of which we have before spoken. It is always easier to put up with diffi culties to which we have been accustomed all our life than to make any radical change, especially when that change causes at once serious difficulties at every moment. It was easier for the Egyptians to retain the odd mixture of ideographic, syllabic, and alphabetic writing, and occasion ally to add some new key for unlocking the difficulties to the formidable list which was already in use. The in genuity of these grammatical devices almost surpasses belief. We can only refer the curious to the hieroglyphic grammar in the fifth volume of Bunsen s Egypt s Place in Universal History. In the second place, a good deal must be allowed to the restraining influence of religion. It is well known that most of the ancient nations ascribed a divine origin to their systems of writing. It might well