Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/52

,  (according to Lidzbarski, see below, perhaps originally  or ),  (properly ; according to Lidzbarski, perhaps ),  (?),  (?), ,  (according to Nestle, comparing the Greek , rather ,  (but perhaps only differentiated from  by the left-hand stroke),  (?), according to others a  or a  (but perhaps only differentiated from  by a circle round it), , , , ,  (Lidzbarski, ‘perhaps originally ,’ as in Ethiopic),  (perhaps a modification of ), ,  (also ),  (?), , according to others  (Lidzb., ‘perhaps ’), , ,.

With regard to the origin of this alphabet, it may be taken as proved that it is not earlier (or very little earlier) than the fifteenth century B.C., since otherwise the el-Amarna tablets would not have been written exclusively in cuneiform. It seems equally certain on various grounds, that it originated on Canaanitish soil. It is, however, still an open question whether the inventors of it borrowed

(a) From the Egyptian system—not, as was formerly supposed, by direct adoption of hieroglyphic signs (an explanation of twelve or thirteen characters was revived by J. Halévy in 1901, p. 356 ff., 1902, p. 331 ff., and in the, Leiden, 1904, p. 199 ff.; but cf. Lidzbarski, , i. 261 ff.), or of hieratic characters derived from them (so E. de Rougé), but by the adoption of the  principle (see ) by which e.g. the hand, in Egyptian , represents the letter t, the lion = , the letter l. This view still seems the most probable. It is now accepted by Lidzbarski (‘Der Ursprung d. nord- u. südsemit. Schrift’ in, i (1900), 109 ff., cf. pp. 134 and 261 ff.), though in his (1898) p. 173 ff. he was still undecided.

(b) From the Babylonian (cuneiform) system. Wuttke’s and W. Deecke’s derivation of the old-Semitic alphabet from new-Assyrian cuneiform is impossible for chronological reasons. More recently Peters and Hommel have sought to derive it from the old-Babylonian, and Ball from the archaic Assyrian cuneiform. A vigorous discussion has been aroused by the theory of Frdr. Delitzsch (in, Lpz. 1897; and with the same title ‘Ein Nachwort’, Lpz. 1898, preceded by a very clear outline of the theory) that the old-Semitic alphabet arose in Canaan under the influence both of the Egyptian system (whence the acrophonic principle) and of the old-Babylonian, whence the principle of the graphic representation of objects and ideas by means of simple, and mostly rectilinear, signs. He holds that the choice of the objects was probably (in about fifteen cases) influenced by the Babylonian system. The correspondence of names had all the more effect since, according to Zimmern ( 1896, p. 667 ff.), out of twelve names which are certainly identical, eight appear in the same order in the Babylonian arrangement of signs. But it must first be shown that the present names of the