Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/104

 84 HISTORY OK ART IN PIKENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. accounted for, as we have elsewhere explained, 1 by habits con- tracted in the carving of hieroglyphs upon stone, wood, and other materials. There is nothing of the kind in Phoenicia. There we find no trace of a time when thoughts were expressed in ideographic characters. The Phoenicians learnt to write when they invented the alphabet. No one believes that they created it " all standing," but it is still doubtful whether they took their materials from the wedges or from the writing of Egypt."' Most scholars who have recently studied the question believe with M. de Rouge, that the borrowing was made from Egypt, and that it was made at a time when a people related to the Phoenicians, the Hyksos of Manetho, ruled in the valley, or at least in the delta, of the Nile. 3 No doubt, however, attaches to the right of the Phoenicians to the honour of having made the decisive step which has given us the alphabet ; the opinion of antiquity on the matter is summed up in two famous lines of Lucan : " Phocnices prinii, famre si creditur, ausi Mnnsuram rudibus vocem signare figuris." 4 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II. pp. 315, 316. 2 M. DECKK has lately returned to the Assyrian cuneiform characters for the originals of the alphabetical signs of Phoenicia (Der Ursprung des altsemitischen Alphabets aus der Assyrischen Kdhchrift, in the /.eitschrift der dentschen Morgen- Uecndischen Gesellschaft, 1877, pp. 102-154). As M. PH. BERGER has remarked, the theory of M. Decke (which has, however, found few supporters) has authority on its side which the learned German has failed to invoke, namely, that of PLINY. " So far as I am concerned," says the latter, " I persist in believing the alphabet to be of Assyrian origin. Literas semper arbitros Assyrias fuisse." He adds, however, " Sed alii apud /Egyptios a Mercurio, ut Gellius, alii apud Syros repertas volunt." l r at. Hist., i. 412. 3 The work of M. DE ROUGE, which was read before the Academy as long ago as 1 859, was only published in 1874, under the title Memoire sur F Origineeg)'ptienne deF Alphabet phenicien. For more complete information on all these difficult questions we must refer our readers to the work of the late M. FR. LENORMANT : Essai sur la Propa- gation de r 'Alphabet phenicien dans Fancim Monde ; the first volume only has been published (i vol. 8vo., Maisonneuve, 1872). M. PH. BERGER'S article in the Encyclopedic des Sciences religieuscs (L Ecriture et les Inscriptions semitiques) may also be profitably consulted. It is later in date (1880), and its author has been able to make use of the information collected in preparing the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Finally, we may point to the article Alphabet (FR. LENORMANT) in the Dictionnaire des Antiquites grecques et romaines. 4 LUCAN, Pharsalia, iii. v. 220-222. So, too, PLINY: " Ipsa gens Phcenicum in magna gloria est litterarum inventionis " (Nat. Hist. v. xii. 13); DIODORUS SICULUS : 2upoi evperai TWV ypa/x/xaTwv curt (v. 74).