Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/105

 THE PIKKNICIAM WRITIXC. 85 " Here the evidence of writers is fully confirmed by the dis- coveries of modern science. We know no alphabet, properly speaking, which is earlier than that of the Phoenicians, and every alphabet that has survived to our own day, or of which we have any fragments, grows more or less directly out of the first alphabet elaborated by the sons of Canaan and spread by them over the whole surface of the ancient world." Whether the Phoenician letters were derived, as M. de Rouge believes, from the cursive writing employed on the papyri of the first Theban empire, or whether, as some have lately contended, they were taken directly, or at least in their chief elements, from a few phonetic symbols occurring in the monumental character, 2 it now appears certain that the invention dates from a much earlier period than w r as formerly supposed. The oldest known alphabetical inscription is that of Mesa, King of Moab, which dates from the year 896 B.C., and it already contains evidence of great fluency and of very long habit in the use of a written character. 8 In such a matter we can hardly suggest a date, but it seems very probable that the Phoenicians were already in possession of their alphabet when they first began to navigate the Levant. 4 In any case the invention o o J was known to the first Sidonian sailors who landed on the coasts of Greece and her islands. Thenceforward, on every shore frequented by the Syrian ships, the savage ancestors of the Greeks might group themselves about the stranger merchants, and with growing curiosity watch them as they recorded the results of each day's trade. The little writing-case (Fig. 31) which they drew from some fold of their robes, the slender kalem, dipped in ink, which moved so rapidly over clay tablet or papyrus strip, the small, crowded, queer-shaped marks which were continually repeated, but ever in some new combination, must all, for some time, have seemed parts of some magic and therefore disquieting rite. We cannot say how many years or centuries were required to carry the power and purpose of those mysterious figures into their minds, but we may be sure that as soon as a full comprehension dawned upon them they became eager to apply them to their own language. 1 FR. LENORMANT, Essai sitr la Propagation de r Alphabet phcnirien, vol. i. p. 84 2 This is the opinion of M. HALEVY (.Melanges tf Epigraphie s'emitique. p. 168). " PH. BERGER, L Ecriture et les Inscriptions semitiques, p. 15. 4 FR. LENORMANT, Essai, vol. i. pp. 95 and 101.