Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/42

30 for E (col. 15) exhibits the Eye form and approximates to our modern e. It also occurs for the short e in the Brito-Phcenician inscription of Partolan.

This labial letter is a very early and critical letter. Its sign occurs with its two bars turned to the right on Pre-dynastic and Early-Dynastic pottery, and onwards throughout almost all the alphabets (see Plate I).

This letter F with its sound or phonetic value has not hitherto been recognized as existing in Sumerian, but the new evidence now attests that existence in the signs hitherto read Pi and Pa.

The parent of the F sign is seen to be the Sumerian Viper-sign, with the value of Fi, hitherto read Pi by Assyriologists, (see Plate I, col. 1). This F phonetic value is evidenced by this Viper-sign, which possesses the F shape in early linear Sumerian (see Plate I, col. 1), by the Viper-sign also existing in Egyptian hieroglyphs from the first Dynasty onwards with the phonetic value of Fy, by this letter F having in the Runes the name of Fia or Fe with the meaning of "Fatal, Fate or Death," the Fey or "fatality" of the Scots and associated with the idea of the Serpent, and by the Sumerian roots spelt with this Viper-sign being largely represented in their Gothic and English derivatives by words spelt with F as their initial, and by this F occurring in archaic Greek also for such words, and also in Old Persian.

The F, called by modern Greek scholars di-gamma or "doubled G" although it has no phonetic affinity whatever with gamma or G, whilst continuing in the Western Cadmean alphabets, very early dropped out of the Ionian and Greek alphabets, where it was either omitted altogether or replaced by the V form of U (whence the V in "Viper"), or by the