Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/46

34 The simple H sometimes occurs early as ╫, which is the Sumerian sign for Khat "to cut," the root of the tribal name Khatti or "Hitt-ite," turned on its left side, and may have been derived from that sign, if it be not, as seems more probable, merely a simpler form of writing the barred oblong sign above figured.

The simple upright cross + which appears to be used for H in some of the later Cadmean alphabets is presumably a still more abbreviated form of the two-barred cross form and approaching the small h, if it be not really the + form of T or t; but it is sometimes found in Indian Asokan for H.

The Sumerian sign for this vowel was, namely five upright strokes, three above and two below. It occurs in substantially the same form in Egypt from the first Dynasty onwards, written by four strokes, three of them fused in a horizontal bar, and somewhat similarly in Cadmean and "Semitic" Phœnician. In Akkad it is.

Ogam (col. 19) significantly preserves all of the five strokes of the Sumerian, which are reduced to three in Old Persian, fused into a line with bent ends in the Runes and Asokan, and becoming cursive in Hindi. The single stroke | appears in later Cadmean sometimes contemporary with the four-stroked form. It was probably, I think, derived from the use of the single bar Sumerian sign for "Wood-bar" with the value of Iś, as alphabetic for I. In the Runes which also use this simple form the letter is called Iss. ⁴ The dot on the top of the letter i seems presumably a survival of the original three top dots or bars of the Early Sumerian sign fused into one.