Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/50

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Phoenician and Greek in more or less its modern form (see Plate I).

Its Sumerian parent is now clearly disclosed to be the syllabic pictogram ⨇, Mad or Mat, "a Mountain,' picturing two hills, in which the final consonant has been dropped out (as previously described under Κ), leaving its alphabetic value as Ma or ℳ this letter-sign is seen to preserve the features of its original pictograph of two hills down to the present day.

It is noteworthy that its common Runic form is practically identical with the earliest Egyptian form (see cols. 3 and 18).

In Sumerian and Akkadian and in other Aryan languages M interchanges with its kindred labial W, the sign for which is somewhat similar, but inverted and derived from a totally different parent, see W.

This nasal letter is found in Egypt from the twelfth Dynasty onwards in its modern form as well as reversed, and unreversed in Cadmean and reversed in the "Semitic" Phoenician (see Plate I).

Its Sumerian parent is evidently the sign Nu, "No" or "Not," picturing what Assyriologists interpret as a line cancelled or crossed out. Significantly, the primitive Sumerian form of a crossed line is retained in the Runes (see col. II).

The occasional reversal of the middle stroke of N as И may be merely owing to carelessness of the scribe, as this form is often perpetrated nowadays by even educated persons in writing their name in capitals. This common vowel has not hitherto been regarded as existing in Sumerian writing by Assyriologists; but it has been inferred that O was probably occasionally sounded