Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/59

Rh with the meaning of "arrow or dart," "remove (afar)," etc. (disclosing the Sumerian origin of the Latin Tilum, "a dart or arrow," and Greek Tele, "far," in tele-graph, tele-scope, etc.). And significantly this arrow-sign was also written at times in the identical form of the above Tar sign. The dropping of the final consonant leaves Ti as the alphabetic value of this sign and possibly it had this early value "alphabetically." The crutch form is evidently merely a cursive manner of writing this arrow-head. And the + and x also appear to be merely forms of writing this sign, just as in our modern minuscule t.

In the Runes, significantly, this archaic arrow-head form survived (see Plate II, col. 18), and the letter is therein called Tyr, which evidently preserves its Sumerian name of Til—l and r being always freely interchangeable dialectically as we have seen. Moreover, Tyr is the Gothic god of the Arrow or god of War, whose name survives in our Tues-day or Tys-day, just as Thurs-day derives from Thor. And Tir is the common Indo-Persian word for "arrow."

In Old Persian cuneiform, the letter זwith double strokes has the value Ti, whilst the simple T has three parallel strokes as in the Ogam with the addition of a dart wedge at its right border (see Plate IV, col. 19). The Indian Asokan form approaches the Sumerian like the cursive Hindi (see cols. 11 and 12).

The Brito-Phœnician of Partolan of the fourth century B.C. preserves the Sumerian form; whilst the Pre-Roman Briton coins have the modern form of the Cadmean Phœnician.

Th, or the aspirated letter with its sound does not appear in Sumerian by a sign, but is common in Semitic alphabets. In Early Cadmean Th occurs as a compound letter or monogram consisting of a cross + or x representing