Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/80

66 scattered in Asia Minor, while there are scarcely any in Europe." From this he concludes "that in North Syria originated the first system of classification" and "that Greece was indebted to North Syria for its alphabet." And here it is noteworthy that the Cappadocians are called "Syrians" by Herodotus, and "White Syrians" by Strabo, and that "Syria" was a name for Asia Minor, the home of the Hittites.

This new evidence thus suggests that the gifted scientist who invented the epoch-making alphabetic system, by observing with rare genius that all the necessary sounds for spelling words numbered no more than about 24 or so, and that the existing Sumerian linear pictograms of those sounds in their most diagrammatic form then current for domestic purposes were all that were needed for the rapid writing of any word or sentence, was presumably a Hittite or Hitto-Phœnician, and thus an Aryan in race. He would doubtless also be partly led to this conclusion by observing the clumsy pseudo-alphabetic system with its 24 or so consonantal and vowel sounds long current in Egypt, a land with which the Hittites and Phœnicians had long been in close relations by commerce and intermarriage and invasion, not to speak of the Sumero-Phœnician origin of the Early Egyptian civilization. Besides this, the old Hittite features present in many of the early Cadmean alphabetic inscriptions, namely, that the opening line is written in reversed direction, and that the plough-wise style of alternating directions as in the Hittite hieroglyphs is sometimes adopted, are also strongly suggestive of Hittite influence. The Hittites or Khatti were the imperial suzerains of Asia Minor and Syria and great traders, and were the blood-kinsmen of the Phœnican or Khad, with whom they were confederated. Phœnicia