Edward Clodd

EGYPTIAN WRITING IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER SCRIPTS

The interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics being thus settled once and for all, the next problem to be attacked was their relation, if any, to the sound-signs whence are derived the alphabets of the civilised world. We travel backwards along clearly-marked lines from our alphabet to the Roman, and thence to the Greek, which tradition attributed to the Phoenicians. Herodotus says upon this matter: "Now these Phoenicians who came with Cadmos, of whom were the Gephyraians, brought in among the Hellenes many arts when they settled in this land of Boeotia, and especially letters, which did not exist, as it appears to me, among the Hellenes before this time; and at first they brought in those which are used by the Phoenician race generally, but afterwards, as time went on, they changed with their speech the form of the letters also. During this time the Ionians were the race of Hellenes who dwelt near them in most of the places where they were; and these, having received letters by instruction of the Phoenicians, changed their form slightly and so made use of them, and in doing so they declared them to be called 'phoenicians,' as was just, seeing that the Phoenicians had introduced them into Hellas. Also, the Ionians from ancient time call paper 'skins,' because formerly, paper being scarce, they used skins of goats and sheep; nay, even in my own time many of the Barbarians wrote on such skins" (v. 58).

Pliny, in his Natural History (v. 12, 13), gives the credit of the invention of the alphabet to the Phoenicians, and other ancient authors repeat what must have been an old tradition. The honesty of these writers is unimpeachable, however much their competency may be questioned; and no slight confirmation of their testimony appears, in the judgment of many modern scholars, to be furnished by the correspondence in number, name (the sibilants s and z excepted), and order, although not in form, between the letters of the Greek and the Semitic alphabets. "In default of further evidence, the very word Alphabet," Canon Taylor remarks, "might suffice to disclose the secret of its origin. It is obviously derived from the names of the two letters alpha and beta, which stand at the head of the Greek alphabet, and which are plainly identical with the names aleph and beth borne by the corresponding Semitic characters. These names, which are meaningless in Greek, are significant Semitic words, aleph denoting an 'ox,' and beth a 'house.'" The following table shows the names and order of the Greek and Semitic letters, the Hebrew being selected as the type of a Semitic alphabet, because it is more familiar than any other (cf. Taylor's History of the Alphabet, vol. i. p.75).

HEBREW.			GREEK.
Name.		Meaning.	Name
?	Aleph	ox	?	a		Alpha
?	Beth	house	?		?	Beta
?	Gimel	camel	G	?		Gamma
?	Daleth	door	?	d		Delta
?	He	window	?	e		Epsilon
?	Vau	hook		(Vau	—	obsolete)
?	Zayin	weapons	?	?		Zeta
?	Cheth	fence	?	?		Eta
?	Teth	serpent?	T	?	?	Theta
?	Yod	hand	?	?		Iota
?	Kaph	palm of hand	?	?		Kappa
?	Lamed	ox-goad	?	?		Lambda
?	Mem	waters	?			Mu
?	Nun	fish	?	?		Nu
?	Samekh	post	?	?		Xi
?	'Ayin	eye	?	?		Omicron
?	Pe	mouth	?	p		Pi
?	Tsade	javelin?		(San	—	lost)
?	Qoph	knot?		(Koppa	—	obsolete)
?	Resh	head	?	?		Rho
?	Shin	teeth	S	s	?	Sigma
?	Tau	mark	?	t		Tau
			?	?		Upsilon *
			F	f		Phi *
			?	?		Chi *
			?	?		Psi *
			O	?		Omega *

* "of later origin"

Assuming the theory of the Phoenician origin of the alphabet to be established, the next question is, was that alphabet an independent invention, or was it adapted from another set of characters? As has been seen, all evidence goes to show that sound-signs have been derived from pictographs, and, if the Phoenician script be no exception to this, search must be made for its earlier forms. Tradition asserted that "the Phoenicians did not claim to be themselves the inventors of the art of writing, but admitted that it was obtained by them from Egypt." So says Eusebius, and the same tradition has currency among classic authorities from Plato to Tacitus, while the fact of the active intercourse which long prevailed between Phoenicia and Egypt goes far in its support. The Phoenicians were of Semitic race, "dwelling in ancient time, as they themselves report, upon the Erythrean Sea" (i.e. in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf), "and thence they passed over and dwelt in the country along the sea coast of Syria; and this part of Syria and all as far as Egypt is called Palestine" (Herodotus, vii. 89). But of their origin and primitive migrations, in truth, little is known. Tyre, whose king, Hiram, gave Solomon aid in the building of his famous temple, and Sidon, are familiar names in the Bible, but that of the "Phoenicians" does not once occur, reference to them being probably included in the term "Canaanite." Professor Huxley, always felicitous in his phrases as he was supreme in exposition, aptly called them the "colossal pedlars" of the ancient world. The narrow strip of Syrian seaboard which they occupied when we first meet them in history was a meeting-place between East and West, and the nursery of a maritime enterprise which looms large in history. Their ships traded westward beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and eastward to the Indian Ocean; their colonists settled on both shores of the Mediterranean, on the Euxine, and were scattered over Asia Minor. Like the Romans, the Phoenicians had little creative instinct. Designing or discovering little, but skilfully manufacturing and circulating much, they were distributors of the wares of their own and neighbouring countries, and founded emporia in many a city of the ancient world, as e.g. at Memphis, "round about whose sacred enclosure, on that side of the temple of Hephaistos which faces the north wind, dwell Phoenicians of Tyre, this whole region being called the camp of the Tyrians," or, as we should say, the Tyrian quarter (Herodotus, ii. 112).

Obviously, one of the pressing needs of a people thus brimful of commercial activity, to whom "time was money," would be some swift and concise mode of record of transactions. Hence the supersession or abbreviation of cumbrous and elaborated characters, with their apparatus of determinatives, ideograms, and the like, by a simple "shorthand" sort of script. But of what characters? Influenced partly by the traditions already referred to, partly by the fact of the intimate relations between Phoenicia and Egypt, and doubtless by that principle of development the application of which was extending in all directions, a French Egyptologist, Emanuel de RougÉ, read a paper on the history of the alphabet before the AcadÉmie des Inscriptions in 1859 (the year of publication of Darwin's Origin of Species), which, in the judgment of many scholars, appeared conclusive as to the derivation of the Phoenician (and, through that, of all other alphabets now in use) from the Egyptian characters. The success which appeared to attend M. de RougÉ's researches "must be attributed to his clear perception of the fact, itself antecedently probable, that the immediate prototypes of the Semitic letters must be sought, not, as had hitherto been vainly attempted, among the hieroglyphic pictures of the Egyptian monuments, but among the cursive characters which the Egyptians had developed out of their hieroglyphs, and which were employed for literary and secular purposes, the hieroglyphic writing being reserved for monumental and sacred uses" (Taylor, i. p. 90). The method which he adopted was admirable. He took the oldest known forms of the Semitic letters that he could discover, and compared these with the oldest known forms of hieratic writing, confining that comparison to the twenty-five letters of the so-called "Egyptian Alphabet." The materials at his command were of the scantiest. On the Egyptian side hieratic papyri of the new Empire (which began about 1587 b.c.) existed in plenty, but the characters in which they are written are comparatively late. Fortunately, however, among the very few examples of the oldest form of hieratic was the Papyrus Prisse (Fig. 50), and this precious relic supplied M. de RougÉ with the cursive characters which made formulation of his theory possible. On the Semitic side there are the Egyptian words which are given in Semitic form in the Old Testament, and the Semitic names of Syrian towns which are found in the Egyptian annals of conquests under the new Empire, through which the sounds severally represented by the Semitic and hieratic characters are arrived at. The chief source of epigraphic evidence was an inscription (Fig. 51) on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon, dating from the fifth century b.c., or about two thousand years later than the Papyrus Prisse, and therefore representing a late form of the Phoenician alphabet.

Fig. 50.—Facsimile of Hieratic Papyrus Prisse

The sarcophagus, which is preserved in the Louvre, was found in a rock-tomb near the site of ancient Sidon. The interpretation of the inscription upon it has exercised the skill of a host of scholars, and given rise to an enormous body of literature. Eshmunazar, whose mask and mummy are sculptured on the sarcophagus, speaks in the first person. He calls himself "king of the Sidonians, son of Tabnit," and tells how he and his mother, the priestess of Ashtaroth, had built temples to Baal Sidon, Ashtaroth, and Emun. He beseeches the favour of the gods, and prays that Dora, Joppa, and the fertile corn-lands of Sharon may ever remain part of his kingdom. Well-nigh in the words of Shakespeare's epitaph, he lays a curse upon him who would molest his grave; such an one "shall have no funeral couch with the Rephaim," that haunt the vasty halls of death. "I am cut off before my time; few have been my days, and I am lying in this coffin and in this tomb in the place which I have built. Oh, then, remember this! may no royal race, may no man open my funeral couch, and may they not seek after treasure, for no one has hidden treasures here, nor move the coffin out of my funeral couch, nor molest me in this funeral bed by putting in it another tomb." (Records of the Past, vol. ix.)

Such, broadly speaking, were M. de RougÉ's materials for observation and comparison, and there have been few more striking examples of ingenuity of classification and inference than those which, his work supplies. In his excellent summary of that work which Canon Taylor gives in the first volume of his indispensable History of the Alphabet (pp. 98-116), he refers the student who desires full details to M. de RougÉ's posthumous MÉmoire sur l'origine Égyptienne de l'alphabet PhÉnicien, and suggests that those readers who care only for results may even skip his summary. That summary necessarily includes much technical matter which will interest only the trained philologist; and in the superficial survey of the subject which is only possible, and perhaps desirable, in these pages, any details would be out of place. Nevertheless, the accompanying tabulated form of M. de RougÉ's results may be followed by an example or two of the method which secured them, and also by reference to some earlier Semitic inscriptions which have come to light since 1859.

M. DE ROUGÉ'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ALPHABET.

Our examples of M. de RougÉ's method may be taken from the letters b and h.

b. The Egyptians had two signs for this, the "leg," _ which is the normal sign, and the "crane" (see Fig. 2 in foregoing table), which letter should be taken as the prototype of the Phoenician (see Fig. 2, col. iii.). The reason may be that the sound of the first symbol seems to have been nearer to v than to b, the "crane" being used as the equivalent of beth in the translation of several Semitic names, such as Berytus (Beyrout) and Khirba. The hieratic trace of the "leg" would, moreover, be easily confused with that of some other letters, such as the "chick" and the "arm," and would therefore be inconvenient for adoption. The Semitic character _ differs from its hieratic prototype _ in having acquired a closed loop. The closed form is so much easier to write that the change presents no difficulty. But there is a curious bit of indirect evidence which seems to show that the Semitic in its earlier form was open, something in the shape of an_. The Greek alphabet used at Corinth, one of the earliest Phoenician colonies in Hellas, must have been derived from a type of the Semitic alphabet more archaic than that which appears on the Moabite Stone (see p. 147). Now, in the old Corinthian alphabet the letter beta is not closed, but open, _, its form being almost identical with the hieratic prototype.

h. The letter he corresponds to the "mÆander" and the "knotted cord." The hieratic forms show that the former must be taken as the prototype. In the Papyrus Prisse there are two of this character; one, which is comparatively rare, is open at the bottom, _, and corresponds to the Moabite _. It is much more usual, however, to find the character completely closed. The name of the Semitic letter, which is generally supposed to mean a "window," would indicate that the previous form of the letter agreed with the more usual hieratic trace. This conjecture is curiously confirmed by the evidence afforded by the early inscriptions of Corinth, which, as we have seen in the case of beta, occasionally preserve alphabetic forms of a more archaic type than those found on the Moabite Stone itself. Now, in the primitive alphabet of Corinth we find, instead of the usual form of epsilon, a closed character _ which is nearly identical with the form of the "mÆander," most usual in the Papyrus Prisse. (Taylor, i. pp. 102, 114.)

Among the more important Semitic inscriptions, other than that on the Eshmunazar sarcophagus, are: (1) the inscription on fragments of sacred vessels of bronze from the temple of Baal Lebanon, which is assigned to the eleventh century b.c.; (2) the inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, on a slab of black basalt, known as the Moabite Stone, which is assigned to the ninth century b.c.; (3) the lion weights from Nineveh, bearing the names of Assyrian kings who reigned during the second half of the eighth century b.c.; and (4) the inscription on a tablet in a tunnel which conveys water from the Virgin's Pool in the Kedron Valley to the Pool of Siloam in the TyropÆon. The date of this inscription lies between the eighth and the sixth centuries b.c.

1. The Baal Lebanon Vessels. In 1876 M. Clermont-Ganneau bought from a Cypriote dealer some fragments of bronze plates bearing Phoenician characters (Fig. 52). They were traced to a peasant who had found them when digging, and who had broken up the metal in the hope that it was of gold. The industry and skill of MM. Renan and Clermont-Ganneau pieced the fragments together in such wise as to warrant the inference that they were portions of sacred bowls, an inference confirmed by the longest of the inscriptions, which declared that "this vessel of good bronze was offered by a citizen of Carthage, servant of Hiram, king of the Sidonians, to Baal Lebanon, his Lord," whose temple was one of the "high places" dedicated to the god.

2. The Moabite Stone (Fig. 53). This, perhaps the most famous, and, certainly, one of the most important, of Semitic relics, was discovered in 1868 by Dr. Klein, a German missionary, during his travels in Moab. The Arabs who escorted him took him to see an inscribed stone, the Phoenician characters on which were beautifully cut in thirty-four lines. The doctor copied a few words, and resumed his journey. On reaching Jerusalem he made known his discovery, whereupon competition was started between the French and German Consulates for purchase of the coveted treasure. This aroused the suspicion of the Arabs, to whom the stone had become a sort of talisman on which the fertility of their crops depended—that is, when they had industry enough to plant them. Messengers sent by M. Clermont-Ganneau succeeded in taking a squeeze of the inscription, which made the Arabs still more hostile, and in the end, after the Turkish governor of Nablus had vainly tried to secure the stone for himself—of course to sell at a profit to the "infidel"—the Arabs put a fire under it, then poured cold water over it, and smashed it into fragments, which were distributed as charms among the tribe. But the tact of M. Clermont-Ganneau recovered nearly all the pieces, so that, a few lines excepted, the inscription is complete. The original is preserved in the Louvre, and a very good cast of it may be seen in the Phoenician department of the British Museum.

The inscription, which is written in a language resembling closely the Hebrew of the Old Testament, gives Mesha's account of his rebellion against the King of Israel, to whom he had hitherto paid yearly tribute of the wool of a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams. Historically the monument is of high value. Mesha speaks of himself as the son of Chemoshmelek, whose position as the national god of the petty kingdom of Moab corresponds to that of Yahweh or Jehovah among the Israelites. The reference to Chemosh throws light on the correspondences in belief between the several Semitic peoples. The "high place" or altar of the god, his anthropomorphic character as angry, as urging his votaries to battle and to slaughter of their foes, giving them no quarter—all this is identical with the Hebrew conception of deity, so that the inscription, mutatis mutandis, reads like a transcript from the warlike annals of the Old Testament. From the epigraphic standpoint, which alone concerns us here, the inscription is regarded by Canon Taylor and other scholars as supporting the theory of M. de RougÉ.

3. The Lion Weights (Fig. 54). Several examples of these were found by the late Sir Austin Layard in his first excavations at Nineveh. They are bilingual, the names of the Assyrian kings being usually in cuneiform writing, while the weights are indicated in Phoenician characters. Of course this evidences intimate trading relations between Assyria and Phoenicia, and the commercial dominance of the latter in the adoption of its weights and measures as the metrical standard of the former, and in the general use of the Phoenician alphabet for business purposes. The action of time has largely obliterated the inscriptions, but among the names of Assyrian kings which have been identified are Tiglath-Peser, Shalmaneser IV., Sargon II., and Sennacherib. The similarity between the Phoenician and Assyrian characters is shown in the inscription here reproduced, which is to scale of the original. It is on the eleventh lion, which weighs a little over twenty ounces, and therefore represents a maneh, a Hebrew weight used in estimating gold and silver, and believed to contain one hundred shekels of the former and sixty of the latter. The reading is maneh melek, "a maneh of the king." The name is not very legible, but is read by Professor Sayce as Shalmaneser, who reigned in the seventh century b.c.

4. The Siloam Inscription.—The tunnel in which this was found was doubtless constructed to secure the water supply of Jerusalem in the event of a siege, the Virgin's Pool being outside the city walls, while the Pool of Siloam is inside the boundaries of the old rampart. Encrustations of carbonate of lime made the decipherment of the letters very difficult on their first discovery in 1880, but enough was seen to prove their high importance for the study of the development of the Hebrew alphabet in its passage from the Phoenician to the Aramean type, whence the modern characters are derived. "It was recognised at once that a Hebrew inscription of a date prior to the Captivity had at last been discovered, and that the uncertainties as to the nature of the alphabet of Israel would now be set at rest." The letters were carefully cleared of their accretion; squeezes, tracings, and casts were obtained, and the Hebrew record, engraved in Phoenician characters nearly resembling those on the Moabite Stone, thus Englished, of course more or less conjecturally in detail, by Professor Sayce:—

The inscription is interesting if only as showing how modern methods of tunnelling were anticipated by these ancient engineers. One gang of men began boring at one end and another gang at the other end, thus advancing till both met, and the failure to make the connection which is spoken of in "the (excess) in the rock on the right" has confirmation in the existence of two "blind alleys" in the tunnel, showing how the borings overlapped. The accuracy with which, aided by the most recent appliances worked by compressed air, the passages through miles of rock have been bored until the men at either end meet face to face in the middle, is among the romantic achievements of modern science. The Samaritan alphabet is the sole surviving lineal descendant of the Phoenician, which in whatever degree the parent of all extant alphabets, became extinct with the decline of Phoenicia herself, and the characters are now recoverable only through the inscriptions of which examples have been given.

M. de RougÉ's theory of the source of that alphabet, and of the variants to which it has given rise, has not passed unchallenged. It belongs to the class of hypotheses which lend themselves to the straining of facts in their support, and therefore demand evidence amounting to demonstration. The superficial resemblances between the written characters are cited as proof of relation, no play being given to that independence of origin of which numerous examples occur in other branches of human development. In his article on Hieroglyphics in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, Mr. Reginald Poole remarks that "the hieratic forms vary, like all cursive forms of writing, with the hand of each scribe. Consequently, the writers who desire to establish their identity with Phoenician can scarcely avoid straining the evidence." Moreover, the long lapse of time between the materials for comparison invites caution. The Papyrus Prisse is, at least, two thousand years older than the Eshmunazar inscription, and on these two hang the validity of M. de RougÉ's theory. Another contention is that certain Semitic letters represent sounds which are peculiar to that language, and for which no equivalent signs could be adopted from the Egyptian, to which, however, the reply is that in the borrowing of characters it suffices to select those representing similar, although not the same, sounds. The objection that the names of the Semitic letters are not those of the hieroglyphs is met by the principle of acrology (see pp. 86, 104). The question is also asked, Why did not the Phoenicians borrow the hieroglyphic instead of the hieratic characters? Mr. Arthur Evans thinks that in some cases this was done, a few of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet coming direct from the pictorial symbols, as Alpha (Alef = an ox), from the hieroglyph of an ox's head; Zeta (zayin = weapons), from the two-edged axe; Sigma (samech = a post), from the sign of a tree; Omikron (Ain = an eye), from the circle used to represent the eye; Eta and E-psilon (cheth = a fence and He = a window), from signs for a wall or door or window. Canon Taylor, however, argues that the derivation must have been on the lines laid down by M. de RougÉ, the Semitic alphabet originating among a colony of aliens of that race settled in Lower Egypt, either as slaves, traders, frontier guards, or conquerors. In any case these intruders would be strangers to the religion and the language of the Egyptians. It would, therefore, be more likely that they should make use of the cursive and easy hieratic, which was ordinarily employed in Egypt for secular and commercial purposes, than that they should adopt the difficult sacred script which was reserved by the Egyptian priesthood for monumental and religious uses. This supposition is confirmed by the singular absence of any hieroglyphic monument which can be assigned to the three dynasties of Semitic rulers known as the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings, who were expelled from Lower Egypt by the Theban Ramesides.

Canon Taylor admits that if, among the objections raised by Professor Lagarde, that based on the want of adequate resemblance between the Semitic letters and the hieratic forms can be sustained, M. de RougÉ's theory falls to the ground. The Canon, a staunch, although perfectly candid, supporter of that theory, very properly lays stress on the tendency of things borrowed to partake of the character of the borrower. That they are borrowed at all implies a certain adaptableness in them which permits modification of type, especially when the writing has to be inscribed on another kind of material. The early hieratic writing was traced on papyrus with a soft reed-stump, while the Semitic was cut upon a stone with a chisel, to the loss of flowing lines and curves. "Looking broadly at the two scripts, Hieratic and Moabite, we see in the first place that the Semitic writing is distinguished by greater symmetry and greater simplicity. The letters have become more regular and uniform: more angular, more firm, and more erect; the differences in relative size have diminished; the complicated and difficult characters especially being straightened or curtailed." (History of the Alphabet, i. 125.) Summing up the several objections, of which only the more important have been noted here, Canon Taylor, amending nothing in the recent reprint of his book, remains satisfied as to the soundness of M. de RougÉ's theory. "Not only is it on a priori grounds the probable solution, not only does it agree with the ancient tradition, not only does it supply a possible and reasonable explanation of the facts, not only is it confirmed by all sorts of curious coincidences, but no objection has been urged against it to which a sufficient answer cannot be found. If we reject M. de RougÉ's explanation of the origin of the alphabet, there is practically no rival theory on which to fall back. There are only three other possible sources, none of which can, at present, be regarded in any higher light than as a mere guess. If the Semitic letters were not derived from Egypt they must have been invented by the Phoenicians, or they must have been developed either out of the Hittite hieroglyphics, or out of one of the cuneiform syllabaries." (Ib., p. 130.) The possible relation of the still undeciphered Hittite hieroglyphs to other scripts will have reference presently, and perhaps Deecke's theory of the derivation of the Phoenician from the Assyrian cuneiform has some measure of truth in it. For cuneiform appears to be essentially a Semitic script, and the Phoenicians in their contact with other Semitic peoples would, it may be assumed, have retained and adapted some, if not all, of the cuneiform characters long before they became familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphic or hieratic. Granting, however, all that the upholders of M. de RougÉ's theory may demand, their inference as to the direct connection between the Greek and other alphabets and the Phoenician alphabet is not necessarily to be accepted. On this question of relation new and important light is thrown by recent discoveries, whose significance will be dealt with in the following section.