PalÆography is defined as "that department of historical science which treats of ancient writing." "In the study of handwriting," it has been said, "it is difficult to exaggerate the great and enduring influence which the character of the material employed for receiving script has had upon the formation of the letters." Whether the material was clay, waxen surface, or papyrus, largely determined the formation of the letters. In the broad sense in which it is used in our discussion the term applies, not only to all written records whether upon rolls or codices and without regard to the material, or their form and content, but also includes epigraphy which has to do with inscriptions on monuments or seals, and numismatics which, specifically, designates the inscriptions of coins.

PalÆography is both an art and a science. Modern penmanship, while commonly regarded as more of an art than a science, is, in reality, less an art than a science. Indeed, in a broad and a not unwarranted generalization, present-day handwriting is seldom either an art or a science, but rather a desultory and questionable though necessary accomplishment. The invention of the typewriter has not added, in general, to the achievements of penmanship. Penmanship is one of the almost universally neglected sciences of modern times. Unquestionably, if there were more of the "science" of penmanship taught and practiced, and more time and attention devoted to its study and its cultivation, we would have more of the art of handwriting to delight our esthetic sensibilities.

The science of palÆography, being related fundamentally to language, links us with prehistoric times. Writing is crystallized speech in visible record, as the phonographic "record" is speech in audible perpetuity. (The author once had the great privilege of hearing the voice of Mr. Gladstone in a thrilling address before the House of Lords;—it was a phonographic "record.") Speech is the most distinguishing of all man's characteristics;—long held to be such. Mr. Huxley once likened human speech to the "Alps or Andes—high over everything else in animal life." Intelligent speech is the broadest line of cleavage to a tenable evolutionary hypothesis of man's origin and development. The capacity of speech at once and forever differentiates man from, and elevates him to, a plane above all other of the manifold creations of God. While speech must be recognized as the most distinguishing faculty of man, writing may be considered the noblest achievement of man. Handwriting may also be regarded the vehicle of expressing and the mode of treasuring and communicating to distant times and places the conceptions of the mind by means of symbols—symbols representing objects or sounds and thus ideas in all their wide applications.

Concerning the genesis and the development of handwriting (and handwriting is a development—a development from very rudimentary beginnings) Professor Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., says: "The use of writing is to put something before the eye in such a way that its meaning may be known at a glance, and the earliest way of doing this was by a picture. Picture-writing was thus used for many ages, and is still found among savage races in all parts of the globe. On rocks, stone, slabs, trees, and tombs, pictures were employed to record an event or tell some message. In course of time, instead of this tedious mode, men learned to write signs for certain words or sounds. Then the next step was to separate the words into letters; and so arose alphabets. The shape of the letters of the alphabet is thought by some to bear traces of the early picture writing."38 The late Wm. Frost Bishop, D.D., affirms with more of positiveness: "Every letter was at first a picture and perhaps it is but a return to first principles when the children are taught to say, 'O was an Orange, S was a Swan, B was a Butterfly'; or when the alphabet invokes the aid of both pictures and poetry,

And the eminent Egyptologist, M. Emmanuel De Roget, has shown from sources antedating the Shepherd Kings in Egypt that the letters of the mother alphabet were but modifications of the earliest Hieratic or priestly script as these were modifications of the picture-writing upon the oldest monuments of Egypt. The alphabets of all languages are thus traced back, step by step, to the pictured hieroglyphs from which they have all come. The alphabets of the world are akin, as they all had one common parentage in the picture-writing of the Egyptians.

There have been developed in the long course of time—how long can only be approximately determined—three somewhat independent though not unrelated sources of literature whence all written language has been evolved. These three sources emerge in history, whatever the genesis and however the process, respectively, in the hieroglyphic, the cuneiform, and the alphabetic writings.

(1) The hieroglyphic writing. In Egypt, and probably in Accadia, the hieroglyphic or picture-writing was the earliest mode of expressing ideas. The new world, also, presents a similar phenomenon, as some of the tribes of the ancient Toltecs of Mexico developed a system of picture-writing resembling somewhat that of North American Indians and akin to the ancient hieroglyphs. With Egyptians this term means, literally, the "sacred" writings. The late Amelia B. Edwards, an Egyptologist of recent years, defines the hieroglyphic or "ideographic" writing as "pictures of objects arranged for the purpose of conveying sequences of ideas, but without any of the connecting links which language supplies." And of picture-writing—in recognition of the universal limitations of this earliest form of written records—one connected with the British Museum says, further: "Picture-writing, moreover, could only place images and symbols side by side, and leave the connection between them to be guessed at or imagined; it could neither show the distinction between the different parts of speech, nor note the flections and tenses of the verbs and the number and case of the nouns, nor fill up the gaps of thought with adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, etc."39 The earliest literature of Egypt was recorded in this picture-writing wherein symbols and delineations were cut into or written on stone, as on the obelisks; or in wood, as in the mummy-cases; or were written or painted on papyrus, as in "The Book of the Dead," deposited with the mummies of royal personages in their entombment. Some of these papyri are of very great age. One of these, The Prisse Papyrus, so named from its procurer, is held to be the oldest papyrus in existence. It was found near the middle of the last century in a Theban tomb of the eleventh dynasty and is thus older by centuries than the time of Moses and perhaps antedates the time of Abraham. This Papyrus consists of eighteen pages of beautiful hieratic (priestly) writing and is treasured in the National Library at Paris.

The last century of our Era witnessed two of the most important achievements of human ingenuity in relation to literature: the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform script of Assyria and Babylonia. Both these remarkable achievements are credited to the last century and have added immeasurably to our knowledge of early historical times, corroborated and confirmed much that was obscure and uncertain of the Bible narrative and its teaching, and opened up to the gaze of all men for all time to come the most valuable records of a vast period of human history which otherwise would have remained in unrelieved obscurity. These achievements were the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone and the cuneiform writing.

The hieroglyphic writing was of two classes; called ideographic in which ideas were denoted by signs or pictures and phonetic wherein sounds represented ideas. In the ideographic hieroglyphs which were the older—this being the parent writing—the picture of an object expressed the idea of or represented the object itself. A fish, e. g., was denoted by the outline drawing of a fish; an obelisk by the picture of that object; a vulture by the delineation of that bird, and so on. Sometimes, however, the cause was put for the effect, and vice versa: thus a palette and reed would commonly represent "writing"; it might also represent a "scribe." Dishevelled hair might represent "grieving," because in the time of trouble the hair of the head would be apt to be disturbed and uncared for. At a later date these ideographic hieroglyphics or pictures representing ideas, by a process of development from the basis of pure primitive picture writing, or by the association and suggestion which one thing gave to another or to other things, or by a species of conventionalization, came to represent sounds;—not letters but words or parts of words. Thus came into existence the other class of hieroglyph-writing—the "phonetic" hieroglyphics.

In the phonetic hieroglyphics pictures were used to express the sound of the objects which they respectively represented; and, in time, certain of the hieroglyphics both expressed and stood for other objects; and certain of the phonetics came to have syllabic value. Afterwards, in the order of development, ideas were communicated, not by pictures but by symbols for pictures, or by characters that represented and stood for definite ideas:—A star, thus, came to express the idea of God, and a succession of herons in a row the idea of "glorified souls."40 Similar is the archÆological witness from ancient Mexico. Prescott says: "A Mexican manuscript looks like a collection of pictures, each one forming the subject of a special study. The Aztecs had various emblems for expressing such things as from their nature could not be directly represented by the painter. A 'tongue,' for example, denoted speaking; a 'footprint,' traveling; a 'man on the ground,' an earthquake. These symbols were often very arbitrary, varying with the caprice of the writer; and it required wise discrimination to interpret them, as a slight change in the form or position of the figure intimated a very different meaning. They also employed phonetic signs, though these were chiefly confined to the names of persons and places. Lastly, the pictures were colored in gaudy contrasts, so as to produce the most vivid impression, for even colors speak in the Aztec hieroglyphics."41

Both the ideographic and the phonetic hieroglyphics are referred to in the following from Professor Hutson: "The ideographs were first pictures pure and simple of actual objects. A large number of them became ultimately symbolic, representing any one of a large group of ideas, and needing its nearest group of phonetics to give it definiteness. The phonetics expressed the sounds of syllables, not of letters, as in the case with our alphabets. Some of these phonetics even came to be used eventually as representatives of letters."42 Thus in the phonetic writing the scribe finally expressed sounds independent of pictures or symbols and so created "words" through which ideas were recorded, perpetuated, and disseminated. There were about two thousand of the hieroglyphic signs.

At best, the picture-writing, while intelligible enough to its originators, was an incomplete and clumsy method of treasuring and transmitting knowledge. It was very liable to misinterpretation and misapplication. It was always exposed to the possibility of being misunderstood, inasmuch as every picture might have a variety of applications or significations, and thus might represent a number of different though kindred things or conceptions. "Thus in Egyptian we find two legs might represent simply the legs of a man, but they might denote 'walking,' 'going,' 'running,' 'standing,' 'support,' and even 'growth,' and their significance had to be divined without further explanation or assistance."43 The exposure to error involved in the decipherment of the ancient picture-writing may be illustrated by what is said to have been an actual occurrence of modern times. It is related of an illiterate though not necessarily ignorant grocer who, being unable to write, kept his accounts by picturing the various articles bought and sold at his little store. Usually there was no occasion for any one to dispute the accuracy of his "charges" though they were recorded in a species of hieroglyphics—his own invention. On one occasion, however, the grocer was taken to task by a customer who "questioned" the "account" of a cheese which had been "charged up" against him. The customer protested that he had never bought a whole cheese, but acknowledged that he had bought what resembled a whole cheese in shape—a grindstone. This admission supplied a clue to the error in the grocer's "charges," for, in his picture-record he had inadvertently omitted the square hole in the center of his picture which would have transformed the "charge" of a cheese into that of a grindstone. In like manner, there was always an imminent and special exposure to error in the "record" with the ideographic hieroglyphic writing. And in addition to the inherent disabilities of the picture-writing and its exposure to a mistaken decipherment, these hieroglyphics gradually lost somewhat of their purely representative and symbolical value and thus, by being conventionalized, came into a more universal and a permanent use. Out of this fact grew the larger significance of the demotic writing as contrasted with the hieratic or priestly writing.

These ancient Egyptian writings, both the hieroglyphic and the demotic, were, alike, a sealed literature until the discovery (in 1799) of the Rosetta Stone—and its subsequent decipherment by Champollion and Young. The inscription of this most important "find" is cut into a basalt slab, three feet two inches long and two feet five inches wide. On this slab is carved a tri-lingual decree of Ptolemy Epiphanes in hieroglyphic or the earliest form of picture-writing, in demotic or the later writing of the people as distinguished from that of the priests, and in Greek or the language resulting from Alexander's domination of the world—the common tongue at the beginning of the Christian Era. The former two inscriptions, though in forms of the Egyptian language long "dead" and undecipherable, were given a material resurrection through their Greek consort. The Greek language, therefore, was the key to unlock, not the inscription of the Rosetta Stone alone but also the vast treasure house of the ancient Egyptian literature. By means of the "golden guess" or the hypothesis of Dr. Young that each part of the tri-lingual inscription on the Rosetta Stone referred to or contained the same subject-matter though in different writings; through the ascertainable meaning of the Greek part of the inscription (including the proper names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra); and through the untiring patience of these early Egyptologists, the hitherto unknown meaning, not only of the Rosetta Stone but of the entire Egyptian hieroglyphs, has been opened up to the world's view.

(2) The cuneiform writing. Scarcely second in time or importance to the hieroglyphs of Egypt was the cuneiform or wedge-shaped writing of the primitive Accadians of Mesopotamia, and communicated by them to the after Assyrians and Babylonians. The cuneiform writing was probably derived from an earlier hieroglyphic language among the most primitive people of Accad. This is evidenced by the pictured monuments and inscribed temple walls and gates of Assyria and Babylonia. Writing, both in Egypt and in Assyro-Babylonia, and also in the (as yet) undeciphered language of the Cretans, began with pictures. The cuneiform system of writing, it is held, must have taken centuries to have reached the stage at which it is first found. "It began, no doubt," says Mr. James Baikie, "with pure picture-writing, as the Egyptian hieroglyphic system began; but while the Egyptians maintained the pictorial element of their system to the end, developing alongside of it the hieratic and demotic systems of writing for ordinary purposes, the race in question had already, when we first meet with their writing, got away from any trace of the picture stage. Their writing is already the arrow-headed or cuneiform script which persisted right down to the fall of the great empires of the ancient East."44 "Not unlike other script," says Professor Albert T. Clay, "the cuneiform was originally pictorial; but, as in Egypt, the hieroglyphs became more and more simplified and conventionalized. But, unlike the Egyptians, the Babylonian or Sumerian became conventionalized at a time prior to the known history of the land; and the hieroglyphs were not continued in use even for monumental purposes, but were practically lost sight of."45 This conclusion is shared by no less a distinguished scholar than Professor Sayce. He held that "the pictures were first painted on the leaves of the papyrus which grew in the marshes of the Euphrates, but as time went on a new and more plentiful writing material came to be employed in the shape of clay."46 This clay which was found under foot everywhere, when prepared, was employed by different peoples of western Asia and for a large variety of specific uses:—for literary and historical records; for mathematical tables; for correspondence; for legal documents which were often enclosed in protecting envelopes of clay; for business transactions, contracts being witnessed unto, in the absence of seals, by each party pressing his thumb-nail into the plastic clay, thus insuring the preservation of his signature for ages; in short, for all literary, historical, mathematical, commercial, and social purposes.

The cuneiform writing, whether derived from the earlier hieroglyphs or developed independently by the Accadians, was employed with all but unlimited fertility by the Assyro-Babylonian civilization. The writing was distinguished from the hieroglyphic in that it was made up, in its entirety, of a single, wedge-shaped or arrow-headed-like character, formed with a metal stylus having a triangular end. By pressing this stylus in the plastic clay of the prepared tablet or cylinder a sharply defined and angular shaped indentation was impressed and, afterward, the clay with its writing was hardened by exposure to the sun or baked by fire into an almost imperishable "record." The all but indestructible character of this material accounts for the large proportion of the Assyrian literature which has been preserved through tens of centuries.

Professor Albert T. Clay describes the preparation and use of this material as follows: "The well-kneeded clay, which had been washed to free it from grit and sand, while in a plastic condition was shaped into the form and size desired.... The stylus, which was made of metal or wood, was a very simple affair. In the early periods it was triangular and in the later quadrangular.... By pressing a corner of it into the soft clay, the impression made will be that of a wedge; hence the term cuneiform (from the Latin cuneus) writing."47

The single simple character ( ? ) from which the cuneiform writing was entirely constructed was used in multitudinous combinations and in various positions (somewhat as the Chinese ideographic characters are still used) to record the thoughts and deeds of the primitive Accadians. Great libraries, written in cuneiform, were accumulated in different centers of population; these were transmitted to the succeeding Assyrians and Babylonians. The cuneiform writing was read in the prevailing direction which the characters pointed. The "key" to the decipherment of the cuneiform writing—as that employed in the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs—was a "lucky guess" by Dr. Grotefend, a German scholar. Following the clue of a few known names on the monuments, verifying by these the conjectural values of six cuneiform combinations, he reached basal conclusions from which, finally, the Assyro-Babylonian scholars have been enabled to read these ancient cuneiform texts and inscriptions with as much assurance as the pages of the Old Testament Hebrew; and so he opened up to view a vast body of the otherwise un-read records of the past. Thus the writings of the great libraries written in this character, as at Assur, Calah, and Nineveh, though buried from sight for multiplied centuries, are now accessible through the labors of the Assyriologists.

The cuneiform literature has one preËminent distinction—its comparative incorruptibility. Manuscripts of parchment or papyrus can be easily tampered with; their contents altered or erased; additions inserted, and parts cut out bodily. They are destructible by fire and water; by time and men. Of the exposure of the papyrus literature, in particular, Mr. George H. Putnam says: "Papyrus was an extremely perishable substance. Damp, worms, moth, mice, were all deadly enemies to the papyrus rolls, but even if, through persistent watchfulness, these were guarded against, the mere handling of the rolls, even by the most careful readers, brought them rapidly to destruction."48 This statement would apply as well though not to the same extent to the literature embodied on parchment and vellum. The writing on tablets, to the contrary, was measurably proof against the obliterations of time and use and accident. The immense number of the tablets which remain after millenniums of years is proof positive that the cuneiform literature is almost unaffected by the "hand of slowly destroying Time." The British Museum contains the largest collection of cuneiform tablets in the world,—Sir Henry Layard, over half a century ago, contributed thereto more than twenty thousand tablets, part results of his explorations on the site of ancient Nineveh.

(3) The alphabetic writing. The alphabet, together with the printing-press, is to be regarded as among the most important associated inventions of all time. With due respect for tradition and oral teaching, no great permanent progress in civilization could have come about without some mode of writing. It has been said that "till one generation of men could transmit to the next the knowledge which they had acquired, and leave behind them a record of their experiments and observations, the arts and sciences must have remained forever in a very rudimentary state, and civilization, after reaching a certain early stage of development, would have remained almost stationary." Canon Taylor affirms that "every system of non-alphabetic (i. e., hieroglyphic or syllabic) writing would have been either so limited in its power of expression as to be of small practical value, or, on the other hand, so difficult and complicated, as to be unsuited to general use."

A concensus of present opinion among scholars ascribes the parentage of the alphabetic literature—at least as related to the development of civilization—to the ancient Phoenicians. The alphabetic writing may have descended from Crete to the Phoenicians, who, in turn, mediated it to all the after ages. (The Chinese literature, while it is conceded to have had a remote origin and a prolific development, cannot be regarded as an alphabetic literature. It has more of kinship with the cuneiform than either the hieroglyphic or the alphabetic writing.)

Testimony as to the source of the alphabetic writing is available: "The vast majority of alphabets are descended from the so-called Phoenician which is the earliest known, and was in existence near a thousand years B.C., although it was probably influenced by the still more ancient syllabary script of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Sumerians on the one hand and the Egyptian pictographs on the other."49 "The Phoenicians were certainly using it" (the alphabet) "with freedom in the ninth century B.C. According to the view accepted till recently, the alphabet was borrowed by the Phoenicians from the cursive (hieratic) form of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.... The more recent view is that of Dr. A.J. Evans who argues ingeniously that the alphabet was taken over from Crete by the 'Cherethites' and 'Pelethites' or Philistines, who established for themselves settlements on the coasts of Palestine. From them it passed to the Phoenicians, who were their near neighbors, if not their kinsfolk."50 Of the alphabetic writing Professor Sayce says: "The history of our alphabet is a record of slow stages of growth, through which the idea of sound-writing has been evolved. The first effort to record an event, so as to make it widely known, would naturally be to draw a picture of it. A written word, let us remember, is the picture of a sound." And in the same connection, he says that the ancient Phoenicians (because they were the great traders and settlers of the early world) were most in need of a clear, precise, and communicable method of writing. The alphabetic writing was such a method.

The desire and necessity for a medium of thought-exchange that might serve as the means of communicating ideas to persons at a distance, and by means of which information and desires might be exchanged independent of personal contact, probably led to the invention or expedited the development of the alphabetic writing, which differed from both the hieroglyphic and the cuneiform writings. This seems to have been the genesis of the alphabet; and the Phoenicians are commonly regarded as the first to have employed it for this purpose. At any rate an alphabetic form of writing by means of what has been designated an "ideographic alphabet," an alphabet expressing ideas by means of letters (whether original or an inheritance) was in use by the Phoenicians as early as about 1,000 B.C. In the estimate of scholars, all our alphabets (varying in the number of letters, respectively, from twenty-two in the Hebrew to forty-nine in the Sanscrit) have come down to our times, however circuitous may have been the route, by way of the old Phoenicians.

[Explorations recently made in Crete, in which Dr. A.J. Evans has borne a conspicuous part, have revealed a high state of civilization existing there, long anterior to that of Egypt or Assyria, and disclosed "The existence of a highly advanced civilization, going back far behind the historic period." Among other interesting "finds," more than a thousand clay tablets were unearthed in the ancient palace of Cnossos. The great conflagration which long, long ago destroyed the palace served, by baking these tablets, to make them more permanent. These tablets vary in size and shape and the character of their writing, being inscribed "both in pictographic and linear forms of the Minoan script." As based on the results of these explorations, a claim is made for the ante-Phoenician origin of the alphabetic writing there discovered. In accordance with this hypothesis it is held that the Phoenicians only appropriated and developed what had come to them from Crete—what had existed in Crete for centuries previously. But it was no less an important service which the Phoenicians contributed though it be hereafter shown conclusively that they merely appropriated what had descended to them from the earlier Cretan civilization.

These Cretan tablets are, as yet, undecipherable. They are written in an unknown tongue and await the discovery of some bi-lingual text or inscription which shall prove, as in the case of the Rosetta Stone, the line of cleavage to the interpretation of what is, possibly, the earliest of all written languages. The characters of these tablets are varied, consisting of linear writing and of hieroglyphics. Dr. Evans thus sums up the present evidence of the earlier Minoan or pre-Cretan origin of this alphabetic writing: "When we examine in detail the linear script of these MycenÆan documents, it is impossible not to recognize that we have here a system of writing, syllabic and perhaps purely alphabetic, which stands on a distinctly higher level of development than the hieroglyphs of Egypt or the cuneiform script of contemporary Syria and Babylon."51]

The earliest alphabetic document, in a language that is decipherable, and the date of which is approximately determinable, is the famous Moabite Stone. This relic of the remote past was discovered in 1868 among the ruins of Dibon by Dr. Klein, a missionary of the Church of England while touring in the region once known as the land of Moab, and whence its designation. The Moabite Stone is a slab of black basalt, nearly four feet high and two feet wide, rounded at the top, and contains an inscription of thirty-four lines cut in Phoenician characters. It is ascribed to the first half of the ninth century B.C. The Stone was intact when discovered though it suffered an attempted destruction by Arabs before it could be removed to a place of safety. The preserved fragments contain six hundred and sixty-nine characters, and many additional characters have been restored from the surviving portions. The inscription on the Stone contains the account of Mesha's breaking away from the rule of Israel and gives striking corroboration of the scripture record (II Kings 3:4-27) and recounts that the king Mesha, after Ahab's death, "rebelled against the king of Israel." "The whole inscription," says Professor Sayce, "reads like a chapter from one of the historical books of the Old Testament. Not only are the phrases the same, but the words and the grammatical forms are, with one or two exceptions, all found in scriptural Hebrew." He adds, further, "The Moabite Stone shows us what were the forms of the Phoenician letters used on the eastern side of the Jordan in the time of Ahab. The forms employed in Israel and Judah on the western side could not have differed much; and we may therefore see in these venerable characters the precise mode of writing employed by the earlier prophets of the Old Testament."52

But the surpassing interest which the Moabite Stone possesses for the antiquarian is not its corroboration of remote Israelitish history or the substantial identity of its letters with the Hebrew forms, but, rather, its contribution to all alphabetic literature of all the past. This will appear in a quotation from the late Wm. Frost Bishop, D.D.: "The essential features in the outline of each of our own letters may be detected easily in the characters of the Moabite Stone, written 2,900 years ago.... The primitive Semitic inscription of this stone contains the alphabet from which all existing alphabets have been derived. It exhibits the embryo forms of all the letters—2,000 or 3,000 in number—in every one of the alphabets which are now in use throughout the world. It might thus be termed the great mother alphabet of the world."53 The Moabite Stone in itself would seem to indicate a more or less general as well as an understanding use of the alphabet in which it is inscribed throughout that region at an early date—perhaps at a much earlier date than that of the inscription—as the Code of Hammurabi, set up at Susa in Persia, indicates a more or less general acquaintance with the cuneiform characters in which the laws of that ancient monarch were promulgated. Supporting this conclusion, Mr. E.C. Richardson holds that there is "growing evidence of the prevailing use of handwriting all over Palestine, by not later than the ninth century."54 Professor Sayce, referring to the criticism that would deny the pre-exilic origin of the larger part of the Old Testament literature on the ground that the early Israelites could not read or write, says: "This supposed late use of writing for literary purposes was merely an assumption, with nothing more solid to rest upon than the critic's own theories and prepossessions. And as soon as it could be tested by solid fact it crumbled into dust."55

Closely identified with the Moabite Stone, both in the time of its supposed production and in its alphabetic characteristics, is the Siloam Inscription at Jerusalem, laid bare to the world's gaze in 1881. The discovery of this valuable treasure of Palestinian records was due to fortuitous circumstances, as has been many another important "find." [A boy wading in the channel cut in the rock leading to the Pool first discovered the writing, partly concealed by water, on the southern wall of the channel.56] The Siloam Inscription, though brief—containing only six lines, with the writing partly destroyed—has great philological and historical value. According to the judgment of scholars this inscription was executed in the reign of King Hezekiah and may have been designed to celebrate and memorialize his distinguished achievement, recorded in scripture (II Chronicles 32:30). Its complete translation has been accomplished. The letters of this writing are held by some archÆologists and philologists to exhibit, possibly, even older forms than those contained in the inscription of the Moabite Stone. The inscriptions are closely related. Of the Moabite Stone a Jewish writer holds that "the language, with slight deviation, is Hebrew, and reads almost like a chapter from the Book of Kings"; and, of the Siloam Inscription, that "it is pure Hebrew."57

(4) Classic writing. Each country and people has had a palÆography, in some respects, of its own, and developed by its own individual history, although modified, often, by the adjacent countries and contemporaneous peoples. The palÆography of a civilization is sometimes taken up by other civilizations and, in turn, may be transmitted as an inheritance to other generations. Almost every century has had its own specific "hand," and the "hand" throughout human history has constantly undergone change. Sometimes the change has been for the better; at other times the change has been for the worse; the change in handwriting going on at the present time can hardly be accredited for the worse, and for the reason that, speaking inclusively, it now seems to have attained unto the superlatively bad. "Handwriting, like every other art, has its different phases of growth, perfection, and decay. A particular form of writing is gradually developed, then takes the finished or calligraphic style and becomes the 'hand' of the period; then deteriorates, breaks up, and disappears, or drags out only an artificial existence—being superceded, meanwhile, by another 'hand' which, either developed from an older hand or introduced independently, runs the same course and, in its turn, is displaced by a younger rival."58 The "Spencerian" and the "vertical" hands are well-known and present-day applications of this law of change or development in the form of written language.

(5) The two great stages of classic writing. Another fact concerning palÆography merits more than a passing notice—it is the two great stages of the classical writing. The Greek handwriting, in which much of the best classic literature was written (in which the New Testament, with the possible exception of Matthew's gospel, and the Old Testament of the Septuagint Version were written; and in which, furthermore, a large proportion of the writings by the early Christian teachers and apologists and also those of the heathen and heretical controversialists of the early centuries were written), passed through two clearly defined and distinctly separated stages, known, respectively, as the uncial and the minuscule "hands." The "uncial" was the large letter hand, and the dominant style from the time of the earliest written productions in Greek down to the ninth century. The "minuscule" (called also the "cursive") was the small letter or the "running" hand and continued in use, comprehensively, from the ninth century A.D. (though known earlier), when it largely displaced the "uncial" style, on, until the invention of printing superceded handwriting as the treasuring and disseminating medium of literary productions.

The difference in size and style of the letters was not the only nor, perhaps, the chief demarcation between these "hands"; there was a broad distinction also in the relation of the letters to one another. In the uncial hand each letter was separated from the other letters as in printing; but in the minuscule style the letters of words were joined together in a "running" hand as in modern writing, thus facilitating rapidity in the use of the pen. Capitalization was little regarded in the early centuries; and punctuation as a system was not known. These two distinctions of the uncial and the minuscule hands were applied also to the productions written in Latin, though the uncial characters gave place to the small letter or "current" hand at an earlier date among the Roman than among the Greek copyists. This was probably owing to the decadence of the Greek language and the consequent ascendency of the Latin.

The most important systems of writing, for many centuries—from a time long previous to the Christian Era and on throughout the Middle Ages—were those which employed the classic Greek and Latin alphabets, and in which the great body of the world's best literature was written. At least this was true within the bounds of Europe. With the declining literary importance of Alexandria came the growing prominence of the region north of the Mediterranean. The Greek alphabet and language held preËminence for centuries, beginning with Alexander's conquest and extending into the early Christian centuries when they were displaced, early in the Middle Ages, under the Latin ascendency. During the increasing domination of the Latin alphabet and literature, national and provincial "hands" were developed and came into active competition in the centuries previous to the invention of printing. The handwriting which was of specifically Roman lineage was gradually modified by environing conditions in the different sections of Europe and resulted in various "hands," as the "Lombardic" hand of Italy, the "Visigothic" hand of Spain, and the "Merovingian" and (later) the "Carolingian" hand of the Frankish Empire.

(6) The Anglo-Saxon writing. The Anglo-Saxon handwriting is an inheritance from the Latin national hand. In this "descent" (or, is it "ascent"?) of our modern English "hand," in the long process of its genealogy, the Latin displaced the earlier Greek, as the Greek had won its way over the still earlier Phoenician and Hebrew. In our modern English literature we employ the Roman alphabet (as other nationalities are coming more and more to do). The Roman characters, being descended immediately from the Latin, though modified more or less by the Norman domination and other factors, constitute what may be called the cosmopolitan alphabet of modern times. The characters used in our Anglo-Saxon writing have come to their present ascendency and increasing supremacy from two reasons in particular: First, because the Latin on which it was based was the language of the educated classes of all nations during the Middle Ages; and second—and probably chiefly—because the Roman characters are better adapted for rapid writing than were the severe though elegant letters of the Greek language. The shape of the Roman characters greatly facilitated the adoption of the "running" hand in the Latin literature.

Many changes other than those already alluded to have come about in the transmission of literature from age to age: Men at first wrote from right to left as the orientals still do. The peoples of early Greece first wrote, as the Chinese still do, perpendicularly to the page, and then from right to left; later, backward and forward from right to left and left to right as in case of furrows made by a side-hill plow; and lastly, from left to right as moderns do. We look for the beginning of the Hebrew Bible where our English Bible ends; and we read it from right to left and turn its pages from left to right. It is much the same with the Chinese books, except that the columns of reading matter extend downwards on the page from top to bottom and not crosswise to the page as in other languages.

(7) PalÆography and the date of literary productions. The style and character of the handwriting is of great practical importance to literary criticism and has large historical value. A knowledge as to the history of the individual letters (and each individual letter of the alphabet has a history of its own, as to its genesis and development) and of the arrangement and the appearance of literary productions is of the utmost significance in ascertaining the age, meaning, and value of ancient documents. The style of handwriting, also, has a large place in determining the time or period when a manuscript was written, even when the date is not affixed, just as the spelling of words in our English tongue and the fashion of our typography—ever fluctuating at the demand of artistic taste or attractive appearance—helps to determine, in absence of the date of publication, the approximate time when a book was printed. Illustrative of this, the author once placed on his library shelves an attractive set of books which were represented at the time of purchase as "just from the press" but which he knew at the time were printed from plates made more than a dozen years before although they may have been "fresh from the press";—he knew it from the kind of type employed in their printing, or, more accurately speaking, he knew it from the peculiar quotation-marks used with that particular type, inasmuch as the style of quotation-marks used in those volumes had passed out of current use by printers and publishers some years previously, having had but a feeble tenure of existence. To realize at a glance the ever-changing style of type in modern printing, one needs but to turn the pages of type-manufacturing catalogues. In like manner, the style of handwriting in any language constitutes a kind of verisimilitude for the age of the written literature. Dr. Isaac Taylor has said, "The architecture of different periods is not more characteristic of the age to which it belongs, than is the style of writing in manuscripts, nor is there less of certainty in determining questions of antiquity in the one case than in the other."59 As the periods of the "Doric," "Ionic," and "Corinthian" architectures are determinable approximately by their respective characteristics—so the time of a literary production is largely determined by the characteristics of the handwriting in which it is written. We quote the words of Professor Mahaffy: "The task of palÆography is now changed. We have ample evidence of antiquity; we rather seek to distinguish the small peculiarities of ancient handwriting as to tell their age approximately when the writer has affixed no note of his own time. And this we do with wonderful certainty, because almost every century has its own hand so distinctly that even the man who attempts to copy older fashions can easily be detected by his want of freedom. Years ago I was shown, in the great library at Naples, a manuscript of this kind, apparently of the tenth century. After a few minutes' examination, though I had never before seen such a thing, I told the librarian that it seemed to me a careful copy of an old hand by a laborious scribe of later date. He was surprised, but then showed me, what he had intended to conceal, a note at the end dated 1450, showing that my guess was correct. This anecdote is quoted to show that the freedom of the hand, as well as the shape of the letters, must be carefully estimated and considered by the palÆographer. By using a good microscope, un-steadiness of lines which escape the naked eye will become apparent; and this is now well known to those who have studied the detection of forgeries in criminal cases."60