Palæography. Bernard Quaritch

Palæography

Jews), were: Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, He, Vau, Zain (Zai), Hheth (Kheth), Teth, Yod, Caph, Lamed, Mem (maim=waters), Nun, Samekh, Ain (Oin), Pe, Tsade, Koph, Resh (=head), Shin, Tau.

We have no actual knowledge of the Chaldæo-Aramaic sounds of these names, but we know that the Eastern Syrians would probably have written them thus:—

Alpha, Beta, Gamla, Dalta, He, Vau, Zaita, Hheta, Teta, Yoda, Kappa, Lamda, Mu (=water), Nun (Nu), Samkha (Simkha=Sigma), Oin (Oi?), Pe, Tsada, Koppa, Rash (Ro?=face), Shen, Tau.

Leaving aside for the present any consideration of the changes and additions in the Greek alphabet, we may assume that it passed from Babylonia through Cilicia to the Phrygians and Lydians; and that, whatever intercourse may have taken place between the European Greeks and the Phœnicians then or afterwards, the Ionians of Asia Minor had already formulated the Hellenic alphabet before it reached the Thebans. As it seems to be nearly certain that the Phrygians possessed it in the tenth century before Christ, the Aramæans must have had it much earlier, and we may credit them with the use of writing as far back as 1300–1200 B.C. It is very unlikely that the Western Syrians were far behind, but the oldest monuments extant go no higher than the tenth century, and are probably surpassed in antiquity by some of the Sabæan (Himyarite or Homerite) inscriptions of Southern Arabia. The Himyari alphabet, which is the direct ancestor of the modern Abyssinian, introduces some novel forms, and has less resemblance to the Aramaic original than any of the others. Most of the letters are, however, ultimately traceable to the Aramaic, although the date must have been remote, to judge from the large divergences in shape which had had time to develop themselves before the type was fixed.

About, or soon after, 1000 B.C., we find a considerable portion of the earth's surface occupied by people knowing how to write; namely, Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, Arabia, the whole of Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia, and China. Abyssinia and Armenia are included because into the one country Egyptian and Himyaritic characters had been imported, and into the other a form of Babylonian. China is placed in the list, far below her pretensions, because we do not really know the age of the character in which Chinese books preserve the inscriptions of Yu. It appears derivable from the dissertations of M. Terrien, whose sagacious learning has attracted many scholars, that the earliest history recorded in Chinese annals is not geographically Chinese; but that it represents the legends and traditions which were carried into China by the ancestors of the race. A connexion has been found to subsist between those traditions and the early history of Babylonia, which leads to the inference that the Akkadian people of 3800 B.C. and the ancestors of the Chinese were at one time united. Assuming that the theory is justifiable, we may treat the Chinese in China as having inherited the art of writing, however strangely altered in form. It is probably true that they used the letters out of which their present characters descended, in the country they now inhabit, at more than 1000 B.C.

The Alphabet in European Greece, 800 B.C.

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The European Greeks are not included in the preceding paragraph, simply because there are no means of proving that they had the use of letters in the tenth century B.C. The probability, however, is that they were not far behind their brethren in Asia Minor. The variations in the forms of some of the letters of the Greek alphabet which are found in inscriptions at different places both in Asia Minor and in Greece, are attributable to local fashions and to the fact that the script was not built up all at once from a single model. It is here that the tradition about Cadmus has its chief significance; for there can be little doubt that the alphabet of Tyre, not quite identical with its elder Aramaic sister, had some immediate influence in modifying the forms borrowed by the Bœotians from the Ionians. The older Greek alphabet has been already mentioned. It was found after a while to be both insufficient and more than sufficient. The Tsade (ts) and Koppa (q) were not needed in Greek, and were only retained formally as numerals. As most Greek organs could only give the same sound (s) to both the simkha and the shen (which they called sigma and san), one of the two names was superfluous. So they kept the symbol for shen as an s, but transferred to it the name of the simkha. The symbol of the latter they retained in its place, but sounded it as ks, and called it Ksi, a name which did not badly suit the original Semitic sound of the letter which was like hs rather than s. The unaspirated He they called mere E (E psilon); to the aspirated Heta, they left its name, but regarded it as aspirated E. Its original Semitic value as an aspirate (adaptable to any vowel) was not wholly lost sight of, and this idea of its power survived the stage at which H had become nothing more than ê or ee. The necessity of making aspirated letters led to the prefixing or over-writing of the H, at first in its full size, then (so as to avoid confusion with Eta) in small, then in half shape, thus

. This custom produced its complement in the shape of

, to mark the soft breathing; until in the eleventh century of our era, the two breathings were worn down into semicircular form, thus

. Another rejected symbol was the vau, formed like the letter F and sounded like our V. It dropped out of usage, and they forgot its name, although it had been considerably used by the old poets, in connexion with whom it is usually named digamma, because of its resemblance to a double gamma, or one gamma superimposed on another. It was found necessary to have a character for u, and advantageous to use single symbols for double letters frequently occurring, such as ph, kh, ps and oo (long o). The old Eastern form of vau supplied the u; in fact, having dropped the letter as a consonant out of its sixth place in the alphabet, they put it in its vowel-character at the end. The symbol of the discarded koppa was used for the Ph, which was not equivalent in sound to our ph, but must have resembled the German pf. The discarded tsada (a trident) was used to represent, in some places ps, in others kh, but finally the symbol fell into two distinct forms, by being written upright as + (ψ) and leaning sidewise as × (χ). By the time of Herodotus the Greek alphabet may be considered as having reached exactly its present form in capital letters. The cursive hand which must have existed at all times of Greek writing was simply a rapid deformation of the capitals, and consequently did not attain to any uniformly distinctive character till much later. The general use of minuscules in any such uniform type is always referred to the eighth century after Christ, but really there is no essential change of form between the cursive letters a hundred years before Christ and those of a thousand years after Christ. The chief difference is in the greater freedom and fluency of the late letters, an air of practised familiarity which is lacking in the earlier cursive.

Writing in Italy from 700 to 100 B.C.

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The Greeks and the Phœnicians had a similar aptitude for establishing colonies abroad to that which the English have shown during the past three centuries. Thus the coast line of the Mediterranean from Tripoli to Morocco, and from Sicily and Southern Italy to Spain and Gaul, was dotted with Punic and Greek settlements created for purely commercial purposes, but gaining an independent importance as time went on. The chief seat of Phœnician domination was at Carthage; of Greek nationality at Syracuse, Cumæ (near Naples), and Marseilles. The age at which those colonies acquired political greatness may be roughly set down as in the fourth century before Christ, but it is sufficient for our purpose to know that they had been founded considerably earlier; and that the

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