Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-09-22
Our Alphabet.

Our Alphabet.
Do you know, in the first place, what the
| word alphabet means? 1t is word made
up by putting together the names of the
| first two letters of the Greek alphabet,
alpha, beta, just as we sometimes speak of
| the q, b, c. SO that alphabet really means
Greek words. They are Phenician, and
in the Phenician language they meant
COX, " house" The Greeks learned the
alphabet from the Phenicians, and the
Phenicians used to call the letter 4 OK, !"
and the letter B house" Now let Us
see if we can find ost why the Phenicians
gave such curious names to their letters,
and first of all, we must ask where and
how did the Pnenicia get their letters
| There have been two or three answers to
| this question, two or three different theo-
ries, that is, and the answer l am going to
give is what people call my theory, which
|, of course, believe to be the true answer.
Take down your aliases and look at the
northwest corner of the Persian Gulf. You
will see emptying into the gulf river
made up Of the two rivers, Tigris and Eu-
pirates. In very ancient times the Per-
sian Gulf used to stretch up so much far
ther than it now does that the Tigris and
Euphrates did not join together, but each
flowed into the Persian Gulf separately.
The level country at the mouth of those
two rivers, where they used to empty into
the Persian Gulf, believe to be the place
where our alphabet was born, and where it
spent its babyhood. The way it was born
was this At first the people Of that coun-
try drew rough pictures of what they
wanted to describe; for "ox," man
drew rough picture of an OK; for
"hand," of hand. By and by, as they
learned more and wanted to put dowu
more things in writing, they found that
this took too long, go that instead of draw
| ing an OK they only drew a head and two
horns, and instead of hand five fingers.
Then they shortened this still more, only
using two or three lines for each object, 80
that little by little most of these pictures
| lost all resemblance to the things of which
they were supposed to be pictures, and
came to be what are called conventional
signs. The people wrote on brick or stone,
and in cutting into it they made the begin
ming of each line, where they began to cut,
broader than the end, and so this writing
is called cuneiform, or wedge.shaped.
| We have some writing from that country
which is about G, 900 years old, and some
of the signs which / have given in the
table are OF that age. All that is left of
the picture of she OK is the sharp, angular
nose and pair of horns. The hand is an
upright, straight line for the palm, with
five straight lines running out of it for the
fingers. the people who used this writing
were the Akkadians and Sumerians. Their
country was fertile and well cultivated.
They lived in cities, and were rich, civil
lied people. Their wealth and civilization
tempted other people who were not rich
and civilized to try and take their riches
from them, or to come and live among
| them and learn their civilization and share
their good things. That was the way in
which the ancestors of the Babylonisns and
Assyrians and Pne licians and Hebrews
came to live among the Akkadians and
| Sumerians, and to rule over them. They
spoke different language, and when they
wanted to use the Akkadian writing that
difference of language caused them to make
a change in the way of writing. The
| Akkadians used the same sign for the
word ''house" and for the syllable e.
because meant house in Akkadian. 1t
was something as though we should use the
letter B, either for the insect bee or the
sound be; I for "eye" or !, aud L for
cell or ], so that when you saw the let
ters B, I, L, L, you could not tell at once
whether they meant bee, eye, two ellis, or
bill. Now in German bee is biene, eye
duge, and ell ellie. so that German might
translate that biene, auge, = ellen. Now
suppose German were to say, will let B
mean bee, or be, or biene, eye or auge,
etc., he would be doing just what the
| Semites-that is, the ancestors of the
Babylonians, Assyrians, etc.-did with the
Akkadian writing. They used the same
sign for the word "house," and the sylla.
BILE e, and the syllable bit, for with them
bit, or 6ien, meant house. Then, as they
pronounced and very much alike, they
let it stand for pit also. Pretty soon the
same sign came to have still other mean
ings, and in the same way almost every
other sign came to have three or four diff
ferent meanings, which makes it now
adays very hard to find out what they
meant to say it is just like reading a
rebus, only in foreign language. Each
OF these meanings or values of sign, You
must remember, was either whole word
UT q sy iiaole, ior tLey uau AO suCA lOSH Vi
letters ss we have.
The Semites came into the country of
the Akkadians and Sumerians probably not
long after 4, 600 B. c. It is supposed that
between 5000 and 1000 B. C. some of
these Semites, the Phenicians, left Baby
lonia to go and found new country on
the shores of the Mediterranean Ses,
where they built Sidon and Byblus and
Arsdus and Tyre, and from which they sent
out colonies to Tunis and Sicily and France
and Spain, while their ships sailed to England
and Ireland and India. Now in the coun.
try which the Pbenicians left, the system
of writing had become very hard to learn
and puzzling to understand. Schools had
been established to teach it, and there were
scribes whose business it was to write it,
and whose pride and interest it was TO
make it harder and harder. But the Phe.
nicians did not have these schools and
scribes to prevent them from making it
simpler and easier. They became a great
commercial people, needing simple, easy
writing for their business. In their CON-
merce they dealt with Egypt, where the
priests hadquite a simple writing which they
had invented for their own use. Perhaps the
Phenicians learned something about this
at all events, they made the writing they
had brought with them from Babylonia
very much more simple. The way think
they did this l will try to tell you next
week.-[The Mastery.
In the Stables.
Col. J. d. Ferguson. Secretary MARYLAND