Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-05-03
The Alnhnhet.

The discovery of the alphabet * at once
the triumph, the instrument and the regis
ter of the progress of our race. The oldest
abecedarium in existence is childs alpha
bet on little ink-bottle Of black ware
found on the site OF Cere, one of the oldest
of the Greek settlements in Central Italy,
certainly older than the end of the sixth
century B. c. The Phonician alphabet
has been reconstructed from several hun
dred inscriptions. The "Moabite Stone"
has yielded the honor of being the most
ancient of alphabetic records to the bronze
plates found in Lebanon in 1872, fixed as
of the tenth or elevenths century, and
therefore the earliest eXtant monuments OF
the Semitic alphabet. The lions of Nine
web and an inscribed scarab found at khor-
sabad have furnished other early alpha
bets; while Scarabs and cylinders, seals and
gems, from Babylon and Nineveh, with
some inscriptions, are the scanty records of
the first epoch of the Phenician alphabet
For the second period, a sarcophagus found
in 1896, with an inscription of % lines has
tasked the skill of more than 40 of the
most eminent Semitic scholars of the day,
and the literature connected with it ia
overwhelming. An unbroken series of
coins extending over seven centuries from
80 b. c. to l53 A. d., Hebrew engraved
gems, the Sloan inscription discovered in
Jerusalem in 1880, early Jewish coins,
have each and all found special students
whose successive progress is fully detailed
by Taylor. The Aramean alphabet lived
only for seven or eight centuries; but from
it sprang the scripts of five great faiths OF
Asia and the three great literary alphabets
of the East Nineveh and its public rec
ords supply most curious revelations Of the
social life and commercial transactions of
those primitive times. Loans, leases, notes,
sales of houses, slaves, etc, all dated, show
the development of the alphabet. The
early Egyptian inscriptions show which
alphabet was there in the reign of Xerxes.
Fragments on stone preserved in old Ro-
man walls in Great Britain, Spain France,
and jerusalem all supply early alphabets.
Alphabets have been affected by reli-
gious controversies, spre; d by mission
aries, and preserved in distant regions by
holy faith, in spite of persecution and per-
version. The Arabic alphabet, next 10
Importance after the great Latin alphabet,
followed i'll eighty years the widespread
religion of Nlohammed; and now the few
Englishmen who can read and speak it are
astonished to learn that it is collaterly
related to our own alphabet and that both
can be traced back to the primitive Pho
nician source.
Greece alone had forty local alphabets, /
reduced by careful study to about half a
dozen generic groups, characterized by
certain common local features and also by
political connection.
OF the Oldest ga, b. c's" found in Italy,
several were scribbled by school-boys on
Pompeiian walls, six in Greek, four in Os-
can, four in Latin; others were scratched
on children's cups buried with them in
their graves, or cut or painted for practice
on unused portions of mortuary slabs. The
earliest was found as late as 1882, plain
vase of black ware with an Etrqscan in
scription and a syllabary or spelling exer
else, and the Greek alphabet twice re-
peated