The Washington times., 1922-05-14

4th. The Ionian. with "a letters.
The last was officially adopted
at Athens under the Archonship
of Euclid (4o3 B. c.. and soon be-
came the only one in use. Now, Of
tho 22 letters Of the Cadmean al
phabet only IA are found in the
Phoenician; but this Is not all, for
OF the % letters were not in the
Ionian alphabet. which was in
general use with the Greeks from
Euclid and in particular use with
the Greek Ionians from the time Of
Homer.
"A LETTERS IN ALPHABET.
Consequently there are only In
the - letters of tho Greek alpha
bet 1s ancient and new. The 8
new are the letters xI, YPSILo.
PHI. CHI. and OMEGA. The his
tory Of these letters is well known
and Is almost modern. The letters,
especially PHI and CHI. were
added to the Cadmean alphabet by
the Homerio hero, Palamedes.
Tho same thing happened to the
Russians, who had no alphabet un-
til the ninth century. At that time
the Greek emperor Of Constantine
pie sent them two Greek mission
aries, who were the brothers Cyril
and Methodius. These two learned
men used the Greek alphabet and
invented other letters to supply
the deficiency IN the richer Rus
sian tongue. The same was true
with the Christian Copts in Egypt.
Now. the new letters Of the Rus
sian alphabet that are in the
Greek alphabet have no meaning
in the Greek, and I venture to say
that the sounds of certain letters
in the Russian alphabet are not
caught by European ears. II is
the same with every nation; there
are letters and sounds peculiar to
some nations and others that are
common to all.
Thus. DIR. lie Piongeon in trans
lating all the letters Of tho Greek
alphabet according to their pho
netic Specification into the Mayax
language. at the same time trans
lates letters of which ak at least
were unknown to other people be-
fore they were Invented by the
Greeks and It IL extraordinary that
he gives these letters sounds that
were unknown sven to Greek eara,
since we know today that tho pro-
nunciation Of Greek according to
the method Of Erasmus Is errone-
Gus and that It Is only in Greece
that Greek II correctly pro
nounced-
ALPHA COMPOUND WORD.
To make clearer what has bean
said, let US take the letter Alpha
which Is a compound word Of two
syllables without signification in
Greek. for It is a Phoenician let
ter which means "Ox" and was
pronounced by the Phoenicians
"Alef." The "Alef" written ip the
Greek language as a simple word
or in connection with other letters
has only one sound "a" whereas
in English It has several sounds.
Notwithstanding the English "A"
is derived from the Greek alpha"
Therefore II an alphabet signifies
something in the Mayax language,
II is not Greek nor Phoenician.
which is derived from the Egyp-
tian. but It is the alphabet of the
ancient Egyptian hieratic writing.
Here we may have hit upon the
key and by reversing the hypoth-
esis of the learned gentlemen Of
DIR. Ballou's school Of dreamers
and by cutting off a few un-
warranted zero extensions In
their chronological calculations, as
we are forced to do in the in
stance OF their willfui estimate Of
the antiquity Of the pueblo build.
Ing race, we may hope to bring
the forgotten past a little nearer
TO a possibility of a solution OF
the perplexing problem OF the
antiquity Of ancient American
civilization.
Possibly DR.. lie Piongeon's
discovery Of an ancient MaysI
alphabet, a reproduction Of which
is given herewith, and which, az
will be seen. he identifies with
the ancient hieratic Egyptian
alphabet according to Messrs.
Champollion le Jeune and Bunsen.
by means OF which he deciphered
the bas.reliefs and mural inscrip-
tions Of ancient Mayax, may be .
reality after all. II by its aid
DR.. lie Plongeon was enabled to
understand such great mysteries,
why not others7
Scientists give US facts and not
mere suppositions that SAVIOR OF
the fabulous.