Evening star., 1928-06-18

ture writing, symbols such as our dollar
sign or the ideographs of the Chinese
and syllable characters such as those Of
the Japanese.
First Writers Used Pictures.
"The earliest written records were
made in pictures which represented
things and actions. Abstract ideas
could be suggested only In the crudest
roundabout way After centuries of
use these pictures became convention
alized into symbols. such as the ideo-
grams OF the Egyptians and the Mayas
Of America, and some of those still
used in China today.
The next step was marked dcpar-
ture from the previous development and
tremendously important one. 1t was
to represent by symbols not the things
themselves. but instead the sounds of
the spoken words. For the first time
man wrote his language as he spoke 1t.
Inc sounds OF entire words were SYM
boli2ed at first: then, after a while,
the syllableS which formed the words.
This gave writing system of consider
able f1uency. In 1t were written the
Chinese classics with an admixture of
the Older ideographs and symbols,
This syllable writing appeared In
purer form in the cuneiform of Meso-
potamia from records in which the
modern world has learned of the inti-
mate daily lives of these people OF long
ago, their business transactions. their
highly developed laws and their rellg-
ious customs. In Egypt syllable writing
was early developed. but to the end the
Egyptians mixed with the syllable char
acters all the lumber of hieroglyphlcs
and kilograms The Egyptians even
took the final step of adopting symbols
for letter sounds: but these too they
iumble6 in with the other varied char
acters.
Alphabet Final Development.
The ultimate step in splitting up
the Syllabies, adopting an alphabet Of
characters TO represent the component
sounds of speech, and building all writ
ten words from these simple characters.
was taken by the Phoenicians. appar-
entity. about 1000 BIC. Records of about
l400 BIC. discovered in the various
countries of the eastern Mediterranean
disclose no alplabetic writing; the
cuneiform was then in general use
even in correspondence between Egypt
and Babylon. Records of about 800 BIC
snow the Phoenician alphabet employed
and apparently in use for some time
The birthdate of the alphabet. there
fore. is taken roughly as about 1000 BIC.
THE resolving of writing into the
alphabetic form was somewhat like
sciences analysis of matter. First stu
dents accepted matter itself. then found
it TO be composed of molecules. They
pushed their analysis further and re-
solved the molecules into atoms and
thess, finally. into electrons, positive
and negative. The vowel and conSonant
symbols, last TO be discovered. may be
considered the positive and negative
electrons of written language, seldom
existing apart from one another.
When alphabets came into exist
ence in the Near East their use spread
rapidly, largely through trade chan
nels. Before many centuries they were
adopted in Northern Africa, the entire
Mediterranean region. Arabia. MeSopo-
tamia. Armenia and Persia. Some stu
dents have asserted that the Brahmi al
ly, but others are convinced that this al
phabet. too. was introduced from Syria
(:he home of the Phoenicians) about
Sco BIC Even the ruric alphabet of
the NorSemen is believed to have been
adopted from Greek alphabet early
in the Christian era.
Hebrew and Arabic.
THE Armenian alphabet was de-
velored from the Phoenician on the
edge Of the Arabian Desert, and from
this grew the Hebrew and Arabic alpha
bets. When the Mohammedan religion
heran to snread in the seventh century
A - "a . L. III