the Fourth Week of Advent
Click here to learn more!
Bible Encyclopedias
Alphabet
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or 'ALPHABETthe vulgar dialect already mentioned, the sound begins as a more open sound than in the cultivated pronunciation, so that no is really pronounced as naou. It is clear, therefore, that the best alphabet would not long indicate very precisely the sounds which it was intended to represent. See Phonetics.
But the history of the alphabet shows that at no time has it represented any European language with much precision, because it was an importation adapted in a somewhat rough and ready fashion to represent sounds different from those which it represented outside Europe. Wherever the alphabet may have originated, there seems no doubt that its first importation in a form closely resembling that with which we are familiar in modern times was from the Phoenicians to the Greeks. The Phoenicians were certainly using it with freedom in the 9th century s.c.; with so much freedom, indeed, that they must have been in possession of it for a considerable time before we can trace it. With the materials available up to August 1910 it would be idle here to attempt to trace its earlier history. Great discoveries in Cappadocia, Assyria and Egypt were then only at their beginning, and any statement was liable to be quickly disproved by the appearance of new evidence. The prevalent theory, universally accepted till a few years ago, was that of Vicomte Emmanuel de Rouge, first propounded to the Academie des Inscriptions in 1859, but unnoticed by the world at large till republished, after de Rouge's death, by his son in 1874. According to this view the alphabet was borrowed by the Phoenicians from the cursive (hieratic) form of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The resemblances between some Egyptian symbols and some symbols of the Phoenician alphabet are striking; in other cases the differences are no less remarkable. As a matter of fact the Egyptians might have passed about thirty-five centuries B.C. from the picture writing of hieroglyphs to genuine alphabetic signs.' They did not, however, profit by their discovery, because, amongst the Egyptians, writing was clearly a mystery in both senses - only possible at that period for masters in the craft, and also something, like the writing of medical prescriptions at the present day in Latin, which was not to be made too easily intelligible to the common people. At all periods, moreover, hieroglyphic writing was a branch of decorative art, and it may have been that the ancient Egyptian, like the modern Turk, resented too much lucidity, and liked his literary compositions to be veiled in a certain obscurity. The alphabet devised by the Egyptians consisted of twenty-four letters. Egyptologists are at variance on the question whether this alphabet was the original, or had any influence upon the development of the Phoenician alphabet. " With the papyrus paper," says Professor Breasted, 2 " the hand customarily written upon it in Egypt now made its way into Phoenicia, where before the 10th century B.C. it developed into an alphabet of consonants, which was quickly transmitted to the Ionian Greeks and thence to Europe." On the other hand, Professor Spiegelberg, 3 writing soon after Professor Breasted, says that investigation has not as yet furnished proof that the Phoenician alphabet is of Egyptian origin, though he admits that in some respects the development of the two alphabets, both without vowel signs, is curiously parallel.
The most recent view is that of Dr A. J. Evans, who argues ingeniously that the alphabet was taken over from Crete by the " Cherethites and Pelethites " or Philistines, who established for themselves settlements on the coast of Palestine. 4 From them it passed to the Phoenicians, who were their near neighbours, if not their kinsfolk. Symbols like the letters of the alphabet have been found in European soil painted upon pebbles belonging to a stratum between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic age. 5 This was in France at Mas d'Azil on the left bank of the Arize. Elsewhere several series of such symbols resembling inscriptions have been found scratched on bones of the same period s For the history of writing these may be important, but for the history of the alphabet, as we know it, they are not in question. The alphabet may have originated as Dr Evans thinks, but at present the proof is not conclusive. The Greek names of the letters, their forms, and the order of the symbols show that the Greek alphabet as we know it must have been imported by or from a Semitic people, and there is no evidence to contradict ancient tradition that this people was the Phoenicians. The view pro 1 Breasted, History of Egypt (1906), P. 45.
2 op. cit. p. 484.
Die Schrift and Sprache der alten Agypter (1907), p. 24.4 Scripta Minoa, i. (1909), � 10, pp. 77 ff.
E. Piette, L'Anthropologie, vii. (1896) pp. 384 ff.
s E. Piette, L'Anthropologie, xvi. (1905) pp. 8-9. The apparent inscriptions of this period are conveniently collected and figured together in Dechelette's Manuel d'archeologie prehistorique celtique et gallo-romaine, i. (1908) p. 235.
pounded by Deecke 7 in 1877, that the Phoenician alphabet had developed out of the late Assyrian cuneiform, never met with much acceptance and has really no evidence in its favour. The earliest alphabetic document which can be dated with comparative certainty is the famous Moabite stone, which was discovered in 1868, and after a controversy between rival claimants which led to its being broken in pieces by the Arabs, ultimately reached the Louvre, where in a restored form it remains. The long inscription upon it celebrates the achievements of Mesha, king of Moab, who had been a tributary of Ahab, king of Israel, and rebelled after his death (1 Kings iii. 4, 5). Though the chronology of the period is somewhat uncertain, the date must be in the first half of the 9th century B.C. It is to be remembered, however, that important as this monument is for the development of the alphabet, and because it can be dated with tolerable accuracy, the dialect and alphabet of Moab are not in themselves proof for the Phoenician forms which influenced the peoples of the Aegean, and through them Western Europe. The fragment of a bronze bowl discovered in Cyprus in 1876, which bears round its edge an inscription dedicating it to BaalLebanon as a gift from a servant of Hiram, king of the Sidonians, is probably the oldest Phoenician document which we possess. This bowl, though perhaps a little earlier than the Moabite stone, in all probability is not more than a century older, while some authorities think it is even later. The earliest alphabet consisted of twenty-two letters, and bears a very close resemblance to the earliest Greek alphabet from A to T. The symbols in the Greek alphabet from Y to S2, or in the numerical alphabet to 7), are not found in the Phoenician alphabet.
As already mentioned, the twenty-two symbols of the Phoenician alphabet indicate consonantal sounds only. Greek did not possess so many consonants. The Phoenician alphabet possessed many more aspirates than were required in Greek, which tended more and more to drop all its aspirates. Before history begins it had also lost, except sporadically in out-of-the-way dialects, the semi-vowel i (approximately English y). It therefore made the aspirates A, E, Q and the semi-vowel I into vowels, and apparently converted the semi-vowel Y = w into the vowel which it placed at the end of the alphabet and substituted for it as the sixth symbol of the alphabet the letter F with the old value of w. The superfluous sibilants were also adapted in various ways (see below).
The discovery of a large number of very archaic inscriptions in the island of Thera, which was made by Freiherr Hiller von Gartringen in 1896, has shown that the earliest Greek - alphabet was even more like the Phoenician than had of been heretofore believed. The symbol for 13 in Thera is nearer than any previously known to the Semitic letter (9) though, as not infrequently happens in the transference of a symbol from one people to another, its position is inverted - a fate which in this alphabet has befallen also A (Semitic L, Thera 1), and possibly o (Semitic N, Thera M). The era of excavation initiated by Dr Schliemann on the grand scale has increased our knowledge of Greek inscriptions beyond anything that was earlier dreamt of. Besides the excavations of Athens, Delos, Epidaurus and Delphi, the results of which are most important for the 5th century B.C. and later, the exploration of the sites of Olympia, of the Heraeum near Argos, of Naucratis in Egypt, and of various Cretan towns (above all the ancient Gortyn), has revolutionized our knowledge of the archaic alphabets of Greece. We can now see how long and laborious was the process by which the Greeks attained to uniformity in writing and in numeration. In no field, perhaps, was the centrifugal tendency of the Greeks more persistent than in such matters. In numeration, indeed, uniformity was not attained till at least the 2nd century of the Christian era. The differentiation of the local alphabets is found Der Ursprung des alt-semitischen Alphabets aus der neu-assyrischen Keilschrift (ZDMG. xxxi. pp. 102 ff.). A still more sweeping theory of the same nature is propounded by the Rev. C. J. Ball in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xv. (1893) PP. 39 2 ff.
from the very beginning of our records. Unfortunately, as yet no record is preserved which can with any probability be dated earlier than the 7th century B.e., and the Phoenician influence had by then nearly ceased. How long this influence lasted we cannot tell. If in Crete a system of writing of an entirely different nature had been developed seven or eight centuries before, there must have been some very important reason for the entire abandonment of the old method and the adoption of a new. In Crete, at least, the excavations show that the old civilization must have ended in a social and political cataclysm. The magnificent palace of Minos - there seems no reason to withhold from it the name of the great prince whom Thucydides recognized as the first to hold the empire of the sea - perished by the flames, and it evidently had been plundered beforehand of everything that a conqueror would regard as valuable. The only force in Greek history which we know that could have produced this change was that of the Dorian conquest. As everywhere in the Peloponnese, except at Argos, there seems to have been a sudden break with the earlier civilization, which can have been occasioned only by the semi-barbarous Dorian tribes, so the same result seems to have followed from the same cause in Thera. The Dorians apparently were without an alphabet, and consequently when Phoenician traders and pirates occupied the place left vacant by the downfall of Minos's empire, the people of the island, and of the sea coasts generally, adopted from them the Phoenician alphabet.' The Greeks who migrated to Cyprus, possibly as the result of the Dorian invasion, adopted a syllabary, not an alphabet (see Plate; also Writing). That the alphabet was borrowed and adapted independently by different places not widely separated, and that the earliest Greek alphabets did not spread from one or a few centres in Greek lands, seem clear (a) from the different Greek sounds for which the Phoenician symbols were utilized; (b) from the different symbols which were employed to represent sounds which the Phoenicians did not possess, and for which, therefore, they had no symbols. The Phoenician alphabet was an alphabet of consonants only, but all Greek alphabets as yet known agree in employing A, E, I, 0, Y as vowels. On the other hand, a table of Greek alphabets 2 will show how widely different the symbols for the same sound were. Except for a single Attic inscription (see Plate), the alphabets of Thera and of Corinth are the oldest Greek Alphabets which we possess. Yet at Corinth alongside LC` "3, which is found for the so-called spurious diphthong a (i.e. the Attic a, which does not represent an IndoEuropean a, but arises by contraction, as in OtXe77-m, or through the lengthening of the vowel sound as the result of the loss of a consonant, as in Eiprt j Avos for FEFpn Avos) the short sound is represented by B; c is found at Corinth in its oldest form, and also as I, while in Thera it is In Thera the w sound of digamma (F) was entirely lost, and therefore is not represented. Both Thera and Corinth employ in the earliest inscriptions for ?', not, though in both alphabets the ordinary use as is adopted, no doubt through the influence of trade with other ' In an excellent summary of the different views held as to the origin of the alphabet (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxii., first half, 1901), Dr J. P. Peters agrees (pp. 191 ff.) that the best test is the etymology of the names of the letters. He shows that " twelve of the letter-names are words with meanings [in the northern dialects of Semitic], all of them indicating simple objects, six of the twelve being parts of the body. The objects denoted by the other six names - ox, house, valve of a door, water, fish and mark or cross - clearly do not belong to any people in a nomadic state, but to a settled, town-abiding population.. .
Six of the letter-names are not words in any known tongue, and appear to be syllables only. Four letter-names are triliterals, and resemble in their form Semitic words." As II of the 12 which have meanings are to be found in the Assyrian-Babylonian syllabaries, he suggests a possible Babylonian origin. Different views with regard to some of these symbols are expressed by Lidzbarski, Ephemeris far semitische Epigraphik, ii. pp. 125 ff. (1906). The earliest tradition of the names is discussed by Noldeke in his Beitrdge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft (1904), pp. 124 ff.
2 See, for example, the tables at the end of Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy (1887); or Kirchhoff's Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets (4th ed. 1887); or Larfeld's Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik, vol. i. (1907).
states. On the other hand, at Cleonae, which is distant not more than 8 or 9 m. from Corinth, an ancient inscription written 1 30vvrpoc 66v has recently been discovered, which shows that though Cleonae for B wrote E {, like the Corinthian ?j, and, as at Corinth, wrote for a vowel sound, the vowel thus represented was not short and long e and n) as at Corinth, but Il only, as in Xp g A, ( X p i i a 1 Here 'a represents and the spurious diphthong is represented by a, as in (dycv, Doric infinitive -= a form which shows that c has at Cleonae the more modern form I as distinguished from the Corinthian Regarding three other questions controversy still rages. These are: (a) how Greek utilized the four sibilants (Shin, Samech, Zain and Zade), which it took over from the Phoenician; (b) what was the history of development in the symbols for cl), x, 4' ,w (the history of E belongs to both heads); (c) the history of the symbol for the digamma F. In the Phoenician alphabet Zain was the seventh letter, occupying the same position and having the same form approximately (i) as the early Greek Z, while in pronunciation it was a voiced s-sound; Samech () followed the 'symbol for n of and was the ordinary s-sound, though, as we have seen, e it is in different Greek states at the earliest period as well as E; after the symbol for p came Zade (v), which was a strong palatal s, though in name it corresponds to the Greek Nra; while lastly Shin (W) follows the symbol for r, and was an sh-sound. The Greek name for the sibilant (clyFca) may simply mean the hissing letter and be a derivative from vi j"co; many authorities, however, hold that it is a corruption of the Phoenician Samech. Unfortunately, it is not clear how many sibilants were distinguished in Greek pronunciation, nor over what areas a particular pronunciation extended. There is, however, considerable evidence in support of the view that Greek va representing the sound arising from Ky, xy, Ty, By was pronounced as sh (s), while representing gy, dy was pronounced in some districts zh (z).4 On an inscription of Halicarnassus, a town which stood in ancient Carian territory, the sound of vv in `AXoKapvaao-Ewv is represented by T, as it is also in the Carian name Panyassis (IIavvfiTcos, geni tive), though the ordinary is also found in the same inscription. The same variation occurs at the neighbouring Teos and at Ephesus, while the coins of Mesembria in Thrace show regularly Meta and M ET A M B P I A N S2 N, where represents the sound which resulted from the fusion of By, and which appears in Homer as Qa in � Vvos, while in later Greek it becomes piaos. 5 This symbol is in all probability the early form of the letter which was known to the Greeks as San (vav) and in modern times as Sampi, and which is utilized as the numeral for 900 in the shape 7A. According to Herodotus (i. 139), San was only the Dorian name for the letter which the Ionians called Sigma. This would bring it into connexion with the Phoenician W (Shin), which, turned through a right angle, is possibly the Greek, though some forms of Zade on old Hebrew coins and gems equally resemble the Greek letter. From other forms of Sade, however, the other early form of a, viz. M, is probably derived. The confusion is thus extreme: the name Zade assimilated in Greek to the names ajra and B41ra becomes slira, though the form is that of Zain; the name of Samech is possibly the origin of Sigma, while the form of Samech is that of = which has not taken over a Phoenician name. It is probable that the form VI is an abbreviation in writing from right to left of the earlier M, and of the four stroke *. That the confusion of the sibilants was not confined to the Greeks only, but that pronunciation varied within a small area even among the Semitic stock, is shown by the difficulty which the Ephraimites found in pronouncing " shibboleth " (Judges xii. 6).
For the history of the additional symbols which are not Phoenician, we must begin with y. There is no Greek alphabet in which the symbol is not represented. But the Phoenician form corresponding to it is the consonant w, and occupies the of position of the Greek digamma as sixth in the series. 0 Whence did the Greeks obtain the digamma? The point is not clear, but probably the Greeks acted here as they did in the case of the vowel i and the consonant y, adopting the consonant symbol for the vowel sound. As, however, except in Cyprus, Pamphylia and Argos, the only y sound which survived in Greek Cp. Frankel, Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum Peloponnesi, No. 1607.
4 See Witton, in American Journal of Philology, xix. pp. 420 ff., and Lagercrantz, Zur griechischen Lautgeschichte (Upsala, 1898).
5 See Foat, " Tsade and Sampi " (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxv. pp. 33 8 ff., xxvi. p. 286). A number of ingenious points often uncertain are raised by A. Gercke, " Zur Geschichte des altesten griechischen Alphabets " (Hermes, xli., 1906, pp. 540 ff.) .
the glide between i and another vowel as in bcch=diya - is never represented, there was no occasion to use the Phoenician Jod in a double function. With Vau it was different; the u-sound existed in some form in all dialects, the w-sound survived in many far into historical times. The Phoenician symbol having been adopted for the vowel sound, whence came the new symbol or [ for the digamma? Hitherto there have been two views. Most authorities have held that the new form was derived from E by dropping the lowermost crossbar; some have held that it developed out of the old Vau, a view which is not impossible in itself and has the similar development in Aramaic (Tema) in its favour. But as Dr Evans has found a form like the digamma among his most recent types of symbols, and as we have no intermediate forms which will prove the development of from Y, though the form found at Oaxos in Crete, viz. A/, shows a form sufficiently unlike it is necessary to suspend judgment.
The Greek aspirates were not the sounds which we represent by ph, th, ch (Scotch), but corresponded rather to the sound of the final consonants in such words as lip, bit, lick, the breath being audible after the formation of the consonant. It is not clear that Greek took over � with this value, for in one Theran inscription e a are found combined as equivalent to T - H, while the regular representation of � and x f and K or 9 (koppa) 8 respectively. In the great Gortyn inscription from Crete and occasionally in Thera, Fl (in Crete in:the form c) and K are used alone for 4 and x, just as conversely even in the 5th century the name of Themistocles has been found upon an ostrakon spelt 6e t eca00100)3. Such confusions show that even to Greek ears the distinction between the sounds was very small. To have recorded it in writing at all shows considerable progress in the observation of sounds. Such progress is more easily indicated by changes in the symbols among a people whose acquaintance with the art is not of long standing nor very familiar. English, though possessing sounds comparable to the Greek 0, /, x, has never made any attempt to represent them in writing. On the other hand, no doubt Athens in 403 B.C. officially adopted the Ionic alphabet and gave up the old Attic alphabet. The political situation in Athens, however, at this time was as exceptional as the French Revolution, and offered an opportunity not likely to recur for the adoption of a system in widely extended use which private individuals had been employing for a long time.
The history of the symbols 4 and x is altogether unknown. The very numerous theories on the subject have generally been founded on a principle which itself is in need of proof, viz. that these symbols must have arisen by differentiation from others already existing in the alphabet. The explanation is possible, but it is not easy to see why, for example, the symbol 9 or cp = Koppa, the Latin Q, should have been utilized for a sound so different as p-h; nor, again, why the symbol for 0 (e) by losing its cross stroke should become 4), seeing that the sounds of o and outside Aeolic (a dialect which is not here in question) are never confused. On the other hand, if we remember the large number of symbols belonging to the prehistoric script, it will seem at least as easy to believe that the persons who, by adding new letters to the Phoenician alphabet, attempted to bring the symbols more into accordance with the sounds of the Greek language, may have borrowed from this older script. It is now generally admitted that the improvements of the alphabet were made by traders in the interests of commerce, and that these improvements began from the great Greek emporia of Asia Minor, above all from Miletus. Symbols exactly like k, X, and (a), X, are found in the Carian alphabet, and transliterated by Professor Sayce 1 as v (and ii), h and kh respectively. If the Carian alphabet goes back to the prehistoric script, why should not Miletus have borrowed them from it? We have already seen that, in the earliest alphabets of Thera and Corinth, the ordinary symbol for E in the Ionic alphabet was used for. This usage brought in its train another - the use of J,/, not for as in Ionic, but for in the name A A EW A CO RA ='AX aybpa, and similarly in Melos,. PAY 1 i<VA ECM = Ilpa crcdbeos. 2 This experiment, for it was no more, belongs apparently to the latter part of the 6th 1 See especially Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for 18 95, p. 40; cf. also Kalinka, Neue Jahrbiicher fiir Philologie, iii. (1899), p. 683. Similar forms are also found in the Safa inscriptions (South Semitic) with similar values, and Praetorius argues (Z.D.M.G. lvi., 1902, pp. 677 ff., and again, lviii., 1904, pp. 725 f.) that these were somehow borrowed by Greek in the 8th century B.C., while in lxii. pp. 283 ff. he argues that the reason why the Greeks borrowed 0 for the aspirated t was its form, the cross in 0 being regarded as "rand the surrounding circle as a variety of ? an occasional form of B the aspirate. Here also (p. 287) as in his Ursprung des kanaaniiischen Alphabets, pp. 13 f., he argues that the two forms of the digamma F and E, and also the South Semitic m = w, could all have developed from the Cyprian I =we. But proof is impossible without evidence of the intermediate steps.
Inscriptiones Graecae, xii., fast. iii. Nos. 811, 1149.
century, and was soon given up. As the Ionians kept the form which the people of Thera used for ?, in the same position in their alphabet as Samech occupied in the Phoenician alphabet, there can be no doubt as to its origin. The symbol ? which the Chalcidian Greeks used in the 6th century B.C. for may be derived, according to the most widely accepted theory, from a primitive form of Samech, which is recorded only in the abecedaria of the Chalcidian colonies in Italy. In this case the borrowing of the Greek alphabet must long precede any Phoenician record we possess. But it is not probable that the Ionic and Phoenician developed independently from the closed form. Kretschmer, however, in several publications 3 takes a different view. He thinks that the guttural element in E was a spirant, and therefore different from X, which is an aspirate. He points out that in Naxos, in a 6th-century inscription,' 5 in Naf Lou, I oxos and ov is represented by 0*, the first element in which he regards as a form of 8 = h. As x is found in the same inscription (in the form X), the guttural element must have been different, else would have been spelt x*. Attica and most of the Cyclades kept x for the guttural element in (written x5 or + 5) and for X as well. On the west of the Aegean a new symbol was invented for the aspirate value, and this spread over the mainland and was carried by emigrants to Rhodes, Sicily and Italy. The sign x was kept in the western group for the guttural spirant in E, which was written X*; but, as this spirant occurred nowhere else, the combination was often abbreviated, and X was used for X precisely as in the Italic alphabets we shall find that F =f develops out of a combination FH.
The development of symbols for the long vowels o and w was also the work of the Ionians. The h-sound ceased at a very early period to exist in Ionic, and by 800 B.C. was ignored in writing. The symbol 9 or H was then employed for the long open e-sound, a use suggested by the name of the letter, which, by the loss of the aspirate, had passed from Heta to Eta. About the same period, and probably as a sequel to this change, the Greeks of Miletus developed ,l for the long open 5-sound, a form which in all probability is differentiated out of O. Centuries passed, however, before this symbol was generally adopted, Athens using only 0 for o, w and ov, the spurious diphthong, until the adoption of the whole Ionic alphabet in 403 B.C.' The discoveries of the last quarter of the 19th century carried back our knowledge of the Latin alphabet by at least two centuries, although the monuments of an early age which have been discovered are only three. (a) In 1880 was discovered between the Quirinal and Viminal hills a little earthenware pot of a curious shape, being, as it were, three vessels radiating from a centre, each with a separate mouth at the top. 6 Round the sides of the triangle formed by the three vessels and under the mouths runs an inscription of considerable length. The use for which the pot was intended and the purport of the inscription have been much disputed, there being at least as many interpretations as there are words in the inscription. The date is probably the early part of the 4th century B.C. Though found in Rome, the vessel is small enough to be easily portable, and might therefore have been brought from elsewhere in Italy. It is equally possible that the potter who inscribed the words upon it was not a native of Rome. One or two points in the inscription make it doubtful whether the Latin upon it is really the Latin of Rome.
It is generally known as the Dvenos inscription, from the name of the maker who wrote on the vessel from right to left the in scription, part of which is DV E N OS MED F E C E D (= fecit). (b) The second of these early records is the inscription on a gold fibula found at Praeneste and published in 1887. The inscription runs from right to left, and is in letters which show more clearly than ever that the Roman alphabet is borrowed from the alphabets of the Chalcidian Greek colonies in Italy. Its date cannot be later than the 5th and is possibly as early as the 6th century B.C. The words are MAN103 MED Fhefhaked NVMAS101, " Manius made me for Numasius." The symbol for M has still five strokes, s has the angular form 5, 5. The inscription is earlier than the Latin change of s between vowels into r, for Numasioi is the dative of the older form which corresponds to the later Numerius. The verb form See especially Athenische Mitteilungen, xxi. p. 426.
Figured in Roberts's Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, p. 65. Details of the history of the individual letters will be found in separate articles.
e It is figured most accessibly in Egbert's Introduction to the Study of Latin Inscriptions, p. 16.
The is remarkable. In the Dvenos inscription the perfect of facio is _feted; here it is a reduplicated form with the same vowel as the present. The spelling also is interesting. The symbol K is still in ordinary use, and not merely used for abbreviations as in the classical age. But most remarkable is the representation of Latin F by FH. The reason for this is clear. The value of F in the Greek alphabet is w and not f as in Latin. Greek had no sound corresponding to Latin F, consequently an attempt is made by combining F and H to indicate the difference of sound. Etruscan uses FH in the same way. As Latin, however, made the symbol V indicate not only the vowel sound u, but also the consonant sound v (i.e. English w), the sign for the digamma F was left unemployed, and as FH was a cumbrous method of representing a sound which did not exist in Greek, the second element came to be left out in writing. Thus F came to be the representative of the unvoiced labiodental spirant instead of that for the bilabial voiced spirant. Whether the form fefaked was ever good Latin in Rome may be doubted, for the Romans, in spite of the few miles that separate Praeneste from Rome, were inclined to sneer at the pronunciation and idiom of the Praenestines (cf. Plautus, Trin. 609, True. 691; Quintilian i. 5, 56). (c) The last, and in some respects the most important, of these records was found in 1899 under an ancient pavement in the Comitium at the north-west corner of the Roman Forum. It is engraved upon the four sides and one bevelled edge of a _ pillar, the top of which has been broken off. As the n writing is f30vorpoOn66v, beginning at the bottom of the pillar and running upwards and down again, no single line of the inscription is complete. Probably more than half the pillar is lost, so that it is not possible to make out the sense with certainty. The inscription is probably not older than that on the fibula from Praeneste, but has the additional interest of being undoubtedly couched in the Latin of Rome. The surviving portion of the inscription contains examples of all the letters of the early alphabet, though the forms of F and B are fragmentary and doubtful. As in the Praenestine inscription, the alphabet is still the western (Chalcidian) alphabet. K is still in use as an ordinary consonant, and not limited to a symbol for abbreviations as in the classical period. The rounded form ofy is found with the value of G in R EC E I, which is probably the dative of rex. H has still the closed form 9, M has the fivestroke form, S is the three-strokes., tending to become rounded. R appears in the Greek form without a tail, and V and Y are both found for the same sound. The manner of writing up and down instead of backwards and forwards across the stone is obviously appropriate to a surface which is of considerable length, but comparatively narrow, a connected sense being thus much easier to observe than in writing across a narrow surface where, as in the gravestones of Melos, three lines are required for a single word. The form of the monument corresponds to that which we are told was given to the revolving wooden pillars on which the laws of Solon were painted. That the writing of Solon's laws, which was f30va-rpocn 66v, was also vertical is rendered probable by the phrase 6 KitrwO�v vopos in Demosthenes' speech Against Aristocrates, � 28, for which Harpocration is unable to supply a satisfactory explanation.
The differentiation of the Roman alphabet from the Greek is brought about (a) by utilizing the digamma for the unvoiced labio dental spirant F; (b) by dropping out the aspirates 0, (I), in the Chalcidian alphabet, whence the Roman is derived) from the alphabet proper and employing them on l as numerals, 0 'y' ? (0) being gradually modified till it was identified with C as though the initial of centum, 100.
Similarly � became in time identified with M as though the initial of mille, 1000, and the side strokes of x in the above form were flattened out till it became 1, and ultimately L, 50. (c) After 35 o B.C., at latest, there was in Latin no sound corresponding to Z, which was therefore dropped. In the Chalcidian alphabet the symbol for x was placed after the symbols common to all Greek alphabets, a position which X retains in the Latin (and also in the Faliscan) alphabet. K in time passed out of use except as an abbreviation, its place being taken by C, which, as we have seen, is in the earliest inscription still g. Three points here require explanation: (1) Why K fell into disuse; (2) why C took the place of K; (3) why the new symbol G was put in the place of the lost Z. It is clear that C must have become an equivalent of K before the latter fell out of use. There is some evidence which seems to point to a pronunciation of the voiced mutes which, like the South German pronunciation of g, d, b, but slightly differentiated them from the unvoiced mutes, so that confusion might easily arise. The Etruscans, who were separated from the Romans only by the Tiber, gradually lost the voiced mutes. But another cause was perhaps more potent. C and IC, as k was frequently written, would easily be confusedin writing, and Professor Hempl (Transactions of the American Philological Association for 18 99, pp. 24 ff.) shows that the Chalcidian form of y` - = developed into shapes which might have partaken of the confusion. Owing to this confusion, the new symbol G, differentiated from C, took the place of the useless I. In abbreviations, however, C remained as before in the value of G, as in the names Gaius and Gnaeus. Y and Z were added in the last century of the republic for use in transliterating Greek words containing v and 1.1 The dialect which was most closely akin to Latin was Faliscan. The men of Falerii, however, regularly took the side of the Etruscans in wars with Rome, and it is clear that the civilization of the old Falerii, destroyed for its rebellion in 241 B.C., was Etruscan and not Roman in character. Peculiar to this alphabet is the form for f - T. Much more important than the scanty remains of Faliscan is the Oscan alphabet. The history of this alphabet is different from that of Rome. It is certain from the symbols which they develop or drop that the people of Campania and Samnium borrowed their alphabet from the Etruscans, who held dominion in Campania from the 8th to the 5th century B.C. Previous to the Punic wars Campania had reached a higher stage of civilization than Rome. Unfortunately, the remains of that civilization are very scanty, and our knowledge of the official alphabet outside Capua, and at a later period Pompeii, is practically confined to two important inscriptions, the tabula Agnonensis, now in the British Museum, and the Cippus Abellanus, which is now kept in the Episcopal Seminary at Nola. Of Etruscan origin also is the Umbrian alphabet, represented first and foremost in the bronze tablets from Gubbio (the ancient Iguvium). The Etruscan alphabet, like the Latin, was of Chalcidian origin. That it was borrowed at an early date is shown by the fact that most of its numerous inscriptions run from right to left, though some are written govarp04q 6v. That it took over the whole Chalcidian alphabet is rendered probable by the survival in Umbrian and Oscan, its daughter alphabets, of forms which are not found in Etruscan itself. This mysterious language, despite the existence of more than 6000 inscriptions, and the publication in 1892 of a book written in the language and handed down to us by the accident of its use to pack an Egyptian mummy, remains as obscure as ever, but apparently it underwent very great phonetic changes at an early period, so that the voiced mutes B, D, G disappeared. Of the existence of the vowel 0 there is no evidence. If it ever existed in Etruscan, it had been lost before the Oscans and Umbrians borrowed their alphabets. On the other hand, both of their alphabets preserve B and Umbrian G in the form >. Etruscan also retained this symbol in the form 3, and utilized it exactly as Latin did to replace)j. Oscan, in order to represent D, introduced later a form SJ, thus creating confusion between the symbols for d and for r. This form was adopted for d because had already been borrowed from Etruscan as the symbol for r, although 9 is also found on Etruscan inscriptions. For the Greek digamma Etruscan used both 3 and q, but the former only was borrowed by the other languages. Etruscan, like Latin, used (from right to left) to represent the sound of Latin F, but, unlike Latin, adopted 8 not as the single symbol. This form it then wrote as two lozenges whence:developed a;later sign, 8, which is used also in Umbrian and Oscan. As the old digamma was kept, this new sign was placed after those borrowed from the Chalcidian - alphabet. Similarly it used 4 and z for the Chalcidian Umbrian borrowed the first, Oscan the second form. The form for h was still closed �, which Etruscan passed on to Oscan, while Umbrian modified it to 0. The form for m has five strokes; from a later form HA the Oscan form was borrowed. Of the two sibilants, M and or S, Oscan adopted only Umbrian both M and the rounded form S. Q is found on Etruscan inscriptions, but not in the alphabet series preserved; neither Umbrian nor Oscan has this form. T appears in Etruscan as y, 7 t, and X; of these Umbrian borrows the first two, while Oscan has a form T like Latin. Etruscan took over the three Greek aspirates, 0, 4), x, in their Chalcidian forms; 0 survives in Umbrian as 0, the others naturally disappear. Both Umbrian and Oscan devised two new symbols. Umbrian 1 Gardthausen, " Ursprung and Entwickelung der griechischlateinischen Schrift " (Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, i. (1909), pp. 337 ff.) argues for a " proto-Tyrrhenian " alphabet from which Etruscan, Umbrian and Oscan descended as one group, and Faliscan and Latin as the other. Evidence in favour of such a position for the Latin alphabet is not forthcoming.
took over from Etruscan perhaps the sign but gave it the new value of a spirant which developed out of an earlier d-sound, but which is written in the Latin alphabet with rs. The second Umbrian symbol was d, which was the representative of an s-sound developed by palatalizing an earlier k. In Oscan, which had an o-sound, but no symbol for it, a new sign was invented by placing a dot between the legs of the symbol for u - V. This, however, is found only in the best-written documents, and on some materials the dot cannot be distinguished. The symbol Iwas invented for the open i-sound and close e-sound.' At a much later epoch it was introduced into the Latin alphabet by the emperor Claudius to represent y, and the sound which was written as i or u in maximus, maxumus, &c.
Besides the Italic alphabets already mentioned, which are all derived from the alphabet of the Chalcidian Greek colonists in Italy, there were at least four other alphabets in use in different parts of Italy: (i) the Messapian of the south-east part of the peninsula, in which the inscriptions of the Illyrian dialect in use there were written, an alphabet which, according to Pauli (Alt-italische Forschungen, iii. chap. ii.) was borrowed from the Locrian alphabet; (2) the Sabellic alphabet, derived from that of Corinth and Corcyra, and found in a few inscriptions of eastern-central Italy; (3) the alphabet of the Veneti of north-east Italy derived from the Elean; (4) the alphabet of Sondrio (between Lakes Como and Garda), which Pauli, on the insufficient ground that it possesses no symbols corresponding to 4 and x, derives from a source at the same stage of development as the oldest alphabets of Thera, Melos and Crete.
From the fact that upon the Galassi vase (unearthed at Cervetri, but probably a�product of Caere), which is now in the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican, a syllabary is found along with one of the most archaic Greek alphabets, and that a similar combination was found upon the wall of a tomb at Colle, near Siena, it has been argued that syllabic preceded alphabetic writing in Italy. But a syllabary where each syllable is made by the combinations of a symbol for a consonant with that for a vowel can furnish no proof of the existence of a syllabary in the strict sense, where each symbol represents a syllable; it is rather evidence against the existence of such writing. The syllabary upon the Galassi vase indicates in all probability that the vase, which resembles an ink-bottle, belonged to a child, for whose edification the syllables pa, pi, pe, pu and the rest were intended. The evidence adduced from the Latin grammarians, and from abbreviations on Latin inscriptions like lubs for lubens, is not sufficient to establish the theory.
It has been argued that the runes of the Teutonic peoples have been derived from a form of the Etruscan alphabet, inscriptions in which are spread over a great part of northern Italy, but of which the most characteristic are found in the neighbourhood of Lugano, and in Tirol near Innsbruck, Botzen and Trent. The Danish scholar L. F. A. Wimmer, in his great work Die Runenschrift (Berlin, 1887), contends that the resemblance, though striking, is superficial. Wimmer's own view is that the runes were developed from the Latin alphabet in use at the end of the 2nd century A.D. Wimmer supports his thesis with great learning and ingenuity, and when allowance is made for the fact that a script to be written upon wood, as the runes were, of necessity avoids horizontal lines which run along the fibres of the wood, and would therefore be indistinct, most of the runic signs thus receive a plausible explanation. The strongest argument for the derivation from the Latin alphabet is undoubtedly the value of f attaching to P; for, as we have seen, the Greek value of this symbol is w, and its value as f arises only by abbreviation from FH. On the other hand, several of Wimmer's equations are undoubtedly forced. Even if we grant that the Latin symbols were inverted or set at an angle (a proceeding which is paralleled by the treatment of the Phoenician signs in Greek hands), so that represents Latin V, M Latin E, I' Latin 11, and J. Latin D; while the symbol for the voiced spirant o is doubled, it is difficult to believe that the symbol for the spirant g, viz. X, represents a Latin K (which was of rare occurrence), or again `'., X a Latin N, or that the symbol for ng, �j, represents < = c doubled. Moreover, the date of the borrowing seems too late. The runes are found in all Teutonic countries, and the Romans were in close contact with the Germans on the Rhine before the beginning I For further details of these alphabets, see Conway, The Italic Dialects, ii. pp. 458 ff. The recent discovery by Keil and Premerstein (Denkschriften der Wiener Akademie,'iii., 1908) of Lydian inscriptions containing the symbol 8 suggests that the old derivation of the Etruscans from Lydia may be true and that they brought this symbol with them (see article on F). But the inscriptions are not yet deciphered, so that conclusive proof is still wanting.
of the Christian era. We hear of correspondence between the Romans and German chieftains in the early days of the empire. It is strange, therefore, if the Roman alphabet, which formed the model for the runes, was that of two whole centuries later, and even then the formal alphabet of inscriptions. By that time the Teutons were likely to have more convenient-materials than wood whereon to write, so that the adaptation of the forms would not have been necessary. That the Germans were familiar with some sort of marks on wood at a much earlier period is shown by Tacitus's Germania, chap. x. There we are told that for purposes of divination certain signs were scratched on slips of wood from a fruit-bearing tree (including, no doubt, the beech; cp. book, German Buck, and Buchstabe, a letter of the alphabet); the slips were thrown down promiscuously on a white cloth, whence the expert picked them up at random and by them interpreted fate. In these slips we have the origin of the Norse kefli, the Scots kaivel, which were and are still used as lots. The fishermen of north-east Scotland, when they return after a successful haul, divide the spoil into as many shares as there are men in the boat, with one share more for the boat. Each man then procures a piece of wood or stone, on which he puts a private mark. These lots are put in a heap, and an outsider is called in who throws one lot or kaivel upon each heap of fish. Each fisherman then finds his kaivel, and the heap on which it lies is his. This system of " casting kaivels," as it is called, is certainly of great antiquity. But its existence will not help to prove an early knowledge of reading or writing, for in order that everything may be fair, it is clear that the umpire should not be able to identify the lot as belonging to a particular individual. It has, however, been contended that a system of primitive runes existed whence some at least of the later runes were borrowed, and the ownership marks of the Lapps, who have no knowledge of reading and writing, have been regarded as borrowed from these early Teutonic runes. 2 Be this as it may, the resemblances between the runic and the Mediterranean alphabets are too great to admit of denial that it is from a Greek alphabet, whether directly or indirectly, that the runes are derived. That Wimmer postdates the introduction of the runic alphabet seems clear from the archaic forms and method of writing. It is very unlikely that a people borrowing an alphabet which was uniformly written from left to right should have used it in order to write from right to left, or (30uvrp04riOOP. Hence Hempl contends 3 that Wimmer's view must be discarded, and that the runes were derived about 600 B.C. from a western Greek alphabet which closely resembled the Formello alphabet (one of the ancient Chalcidian abecedaria) and the Sabellic and North Etruscan alphabets. He thus fixes the date at the same period as Isaac Taylor had done in his Greeks and Goths and The Alphabet. Taylor, however, derived the runes from the alphabet of a Greek colony on the Black Sea. Hempl's initiative was followed by Professor Gundermann of Giessen, who announced in November 1897' that he had discovered the source of the runic alphabet, the introduction of which he declares preceded the first of the phonetic changes known as the " Teutonic sound-shifting," since < = g is used for k, X = x for g, a Theta-like symbol for d, while zd is used for st. If this view (which is identical with Taylor's) be true, we have a parallel in the Armenian alphabet, which is similarly used for a new value of the sounds. Hempl, on the other hand, contends that the sound-shifting had already taken place, and, arguing that several of the symbols have changed places (e.g. {% f and p a, 0 u and 8 b, because this time b was a bilabial spirant and not a stop), ultimately obtains an order - a b d e f z kgw h i j pr st u l m n o o. As neither Gundermann nor Hempl has published the full evidence for his view, no definite conclusion at the moment is possible.
2 R. M. Meyer, Paul Braune and Sievers' Beitreige, xxi. (1896), pp. 162 ff.
In a paper published in the volume of Philologische Studien, presented as a " Festgabe " to Professor Sievers in 1896, and in a second paper in the Journal of Germanic Philology, ii. (1899), pp. 37 0 ff.
' See Literaturblatt fiir germanische and romanische Philologie for 1897, col. 429 f.
9k 21/4 ?,? ?c)? * � w >k ^ + * � * A i 4.1 ?? .iv? + ?- 1, _,a, - oit - et_ � es aG - C �, vr - th%r Q.nv ' '1 oC p [ 1:9 � Zkio Cv s o o � s oK I 1 de oK � �K � ,P T °`a Cyprian Inscription (4th century B.C.) from Curium (British Museum Excavations, p. 64). Below are (t) the transliteration of the symbols; (2) the Greek words, both like the Cyprian reading from right to left.
