IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume I: The Beginnings of Science | ||
4. IV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET
[The Development of the Alphabet]
BEFORE we turn specifically to the new world of the west, it remains to take note of what may perhaps be regarded as the very greatest achievement of ancient science. This was the analysis of speech sounds, and the resulting development of a system of alphabetical writing. To comprehend the series of scientific inductions which led to this result, we must go back in imagination and trace briefly the development of the methods of recording thought by means of graphic symbols. In other words, we must trace the evolution of the art of writing. In doing so we cannot hold to national lines as we have done in the preceding two chapters, though the efforts of the two great scientific nations just considered will enter prominently into the story.
The familiar Greek legend assures us that a Phœnician named Kadmus was the first to bring a knowledge of letters into Europe. An elaboration of the story, current throughout classical times, offered the further explanation that the Phœnicians had in turn acquired the art of writing from the Egyptians or Babylonians. Knowledge as to the true origin and development of the art of writing did not extend in antiquity beyond such vagaries as these. Nineteenth-century studies gave the first real clews to an
THE MOABITE STONE
(With one possible exception the oldest known example of the
Phœnician writing. It shows an inscription of Mesha,
king of Moab, and dates from early in the ninth century, B.C.)
[Description:
Photograph of the Moabite Stone, an inscription of Mesha, king
of Moab, dating from the ninth century, B.C.)
]
But, as has often happened in other fields after years of acrimonious controversy, a new discovery or two may suffice to show that neither contestant was right. After the Egyptologists of the school of De Rouge [36] thought they had demonstrated that the familiar symbols of the Phœnician alphabet had been copied from that modified form of Egyptian hieroglyphics known as the hieratic writing, the Assyriologists came forward to prove that certain characters of the Babylonian syllabary also show a likeness to the alphabetical characters that seemingly could not be due to chance. And then, when a settlement of the dispute seemed almost hopeless, it was shown through the Egyptian excavations that characters even more closely resembling those in dispute had been in use all about the shores of the Mediterranean, quite independently of either Egyptian or Assyrian writings, from periods so ancient as to be virtually prehistoric.
Coupled with this disconcerting discovery are the revelations brought to light by the excavations at the sites of Knossos and other long-buried cities of the island of Crete. [37] These excavations, which are still in progress, show that the art of writing was known and practised independently in Crete before that cataclysmic overthrow of the early Greek civilization which archæologists are accustomed to ascribe to the hypothetical invasion of the Dorians. The significance of this is that the art of writing was known in Europe long before the advent of the mythical Kadmus. But since the early Cretan scripts are not to be identified with the scripts used in Greece in historical times, whereas the latter are undoubtedly of lineal descent from the Phœnician alphabet, the validity of the Kadmus legend, in a modified form, must still be admitted.
As has just been suggested, the new knowledge, particularly that which related to the great antiquity of characters similar to the Phœnician alphabetical signs, is somewhat disconcerting. Its general trend, however, is quite in the same direction with most of the new archæological knowledge of recent decades—that is to say, it tends to emphasize the idea that human civilization in most of its important elaborations is vastly older than has hitherto been supposed. It may be added, however, that no definite clews are as yet available that enable us to fix even an approximate date for the origin of the Phœnician alphabet. The signs, to which reference has been made, may well have been in existence for thousands of years, utilized merely as property marks, symbols for counting
MEXICAN PICTURE-WRITING
(Probably of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, A.D. The
original is now M.S. 3773 of the Vatican Library, Rome.
Reproduced from Williams' History of the Art of Writing.)
[Description:
Eight panels (four above four) of various typically pre-Columbian
art.
]
FIRST STEPS
For the very first chapters of the story we must go back in imagination to the prehistoric period. Even barbaric man feels the need of self-expression, and strives to make his ideas manifest to other men by pictorial signs. The cave-dwellers scratched pictures of men and animals on the surface of a reindeer horn or mammoth tusk as mementos of his prowess. The American Indian does essentially the same thing to-day, making pictures that crudely record his successes in war and the chase. The Northern Indian had got no farther than this when the white man discovered America; but the Aztecs of the Southwest and the Maya people of Yucatan had carried their picture-making to a much higher state of elaboration. [38] They had developed systems of pictographs or hieroglyphics
What the Aztec and Maya were striving towards in the sixteenth century A.D., various Oriental nations had attained at least five or six thousand years earlier. In Egypt at the time of the pyramid-builders, and in Babylonia at the same epoch, the people had developed systems of writing that enabled them not merely to present a limited range of ideas pictorially, but to express in full elaboration and with finer shades of meaning all the ideas that pertain to highly cultured existence. The man of that time made records of military achievements, recorded the transactions of every-day business life, and gave expression to his moral and spiritual aspirations in a way strangely comparable to the manner of our own time. He had perfected highly elaborate systems of writing.
EGYPTIAN WRITING
Of the two ancient systems of writing just referred to as being in vogue at the so-called dawnings of history, the more picturesque and suggestive was the hieroglyphic system of the Egyptians. This is a curiously conglomerate system of writing, made up in part of symbols reminiscent of the crudest stages of picture-writing, in part of symbols having the phonetic value of syllables, and in part of true alphabetical letters. In a word, the Egyptian writing represents in itself the elements of the various stages through which the art of writing has developed. [39] We must conceive
REPRODUCTION OF A FRAGMENT OF THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF
THE DEAD
(Reproduced from Williams' History of the Art of
Writing.)
[Description:
Egyptian mural, depicting a central figure with a dog head
kneeling under a set of scales; to his right is a standing figure
with a bird-head, and a kneeling animal figure; to the left are
two smaller figures, and two same-scale femal figures standing
atthe far left. Above are ten figures seated in a row, all
facing right, with hieroglyphic text filling in space throughout.
]
Here, for example, in the midst of unintelligible lines and pot-hooks, are various pictures that are instantly recognizable as representations of hawks, lions, ibises, and the like. It can hardly be questioned that when these pictures were first used calligraphically they were meant to represent the idea of a bird or animal. In other words, the first stage of picture-writing did not go beyond the mere representation of an eagle by the picture of an eagle. But this, obviously, would confine the presentation of ideas within very narrow limits. In due course some inventive genius conceived the thought of symbolizing a picture. To him the outline of an eagle might represent not merely an actual bird, but the thought of strength, of courage, or of swift progress. Such a use of symbols obviously extends the range of utility of a nascent art of writing. Then in due course some wonderful psychologist—or perhaps the joint efforts of many generations of psychologists—made the astounding discovery that the human voice, which seems to flow on in an unbroken stream of endlessly varied modulations and intonations, may really be analyzed into a comparatively limited number of component sounds—into a few hundreds of syllables. That wonderful idea conceived, it was only a matter of time until it would occur to some other enterprising genius that by selecting an arbitrary symbol to represent each one of these elementary sounds it would be possible to make a written record of the words of human speech which
So fond were the Egyptians of their pictorial symbols used ideographically that they clung to them persistently throughout the entire period of Egyptian history. They used symbols as phonetic equivalents very frequently, but they never learned to depend upon them exclusively. The scribe always interspersed his phonetic signs with some other signs intended as graphic aids. After spelling a word out in full, he added a picture, sometimes even two or three pictures, representative of the individual thing, or at least of the type of thing to which the word belongs. Two or three illustrations will make this clear.
Thus qeften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey is added as a determinative; second, qenu, cavalry, after being spelled, is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third, temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added; and fourth, tatu, quadrupeds,
It must not be supposed, however, that it was a mere whim which led the Egyptians to the use of this system of determinatives. There was sound reason back of it. It amounted to no more than the expedient we adopt when we spell "to,'' "two,'' or "too,'' in indication of a single sound with three different meanings. The Egyptian language abounds in words having more than one meaning, and in writing these it is obvious that some means of distinction is desirable. The same thing occurs even more frequently in the Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese adopt a more clumsy expedient, supplying a different symbol for each of the meanings of a syllable; so that while the actual word-sounds of their speech are only a few hundreds in number, the characters of their written language mount high into the thousands.
BABYLONIAN WRITING
While the civilization of the Nile Valley was developing this extraordinary system of hieroglyphics, the inhabitants of Babylonia were practising the art of writing along somewhat different lines. It is certain that they began with picture-making, and that in due course they advanced to the development of the syllabary; but, unlike their Egyptian cousins, the men of Babylonia saw fit to discard the old system when they had perfected a better one. [40] So at a very early day their writing—as revealed to us now through the
A brief analysis of speech sounds will aid us in understanding the real nature of the syllabary. Let us take for consideration the consonantal sound represented by the letter b. A moment's consideration will
In point of fact, such a work as Professor Delitzsch's Assyrian Grammar [41] presents signs for three hundred and thirty-four syllables, together with sundry alternative signs and determinatives to tax the memory of the would-be reader of Assyrian. Let us take for example a few of the b sounds. It has been explained that the basis of the Assyrian written character is a simple wedge-shaped or arrow-head mark. Variously repeated and grouped, these marks make up the syllabic characters.
To learn some four hundred such signs as these was the task set, as an equivalent of learning the a b c's, to any primer class in old Assyria in the long generations when that land was the culture Centre of the world. Nor was the task confined to the natives of Babylonia and Assyria alone. About the fifteenth century B.C., and probably for a long time before and after that period, the exceedingly complex syllabary of the Babylonians was the official means of communication throughout western Asia and between Asia and Egypt, as we know from the chance discovery of a collection of letters belonging to the Egyptian king Khun-aten, preserved at Tel-el-Amarna. In the time of Ramses the Great the Babylonian writing was in all probability considered by a majority of the most highly civilized people in the world to be the most perfect script practicable. Doubtless the average scribe of the time did not in the least realize the waste of energy involved in his labors, or ever suspect that there could be any better way of writing.
Yet the analysis of any one of these hundreds of syllables into its component phonetic elements—had
OLD BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTION.
Date, about 4500 B.C.
British Museum, London.
(Reproduced from Williams' History of the Art of Writing.)
[Description:
Example of Babylonian script.
]
Yet, in the end, conservatism always yields, and so it was with opposition to the alphabet. Once the idea of the consonant had been firmly grasped, the old syllabary was doomed, though generations of time might be required to complete the obsequies—generations of time and the influence of a new nation. We have now to inquire how and by whom this advance was made.
THE ALPHABET ACHIEVED
We cannot believe that any nation could have vaulted to the final stage of the simple alphabetical writing without tracing the devious and difficult way of the pictograph and the syllabary. It is possible, however, for a cultivated nation to build upon the shoulders of its neighbors, and, profiting by the experience of others, to make sudden leaps upward and onward. And this is seemingly what happened in the final development of the art of writing. For while the Babylonians and Assyrians rested content with their elaborate syllabary, a nation on either side of them, geographically speaking, solved the problem, which they perhaps did not even recognize as a problem; wrested from their syllabary its secret of consonants and vowels, and by adopting an arbitrary sign for each consonantal sound, produced that most wonderful of human inventions, the alphabet.
The two nations credited with this wonderful achievement are the Phœnicians and the Persians. But it is not usually conceded that the two are
Regarding the Persian alphabet-maker, then, as a copyist rather than a true inventor, it remains to turn attention to the Phœnician source whence, as is commonly believed, the original alphabet which became "the mother of all existing alphabets'' came into being. It must be admitted at the outset that evidence for the Phœnician origin of this alphabet is traditional rather than demonstrative. The Phœnicians were the great traders of antiquity; undoubtedly they were largely responsible for the transmission of the alphabet from one part of the world to another, once it had been invented. Too much credit cannot be given them for this; and as the world always honors him who makes an idea fertile rather than the originator of the idea, there can be little injustice in continuing to speak of the Phœnicians as the inventors of the alphabet. But the actual facts of the case will probably never
The inventive thinker must have been struck with amazement when, after making the fullest analysis of speech-sounds of which he was capable, he found himself supplied with only a score or so of symbols. Yet as regards the consonantal sounds he had exhausted the resources of the Semitic tongue. As to vowels, he scarcely considered them at all. It seemed to him sufficient to use one symbol for each consonantal
Peoples using the Aryan speech soon saw the defect, and the Greeks supplied symbols for several new sounds at a very early day. [43] But there the matter rested, and the alphabet has remained imperfect. For the purposes of the English language there should certainly have been added a dozen or more new characters. It is clear, for example, that, in the interest of explicitness, we should have a separate symbol for the vowel sound in each of the following syllables: bar, bay, bann, ball, to cite a single illustration.
There is, to be sure, a seemingly valid reason for not extending our alphabet, in the fact that in multiplying syllables it would be difficult to select characters at once easy to make and unambiguous. Moreover, the conservatives might point out, with telling effect, that the present alphabet has proved admirably effective for about three thousand years. Yet the fact that our dictionaries supply diacritical marks for some
Notes
(p. 87) . Vicomte E. de Rougé, Memoire sur l'Origine Égyptienne de l'Alphabet Phénicien , Paris, 1874.
(p. 89). Aztec and Maya writing. These pictographs are still in the main undecipherable, and opinions differ as to the exact stage of development which they represent.
(p. 90). E. A. Wallace Budge's First Steps in Egyptian, London, 1895, is an excellent elementary work on the Egyptian writing. Professor Erman's Egyptian Grammar, London, 1894, is the work of perhaps the foremost living Egyptologist.
(p. 93). Extant examples of Babylonian and Assyrian writing give opportunity to compare earlier and later systems, so the fact of evolution from the pictorial to the phonetic system rests on something more than mere theory.
(p. 96). Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestucke mit grammatischen Tabellen und vollständdigem Glossar einführung in die assyrische und babylonische Keilschrift-litteratur bis hinauf zu Hammurabi, Leipzig, 1900.
IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume I: The Beginnings of Science | ||