TABLE SHEWING THE PROBABLE DERIVATION OF HEBREW & SAMARITAN CHARACTERS FROM EGYPTIAN HIEROCLYPHICS. PL.V... T.AD. House. .GAH. גאה Arm. .DAU .דע Mouth. HEH הת ALEPH Ox House 4A A... 9 AF BB ALPHA B 2 2 G DELTA D E. E EE E ה IFFC F. [Ze GHH.. DIGAMMA F. F 5 5 6 N 7 7 H 00 ΤΗ. B H K... ヘス I. DICTA Jer Y レ JJ 1 Л KAPPA K K KK= L LAMBDA L MU MMMMM KI 20 20 LLA MMM XI XS. M. N. OMICRON Leys. Eye. 30 30 M מ 40 40 NNN PPPIE a R. Q/Q/P PHORRR 9 AR Pp. 3 ရာ. S. TAV PH CHI CH TS! FS. 50 50 60 60 10 70 70 80 20, 90 100 200 3 모드 F 100 Hereglskurkarient Names of ancient, unter Sat. Later, Hierogly: Somontan. Plenician. Greek Greek. Ancient. Later English. Hebrew. Greek Sava ebrew, Squarebelrew. Hebrew. fumes, thing CHAPTER VIII. ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW ALPHABET, AND THE FIRST USE OF WRITING AMONG THE JEWS. THE HE Hebrew language, and the character in which it was written, have a deep interest for all nations of Christendom, as being the means by which the Jewish Scriptures have been transmitted to us, upon which the Christian faith is founded. It appears singular that no monuments of Hebrew writing exist, which are not posterior even to the Christian era, with the exception of those on the coins. of the Maccabees, which are in the ancient, or what is termed the Samaritan, form of the Hebrew letters. The recent discoveries in Assyria have, however, brought to light many inscriptions in a character closely resembling the Hebrew, which are evidently contemporaneous with the later Assyrian inscriptions of the cuneatic form. Earlier than this, however, it is not likely that any scriptorial. monuments of a kind likely to elucidate the early history of the Jewish method of writing will ever be recovered, though it is certain that some kind of writing was known to that people in the time of Moses, if not before; for it is selfevident that their great leader and deliverer was skilled in all the knowledge of the Egyptians, and, of course, in the art of writing. He must also have been aware that the Egyptian system of expressing ideas by means of writing consisted of pictorial, symbolic, and phonetic characters; and he knew that these three classes of characters were blended by the Egyptians into one homogeneous general system; as we find it in works known to have been in existence in his time, among which is the obelisk of Luxor, recently erected in Paris. That Moses must have introduced the art of writing among the Jewish people, if they did not possess it before, appears certain, as in more than one passage of the Pentateuch writing is spoken of as an art well known. If he were the direct means of conferring a system of writing upon the Jewish people, he probably perceived, when a foreign language was to be expressed by Egyptian characters, the advantage of only adopting the phonetic signs-leaving the heavy paraphernalia of the pictorial and symbolic characters untouched. Conjectural evidence, if the term evidence may be so qualified, is, however, in favour of the view that the Phoenicians had already effected. this elimination of the Egyptian system, and founded in a neighbouring state an alphabetic system ready to the hands of the Hebrew people; and that when they returned to the land of their fathers, and found themselves neighbours of the Phoenicians, who spoke a nearly allied language, they adopted the alphabet of that people, with certain modifications, which may either have been effected at the time, or may have subsequently grown up; the differences being such as were likely to have ensued in a written character when practised by nations whose political and religious institutions became so distinct. However this may be, the earliest known form of the Hebrew alphabet, that termed the Samaritan, bears evident traces of a common origin with that of Phoenicia. So that, whether the Jewish system of writing was a direct adaptation of portions of the Egyptian system by Moses, or by some earlier patriarch, or whether it was received through the medium of an already perfected Phonician alphabet derived from the same source, is unimportant. A striking proof of the immediate derivation of both the Phoenician and Hebrew characters from a hieroglyphic system is the original names of the signs which form the Hebrew alphabet, which have fortunately been preserved, and which indicate clearly their pictorial origin. Whether the Hebrew was immediately founded upon the Phoenician arrangement or not, cannot, as stated, with our present means of observation, be determined; but the great similarity of the two alphabets, as will be seen by examination of Plate V., would naturally lead to this inference, rather than that which supposes a direct Egyptian origin. That the Jewish alphabet was rather derived immediately from Phœnicia, the civilisation of which province preceded that of Judea, appears most probable; as in most of the arts of life there are evident traces of their having followed in the track of their more advanced neighbours. This, however, appears the proper place to state, that the rock inscriptions in the regions of Mount Sinai have been thought by a recent author (the Rev. C. Forster) to be the work of the Israelites during their sojourn in "the wilderness;" and if that could be verified, it would go to prove as these inscriptions appear to be in a character closely allied to the Egyptian enchorial or demotic— that the Israelites, on their departure from Egypt, carried with them the demotic, or more popular manner of writing of that country. If such were the case, it would shew that the Hebrews, at that time, used a hieroglyphic system of writing in a cursive form, and were not as yet in possession of a true alphabet. These speculations, however, can have but little weight, as it is now the general opinion of philologists that the inscriptions in question belong to a far more recent date than that assigned by Mr. Forster, and that, in fact, they are posterior to the Christian era. The first allusion to writing in the books of Moses is that referring to the writing of the commandments, on the tablets of stone "after the manner of a signet;" by which we may understand engraved writing like that of the Assyrian cylinders, or seals—such as those here engraved, which, when rolled over with warm wax or soft clay, left a flat and legible impression of the writing of the signet. In the Exodus the following notice of writing also occurs: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book." But it should be observed, that the term TDD (sepher), a book, is from the same root as the Greek spas, a stone, by which a tablet, such as that used for the inscription of the commandments, was most probably meant. Whether the character made use of was a partially iconographic system, like that of the Egyptian, must be left to conjecture; but according to the present received date of the age of Moses, the early Samaritan alphabetic characters may have been in use, for the Phoenicians most probably possessed the art prior to that epoch; indeed, after naming the earliest date of Egyptian writing (5000 B.C.), the era of Moses (1490 B.C.) appears, comparatively speaking, a modern one. Minute investigation, nevertheless, involuntarily leads us to the conclusion that writing was at that time but rarely practised among the Jews, except for monumental inscriptions, sacerdotal records, or signets; a view illustrated by the following passage: "And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings on a signet," &c. It would appear also that the public documents were written on plates of metal, or brass, or gold, or, like the Decalogue, on tablets of stone, which Moses. describes as having received on Mount Sinai, in the form of "two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." Although the preceding statements tend to prove that the Jews were in possession of some mode of writing as early as the time of Moses, no existing national monuments of that period have been discovered. The most ancient examples of letters of a Semitic character are those, as before stated, which have been recently found among Assyrian remains; the first authentic examples of Hebrew writing being the inscriptions on the coins of the Maccabees, the earliest of which belong to the second century B.C. At that time the alphabet of the Jews could not have undergone any such serious change as to obliterate entirely its first character, if we may judge from the progress of the Phoenician and the Greek during a similar period. Indeed, the stationary character of the Hebrew alphabet, or rather what is considered the Samaritan branch of it, may be further illustrated by comparison of a portion of a Samaritan Pentateuch, written in the eleventh century of our era M (Plate V.), with the characters on the coins issued by the Maccabees, written two centuries B.C., when it will be perceived that, after a lapse of thirteen centuries, but trifling variation had taken place. We may therefore take the earliest examples preserved of the Samaritan, which is, in fact, a very ancient authentic form of the Hebrew alphabet, and consider them as representing pretty nearly the state of that alphabet when first derived, directly or indirectly, from the phonetic signs of the Egyptian system. The fact of the Hebrew language having been preserved, while that of the Phoenicians has been lost, enables us to trace the connexion of the Semitic alphabets with their Egyptian parent, through the original names of the letters, which are, in fact, those of the objects of which, in their pictorial stage, they were representations. These names at once betray the pictorial origin of the characters themselves; and they were doubtless similar to those which distinguished the Phoenician characters. The close resemblance of the names of the Greek letters with those of the Hebrew, clearly proves the common origin of those of the Phoenicians and Hebrews from the same pictographic source, which was, in all probability, the Egyptian. The two last columns of Plate V. will enable the student to compare the Greek and Hebrew forms of these picture-betraying names much better than farther description. In the first of these characters, Aleph, corresponding to our A, and signifying ox, the horns of an ox are still traceable. An example will be found in a specimen from a Samaritan Pentateuch, of the eleventh century, in which that letter still exhibits an outline, similar to the head of an ox, with the two horns pointing to the right; but this resemblance is not perceptible in the square Hebrew. The letter in question is the second of the upper line of my specimen (Plate V. No. 2), when read from right to left; it also occurs as the last letter of the same line. In Plate V.a, the hieroglyphics, from which this and the other letters of the series were possibly taken, are placed in a corresponding column. In the second letter, Beth (a house), there appears but slight traces of the original form, either in the Samaritan or modern Hebrew, unless a tent, the house of the Arab, be taken as the original type; but in the third, Ghimel (camel), the head and neck of the camel are still traceable in the Samaritan, in the direction of the lines. The next, Daleth (door), some have traced to the Egyptian hieroglyphic of a folding-door, which in the Samaritan strongly resembles the Chinese character, or rather picture, at page 26. In the aspirated He, which well represents the sound of breathing through the nostrils, the character is evidently derived from a pictograph of that organ, as may be seen in the adjoining column of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Plate V.a. This character is also represented in an analogous manner in a Chinese pictograph. (See the nose, page 25.) The analogies of the Samaritan and of the Hebrew characters with |