Part 2

About, or soon after, 1000 B.C., we find a considerable portion of the earth's surface occupied by people knowing how to write; namely, Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, Arabia, the whole of Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia, {13}and China. Abyssinia and Armenia are included because into the one country Egyptian and Himyaritic characters had been imported, and into the other a form of Babylonian. China is placed in the list, far below her pretensions, because we do not really know the age of the character in which Chinese books preserve the inscriptions of Yu. It appears derivable from the dissertations of M. Terrien, whose sagacious learning has attracted many scholars, that the earliest history recorded in Chinese annals is not geographically Chinese; but that it represents the legends and traditions which were carried into China by the ancestors of the race. A connexion has been found to subsist between those traditions and the early history of Babylonia, which leads to the inference that the Akkadian people of 3800 B.C. and the ancestors of the Chinese were at one time united. Assuming that the theory is justifiable, we may treat the Chinese in China as having inherited the art of writing, however strangely altered in form. It is probably true that they used the letters out of which their present characters descended, in the country they now inhabit, at more than 1000 B.C.

_The Alphabet in European Greece, 800 B.C._

The European Greeks are not included in the preceding paragraph, simply because there are no means of proving that they had the use of letters in the tenth century B.C. The probability, however, is that they were not far behind their brethren in Asia Minor. The variations in the forms of some of the letters of the Greek alphabet which are found in inscriptions at different places both in Asia Minor and in Greece, are attributable to local fashions and to the fact that the script was not built up all at once from a single model. It is here that the tradition about Cadmus has its chief significance; for there can be little doubt that the alphabet of Tyre, not quite identical with its elder Aramaic {14}sister, had some immediate influence in modifying the forms borrowed by the Boeotians from the Ionians. The older Greek alphabet has been already mentioned. It was found after a while to be both insufficient and more than sufficient. The Tsade (ts) and Koppa (q) were not needed in Greek, and were only retained formally as numerals. As most Greek organs could only give the same sound (s) to both the _simkha_ and the _shen_ (which they called _sigma_ and _san_), one of the two names was superfluous. So they kept the symbol for _shen_ as an _s_, but transferred to it the name of the _simkha_. The symbol of the latter they retained in its place, but sounded it as ks, and called it _Ksi_, a name which did not badly suit the original Semitic sound of the letter which was like _hs_ rather than _s_. The unaspirated _He_ they called _mere E_ (_E psilon_); to the aspirated Heta, they left its name, but regarded it as _aspirated E_. Its original Semitic value as an aspirate (adaptable to any vowel) was not wholly lost sight of, and this idea of its power survived the stage at which H had become nothing more than _ê_ or _ee_. The necessity of making aspirated letters led to the prefixing or over-writing of the _H_, at first in its full size, then (so as to avoid confusion with Eta) in small, then in half shape, thus |-. This custom produced its complement in the shape of -|, to mark the soft breathing; until in the eleventh century of our era, the two breathings were worn down into semicircular form, thus ( , ). Another rejected symbol was the _vau_, formed like the letter F and sounded like our V. It dropped out of usage, and they forgot its name, although it had been considerably used by the old poets, in connexion with whom it is usually named _digamma_, because of its resemblance to a double gamma, or one gamma superimposed on another. It was found necessary to have a character for _u_, and advantageous to use single symbols for double letters frequently occurring, such as _ph_, _kh_, _ps_ and _oo_ (long o). The old Eastern form of _vau_ supplied the _u_; in fact, having dropped the letter as a consonant out of its sixth place in {15}the alphabet, they put it in its vowel-character at the end. The symbol of the discarded _koppa_ was used for the _Ph_, which was not equivalent in sound to our _ph_, but must have resembled the German _pf_. The discarded _tsada_ (a trident) was used to represent, in some places _ps_, in others _kh_, but finally the symbol fell into two distinct forms, by being written upright as + ([psi]) and leaning sidewise as × ([chi]). By the time of Herodotus the Greek alphabet may be considered as having reached exactly its present form in capital letters. The cursive hand which must have existed at all times of Greek writing was simply a rapid deformation of the capitals, and consequently did not attain to any uniformly distinctive character till much later. The general use of minuscules in any such uniform type is always referred to the eighth century after Christ, but really there is no essential change of form between the cursive letters a hundred years before Christ and those of a thousand years after Christ. The chief difference is in the greater freedom and fluency of the late letters, an air of practised familiarity which is lacking in the earlier cursive.

_Writing in Italy from 700 to 100 B.C._

The Greeks and the Phoenicians had a similar aptitude for establishing colonies abroad to that which the English have shown during the past three centuries. Thus the coast line of the Mediterranean from Tripoli to Morocco, and from Sicily and Southern Italy to Spain and Gaul, was dotted with Punic and Greek settlements created for purely commercial purposes, but gaining an independent importance as time went on. The chief seat of Phoenician domination was at Carthage; of Greek nationality at Syracuse, Cumæ (near Naples), and Marseilles. The age at which those colonies acquired political greatness may be roughly set down as in the fourth century before Christ, but it is sufficient for our purpose to know that they had been founded considerably {16}earlier; and that the art of writing had been carried westward as far back at least as the seventh or eighth century B.C. It was virtually the one alphabet, applied by various races to their various languages, which was used at Carthage and Cadiz, at Marseilles and in Sicily and Italy, in the seventh century B.C. Italy was occupied by several distinct sets of people. The Umbrians, Latins, and Oscans occupied all the middle of the peninsula; the Pelasgic tribes who were in the heel and toe of the geographical boot were nearly Grecised; the Etruscans held Tuscany, and Celts occupied Lombardy. Mommsen thought that the Greek alphabet had reached the Italians more than 1300 years before Christ; but a more modest estimate will be safer. It was probably about seven hundred years B.C. when the Etrurians received their alphabet from the Greeks; and there is no reason for thinking, as Mommsen implies, that their first contact with Greek letters had been elsewhere than in Italy. The alphabet reached them no doubt from Cumæ, as it did the Latins, and there was sufficient variation in the practice of the Greek colonies in Italy to account for the differences which mark Etruscan, Umbrian, and Latin writing.

_Roman Writing._

The usual date of the founding of Rome is undoubtedly correct or nearly so. It was about the middle of the eighth century B.C., and the rapid enlargement of the new Latin town on the Tiber, produced by the influx of settlers into a trade emporium with waterway, must have led to an early use of writing. This indicates something like 700 B.C. for the period of the extension of that art over the whole of Italy. The custom of writing from right to left and left to right in alternate lines was retained for several centuries among the various Italic peoples, but the Latins seem to have been the first to adopt the Greek modification by which {17}the letters took their permanent shape from the left-right sequence. In several Greek towns, the old [GAMMA] was replaced by a C (the result of a cursive mode of writing), and the triangular [DELTA] had its second and third lines represented by a single curve. The [PI] was still a [Symbol: P not connected in the middle], and the P had a little stroke added to it ([Symbol: R with short tail]) for the sake of distinction. The Sigma was commonly written [Symbol: reverse tilted Z] instead of [Symbol: reverse 3] ([SIGMA]). The Latins omitted of course such letters as they found superfluous (_z_, _th_, _k_, _ph_, _ch_, _ps_, and _oo_), but were naturally bound to retain letters already becoming superfluous to the Greeks (F, Q). The third letter of the alphabet was used for both K and G; but later, when the need of some differentiation became felt, the useless Z was replaced by a second C to which a tail was added ([Symbol: C with diagonal tail]). The Eta (or Heta) was made to retain its earliest function as a strong breathing (H), although the Greeks were treating it as no more than EE. The Greek confusion between the symbols for _ks_, _ps_, and _ch_, affected the Latins so far that one of the three letters, _i.e._ X, was taken to represent the only sound of the three which their language needed, namely _ks_; and this being an afterthought, it was put at the end of the alphabet. Thus in the second century B.C. the Romans had their alphabet completely formed in the capital shapes, and with the phonetic values, which it thenceforward retained. The letters were A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, the F being sounded probably as our V and F, the V as our U and W. It was long afterwards that the F was restricted to the sound of English F, and V as a consonant took the sound of English V (instead of W.) The Q was a more guttural letter than the C originally, but afterwards lost its distinctiveness of utterance. When it became fashionable to learn and quote Greek, in the time of Cicero and after, the letters [KAPPA], [UPSILON], and [ZETA] were reinserted in the Latin alphabet for form's sake, as K, Y, Z. It was not till the sixteenth century that, in the northern countries of Europe, the letter J was evolved from the black letter form {18}of I ([Symbol: blackletter I]) and the letter V split into U and V. As for the W, it was needed only by Germanic people, and was consequently a late intruder into the modern Roman alphabet.

_Indian Writing about 300 B.C._

To return to the East, the first examples of native Indian writing appeared in the rock-inscribed decrees of Asoka, found in various places over the north of India, from the Indus to the Ganges, and even in the Dekkan; which can be dated between 250 and 230 B.C. The language is Prakrit or Pali, the characters (although at first sight they seem an independent script) were derived like so many others from the Semitic system, and the nearest of the parallel types is the alphabet of the Himyarite inscriptions. The Sabæan monarchy which ruled over Southern Arabia a thousand years B.C. had had large commercial relations with India, and it was probably from that source that the people of Bombay and the North-West acquired the art of writing, how long before Asoka it would be difficult to learn. Out of the simple forms of Asoka's alphabet all the modern scripts of Indian native writing descended, including the artificial and elaborate Nagari alphabet which is one of the latest of them.

_Writing in Central Asia from 300 B.C._

In the kingdom of Bactria, the coins of the kings who from about 150 B.C. followed the older Greek princes, bear inscriptions in Indian Prakrit, but not written in the same character as was used by Asoka. The two scripts differ so much in appearance not only from all others, but also between themselves, that one does not easily recognise the fact that they both must have been of Himyaritic origin. They are very different from the Pehlvi which was used by Parthian sovereigns in the second century after Christ, and by the Sassanide kings in the fourth. The {19}Pehlvi had been evolved from the later Aramean, and must have been in use in Persia before the time of Alexander; but the existing specimens are all subsequent to the beginning of the Christian era. And as for the script which is called Zend, and which is used for writing the Zoroastrian books of the most ancient Persian language, there is nothing to prove that it is not of much later invention than the Pehlvi.

_Oriental Letters after the beginning of the Christian Era_

_Samaria._--The writing of Palestine was probably identical originally with that of the Phoenicians, and the Samaritan script, which is still in use for biblical purposes, has retained to the present day a considerable resemblance with that of Tyre and Sidon. The expatriation and partial repatriation of the Jews and Israelites during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., had the effect of leaving only a small remnant in the north of the land who preserved their ancient writing. From that time to this some of the descendants of the Samarians have continued to write their Pentateuch (which for them is the whole of the Bible) in the ancient characters of the Hebrew language (a specimen is found on plate 4). All the rest of the Jews, in whatever part of the world they may have been, have retained the square character (with its various Rabbinical modifications) which they learned in Chaldæa in the seventh century B.C. But the Hebrew language never returned to the Holy Land. Hebrew, as spoken among the Samaritans, underwent the same Aramaisation as the language of the Judæans, and from three or four centuries B.C. down to the eighth century of our era, the language of all Syria was Syriac with local dialects, and Greek in the great cities. The usual character in which Syriac was written has already been mentioned, but the Samaritans wrote even their semi-Syriac speech in the old {20}characters of their Bible; and there is a really Samaritan Pentateuch--different from the Hebrew Pentateuch in Samaritan letters--which corresponds in Samaritan literature to the Chaldee Targums of the Jews. None of the Hebraeo-Aramaic dialects long survived in Syria the conquest of the Arabs. Syriac still lived on in Western Persia and in Mongolia, and in India for a time, but only survived as a dead liturgical language. Chaldæo-Hebraic made its way westwards to Morocco, Italy, Spain and Gaul. The faithful in Samaria, now nearly extinct, clung to their Pentateuch and their religion through all vicissitudes, and have never ceased to write the Bible in the Hebrew script of ancient Palestine.

_Arabia._--Arabian writing before the time of Mohammad is only known to us under the name of Haurani and Nabathæan in the North, of Himyaritic in the South. None of these scripts resembles the Islamic characters called distinctively Arabic. The Gospel-script (Estrangelo) of the Syrians is the nearest of all the Aramaic hands to that used by the earliest Mohammadans, which (from its special cultivation in the town of Cufa) is called Cufic. But even here, the resemblance is not so close as to make it improbable that there was a link between them in some lost script of pre-Christian days. The Cufic writing which prevailed for three centuries as the mode of writing the Koran cannot strictly be shown to be the mother of the Naskhi which replaced it and has flourished for a thousand years. It is clearly older than the Naskhi in its forms, but the Naskhi has been proved to have existed contemporaneously with the Cufic almost from the beginning of Mohammadanism. After the third century of the Hijra, the Cufic was only retained for ornamentation and head-lines. By that time the Arab conquests had created a vast Mohammadan empire; the Syrians, the Persians, and the Egyptians were obliged to give up their old scripts, and to accept that of their conquerors. Arabic writing occupied not only all {21}the seats in which Phoenician letters had been used fifteen centuries before, but even a far larger area. The writing and the language were used and known from Seville to the frontiers of India. Soon after, India likewise fell a prey; and Arabic letters have been used there ever since by the Mohammadan population. The elegant script called Talik, which was peculiar to the Persians (but has been borrowed in India), was developed in the fourteenth century. It differs little, except in gracefulness, from the typical Naskhi.

_India and the further East._--The characters in which the Pracrit inscriptions of Northern India were engraved on stone, in the third century B.C., descended, with considerable modifications of form, to the various tribes of Hindus who developed the modern languages of India, now called Hindi, Gujarati, Mahratti, Panjabi, Bengali. All these languages are akin, their differences being produced by segregation and by local contact with aboriginal or foreign populations. Their character two thousand years ago (before local diversities were perpetuated in names) is described by the term Prakrit (=Natural) as distinguished from the title given to another form of the language, namely Sanskrit (=Artificial) which is believed to represent a far more ancient stage of Indian speech. In this artificial language the earliest traditions and literature of the Hindo-Aryan race are preserved, but it is supposed to have died out of speech (if ever it was spoken) several centuries before the Christian era. However that may be, we have no monument or record to show that it was written till the tenth century after Christ, and the Sanscrit alphabet is undeniably not more than eight or nine centuries old, having been artificially elaborated from the much simpler script of Asoka's time.

The graphic systems of Southern India, Ceylon, Thibet, Burma, and Siam were all derived from the script of Aryan India after Budhism had begun to spread.

{22}In North-Eastern Asia, the Mongolian script (and out of it, the Manchurian) were formed from the writing of the Nestorian Christians who carried their Syriac books to the frontiers of China.

_Spain and Gaul under the Romans_

It has been already said that Punic settlements were made in Spain probably as far back as the seventh century B.C. To the Phoenicians or Carthaginians we may ascribe the introduction of letters and their application to coins and inscriptions, not only in the Punic language of the men who held Cadiz, Carthagena, and Barcelona, but also in the Iberian and Celtiberian language of native princes. Strabo says that the Turdetani (of the present Andalusia) boasted the possession of historical and poetical books of immense age in their own language; but when he was writing, about the time of the birth of Christ, they were all Romanised and unable to speak any other tongue than Latin. There exists, however, a great quantity of coins struck in Spain between 400 B.C. and the time of Augustus. There are three varieties (omitting those of Greek colonies in Aragon), namely, those in Punic language and Punic letters, those with Iberian names in Punic letters, and those with Celtiberian names in modified Punic letters. The later Iberian and Celtiberian have sometimes Latin inscriptions added to the native ones. In the first century after Christ, the whole of Spain was virtually Romanised. The Transalpine Gauls retained their own speech longer than the Spaniards did theirs, because the conquest was later; but the people of Cisalpine Gaul were Romanised even earlier than the Spaniards. The independence of Marseilles as a Greek republic came to an end in the first century of the Roman empire, and the Greek language probably died out in a few generations. Then, no doubt, Roman letters took the place of the Greek, which, as Cæsar said, were used by the Gauls in his time. Henceforward, till the fifth century, Spain and {23}Gaul were simply outlying provinces of the empire, without anything in literature or calligraphy to distinguish their people from the Romanised Italians. It was not till the sixth century, when the Gothic kingdom had become a stable institution, that anything like a local fashion of calligraphy began to develop itself in Spain. Gaul was similarly affected by the influx first of the Visigoths, then of the Franks.

_Influence of the Bible upon writing_

The events which led to the compilation of the Gospels were of the greatest moment in the history of writing. The educational influence of the Bible--apart entirely from its claims to supernatural importance--in spreading the use of letters and creating schools for the study of reading and writing, has been incalculable. The historical and religious traditions of the Jews would probably have had but little effect upon the world, if the result of the various wars by which Syria was so often desolated had not been to expatriate the chosen people of the Lord. A large Jewish population occupied Northern Egypt at the time when Alexander's conquests revolutionised the old world. The establishment of Greek dynasties in that country and in Syria speedily Hellenised the upper classes and the citizens in both; and the linguistic subjugation of the Jews in Egypt was even more complete than that of their old masters. Their peculiar condition facilitated a change; for while they possessed the sacred book of the Law of their forefathers in a language that had been dead for centuries, they had only translations in the language of the country of their former exile (Chaldæa); and though they had the commercial qualification of bilingualism, their Chaldee and their Egyptian were probably equally weak. Two generations were enough to Hellenise them, and seventy years after Alexander's death, the Bible was introduced to the knowledge of the Greek world in an edition destined to render the old Hebrew {24}scripture intelligible to Egyptian and Syrian Jews. This fortunate circumstance drew a number of people into the Elohistic fold who would never otherwise have been found there; and had no small influence in bringing about the social and moral revolution which signalised the beginning of our era.