The Origin and Varieties of the Semitic Alphabet

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Excerpt from The Origin and Varieties of the Semitic Alphabet: With SpecimensMany of these pictures, which are called hieroglyphics, are mere outline figures. As the number of writers increased, the demand for haste, the lack of skill, the use of papyrus, or waxed or powdered tablets and the pen and stylus, produced out of the hieroglyphs a set of broken and distorted outline forms, which con stituted a new and now arbitrary alphabet. In the time of the Shepherd kings, this kind of writing, which is called hieratic, had lost much of its resemblance to the hieroglyphs out of which it was formed. Such an alphabet was adopted by some Semitic people, and by them imparted to the various tribes of Syria. Of this alphabet, in the first thousand years of its use, we have no specimen, and no one can tell what changes it may have undergone in that period. When this is con sidered, it is remarkable that the likeness of the Semitic alphabet to Egyptian prototypes is very distinct.It was probably not a' copy of any one style or type of the hieratic alphabet, for instance like that of the papyrus Prisse, but was made in part of familiar hier atic forms, and in part of forms in hieratic style containing the main features of several hieroglyphs which represented the same sound. It was thus partly a ser vile imitation, but may have embraced a few new arbitrary elements.But the, descent of the Semitic alphabet from the Egyptian cannot be Correctly traced without taking into account many considerations.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.