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This is (in chronological sequence) the place at which mention should be made of the Greek myth that alphabetical letters were introduced into Bœotia by Cadmus the Phœnician. It has always been accepted as substantially true, even by those who knew that Cadmus in Semitic speech meant simply The Ancient, or The Eastern; and has usually been assigned to about 1500 B.C. The story requires some modification, and the date is probably a good deal out of reckoning. Here it is only referred to as showing the early use of letters by the Phœnicians. There are really no extant monuments to prove the anteriority of the Semite alphabet to that of the Greeks, but there can be no question as to the fact. The names of the Greek letters are manifestly borrowed from a Semitic speech, and the Cadmus story is in itself a sufficient acknowledgment of the secondary position of the Hellenes. It is generally held that the Phœnicians derived their alphabet by means of a selection from the phonetic symbols of the Egyptian hieratic script. Whether the process was due to the Phœnicians themselves, is not so clearly asserted. Mr. Maunde Thompson, following Lenormant and the Vicomte de Rougé, seems to consider that it gradually took place in Egypt after the Arabs had conquered the country, and when the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings had established their dynasty (2000 B.C.). During the five hundred years of their rule there must have been a large Semitic immigration, and it is not unlikely that the Semitic alphabet was then derived from the Egyptian for the use of the Syrians and Arabs who dwelt in Lower Egypt. There is, on the other hand, a modern theory that the Semitic alphabet was not evolved in this way, but from the hieratic Babylonian writing. It is true that similarities may be found between them, and it is also demonstrable that the Greek names of the alphabet were drawn from the speech, not of Phœnicia or Palestine, but of Aram or Semitic Chaldæa. Nothing is certain as to the origin of the Semitic alphabet, notwithstanding the elaborate comparative tables produced by Rougé and others, beyond the fact that several letters resemble Egyptian (and Chaldæo-Assyrian) symbols having sometimes the same phonetic value. The names given to their characters by the Semites are undoubtedly descriptive of their apparent iconism, and the initial sound of each name is the power of the letter. This, on the face of it, would imply that the Aramaic alphabet was an original invention. The Greeks who first received it, must have been those of Asia Minor, not those of Hellas; and the first transmitters were neither Arabs, nor Jews, nor Phœnicians, but Babylonian Aramæans in contact with Cilicia and Cappadocia. The names of the letters, as sounded by the Syrians of Palestine (Phœnicians, Israelites, Jews), were: Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, He, Vau, Zain (Zai), Hheth (Kheth), Teth, Yod, Caph, Lamed, Mem (maim=waters), Nun, Samekh, Ain (Oin), Pe, Tsade, Koph, Resh (=head), Shin, Tau.

We have no actual knowledge of the Chaldæo-Aramaic sounds of these names, but we know that the Eastern Syrians would probably have written them thus:—

Alpha, Beta, Gamla, Dalta, He, Vau, Zaita, Hheta, Teta, Yoda, Kappa, Lamda, Mu (=water), Nun (Nu), Samkha (Simkha=Sigma), Oin (Oi?), Pe, Tsada, Koppa, Rash (Ro?=face), Shen, Tau.

Leaving aside for the present any consideration of the changes and additions in the Greek alphabet, we may assume that it passed from Babylonia through Cilicia to the Phrygians and Lydians; and that, whatever intercourse may have taken place between the European Greeks and the Phœnicians then or afterwards, the Ionians of Asia Minor had already formulated the Hellenic alphabet before it reached the Thebans. As it seems to be nearly certain that the Phrygians possessed it in the tenth century before Christ, the Aramæans must have had it much earlier, and we may credit them with the use of writing as far back as 1300–1200 B.C. It is very unlikely that the Western Syrians were far behind, but the oldest monuments extant go no higher than the tenth century, and are probably surpassed in antiquity by some of the Sabæan (Himyarite or Homerite) inscriptions of Southern Arabia. The Himyari alphabet, which is the direct ancestor of the modern Abyssinian, introduces some novel forms, and has less resemblance to the Aramaic original than any of the others. Most of the letters are, however, ultimately traceable to the Aramaic, although the date must have been remote, to judge from the large divergences in shape which had had time to develop themselves before the type was fixed.

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, 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.