of a short and commodious script, without the encumbrance of ideograms, determinatives, polyphony and syllabic sounds, such as had fettered the Egyptian and Chaldaean scribes, in spite of their cleverness in dealing with them.  Phonetic articulations were ultimately resolved into twenty-two sounds, to each of which a special sign was attached, which collectively took the place of the hundreds or thousands of signs formerly required.

* The inscription on the bronze cup dedicated to the Baal of the Lebanon, goes back probably to the time of Hiram I., say the Xth century before our era; the reasons advanced by Winckler for dating it in the time of Hiram II. have not been fully accepted up to the present.  By placing the introduction of the alphabet somewhere between Amenothes IV. in the XVth and Hiram I. in the Xth century before our era, and by taking the middle date between them, say the accession of the XXIs’dynasty towards the year 1100 B.C. for its invention or adoption, we cannot go far wrong one way or the other.

[Illustration:  106.jpg ONE OF THE MOST ANCIENT PHOENICIAN INSCRIPTIONS]

     Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure.  This is the cup
     of the Baal of the Lebanon.

This was an alphabet, the first in point of time, but so ingenious and so pliable that the majority of ancient and modern nations have found it able to supply all their needs—­Greeks and Europeans of the western Mediterranean on the one hand, and Semites of all kinds, Persians and Hindus on the other.

[Illustration:  107.jpg Table of Alphabets]

It must have originated between the end of the XVIIIth and the beginning of the XXIst dynasties, and the existence of Pharaonic rule in Phoenicia during this period has led more than one modern scholar to assume that it developed under Egyptian influence.*

* The hypothesis of an Egyptian origin, suggested casually by Champollion, has been ably dealt with by E. de Rouge.  E. de Rouge derives the alphabet from the Hieratic, and his identifications have been accepted by Lauth, by Brugsch, by P. Lenormant, and by Isaac Taylor.  Halevy would take it from the Egyptian hieroglyphics directly without the intervention of the Hieratic.  The Egyptian origin, strongly contested of late, has been accepted by the majority of scholars.

Some affirm that it is traceable directly to the hieroglyphs, while others seek for some intermediary in the shape of a cursive script, and find this in the Hieratic writing, which contains, they maintain, prototypes of all the Phoenician letters.  Tables have been drawn up, showing at a glance the resemblances and differences which appear respectively to justify or condemn their hypothesis.  Perhaps the analogies would be more evident and more numerous if we were in possession of inscriptions going back nearer to the date of origin.  As it is, the divergencies are sufficiently striking to lead some scholars to