resemblance is confined to three or four.  Secondly, no theory of derivation accounts for the Phoenician names of their letters, which designate objects quite different from those represented by the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and equally different from those represented by the Hittite letters.  For instance, the Egyptian a is the ill-drawn figure of an eagle, the Phoenician alef has the signification of “ox;” the b of the Egyptians is a hastily drawn figure of a crane, the Phoenician beth means “a house.”

On the whole, it seems most probable that the Phoenicians began with their own hieroglyphical system, selecting an object to represent the initial sound of its name, and at first drawing that object, but that they very soon followed the Egyptian idea of representing the original drawing in a conventional way, by a few lines, straight or curved.  Their hieroglyphic alphabet which is extant is an alphabet in the second stage, corresponding to the Egyptian hieratic, but not derived from it.  Having originally represented their alef by an ox’s head, they found a way of sufficiently indicating the head by three lines {...}, which marked the horns, the ears, and the face.  Their beth was a house in the tent form; their gimel a camel, represented by its head and neck; their daleth a door, and so on.  The object intended is not always positively known; but, where it is known, there is no difficulty in tracing the original picture in the later conventional sign.

The Phoenician alphabet was not without its defects.  The most remarkable of these was the absence of any characters expressive of vowel sounds.  The Phoenician letters are, all of them, consonants; and the reader is expected to supply the vowel sounds for himself.  There was not even any system of pointing, so far as we know, whereby, as in Hebrew and Arabic, the proper sounds were supplied.  Again, several letters were made to serve for two sounds, as beth for both b and v, pe for both p and f, shin for both s and sh, and tau for both t and th.  There were no forms corresponding to the sounds j or w.  On the other hand, there was in the alphabet a certain amount of redundancy. Tsade is superfluous, since it represents, not a simple elemental sound, but a combination of two sounds, t and s.  Hence the Greeks omitted it, as did also the Oscans and the Romans.  There is redundancy in the two forms for k, namely kaph and koph; in the two for t, namely teth and tau; and in the two for s, namely samech and shin.  But no alphabet is without some imperfections, either in the way of excess or defect; and perhaps we ought to be more surprised that the Phoenician alphabet has not more faults than that it falls so far short of perfection as it does.