Since writing the above, I find in the “Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society” for December, 1880, p. 154, an interesting article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian.  I quote: 

It is astonishing to notice that while Landa’s first B is, according to Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the human leg.

“Still more surprising is it that the H of Landa’s alphabet is a tie of cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord. . . .  But the most striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line representing Landa’s U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely like Landa’s alphabet U in Central America?  There is one other remarkable coincidence between Landa’s and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way, the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it.  Landa’s D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed Mexican symbol for a day or sun.  So far as sound is concerned, the English day represents it; so far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian ‘cake,’ ideograph for (1) country and (2) the sun’s orbit is essentially the same.”

It would appear as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another.  They followed out different characteristics in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b.  And yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs—­in the c, h, t, i, k, m, n, o, q, and s—­eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle!  If we add to the above the b and u, referred to in the “Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,” we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other.  Can any theory of accidental coincidences account for all this?  And it must be remembered that these resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet in the world.

Let us suppose that two men agree that each shall construct apart from the other a phonetic alphabet of sixteen letters; that they shall employ only simple forms—­combinations of straight or curved lines—­and that their signs shall not in anywise resemble the letters now in use.  They go to work apart; they have a multitudinous array of forms to draw from the thousand possible combinations of lines, angles, circles, and curves; when they have finished, they bring their alphabets together for