CHAPTER X

TABLE IIITable2

TABLE III

While, as remarked above, the hieroglyph-bearing stones are found only in Crete, examples of the linear character have been found at Mycenæ, Nauplia, and other prehistoric sites in Greece and Egypt. Moreover, as already noted, some of the signs have marked affinities with Cypriote, Hittite, and Semitic.

Among the antiquities which make the Fayum so renowned a district are the remains of two cities; Kahun, which dates from the twelfth dynasty,i.e.2500b.c., and Gurob, which is some twelve centuries later, both sites yielding evidence of Asian and Ægean settlers. When digging there ten years ago Professor Flinders Petrie discovered fragments of Mycenæan, or, as he calls it, Ægean, pottery inscribed with characters resembling, and in some cases identical with, those found in Greece. Both the Professor and Mr. Evans agree that the relics unearthed at Kahun are as old as that city; while, speaking of the signs known to be in use 1200b.c., in a place occupied by people of the Ægean and Asia Minor, Turseni, Akhaians, Hittites, and others, Professor Flinders Petrie remarks that "it will require a very certain proof of the supposed Arabian source of the Phœnician alphabet before we can venture to deny that we have here the origin of the Mediterranean alphabets." (Ten Years' Digging in Egypt, p. 134.) Conversely, scarabs of the twelfth dynasty have been found in Crete, notable among these being one in steatite with a spiral ornament peculiar to that period.

Passing to excavations in the huge mound of Tell-el-Hesy, in Palestine, made up of the ruins of eleven different cities heaped up one above another, we have the discovery, amongst remains of the fourth city, dating about 1450b.c., of potsherds inscribed with signs similar to the Ægean.

While about twenty per cent. of the Cretan hieroglyphs approachthose of the Egyptian in character, twenty out of the thirty-two linear signs there are practically identical with those found in Egypt. Mr. Evans adds that "the parallelism with Cypriote forms is also remarkable, some fifteen agreeing with letters of the Cypriote syllabary."

EGYPTIAN SCARABS, XIITH DYNASTYEARLY CRETAN SEAL-STONESFig. 65.Fig. 65.—Signs on Potsherds at Tell-el-Hesy compared with Ægean Forms

EGYPTIAN SCARABS, XIITH DYNASTY

EARLY CRETAN SEAL-STONES

Fig. 65.

Fig. 65.—Signs on Potsherds at Tell-el-Hesy compared with Ægean Forms

This syllabary, as its name implies, is found in theisland of Cyprus,which, lying only sixty miles from Asia Minor, might be expected to yield many traces of active intercourse therewith from prehistoric times. The affinity of its ancient script with those of Western Asia, which may be looked upon as settled, had, therefore, much to commend it at the outset of the inquiry. It stands in nearest relation, possibly as its direct descendant, to the syllabary of the Hittites. References to these people come apace nowadays, and their history has been padded out in portly volumes, but, in truth, we know no more about them than we do about the Phœnicians and Phrygians, which means that we know very little indeed. Through the mists of the past, with the help of such light as is thrown by tablets from Tell-el-Amarna, sculptures from Karnak, and by Hebrew and other records, we have glimpses of a great and powerful empire which stretched from the Euphrates to the Euxine,pushing its borders to the confines of Egypt, against which, on the one hand, and Assyria on the other, it waged war for a thousand years. In 1270b.c.Rameses III. had to face the onrush of the Hittites and other confederated peoples, whom he defeated at Migdol. They "had overrun Syria. The islands and shores of the Mediterranean gave forth their piratical hordes; the sea was covered with their light galleys, and swept by their strong oars." (Rawlinson'sHistory of Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 271.) According to Dr. Wright, the Hittites appear in history for the first time "in the inscription of Sargon I., King of Agané, about 1900b.c., and disappear from history in the inscriptions of Sargon 717b.c." (Empire of the Hittites, p. 122.) Until some thirty years ago no monumental remains had come to light concerning an empire whose high place among ancient nations is attested by the discovery of a treaty (the oldest known example of its kind) with Egypt, in which each recognised the other as a power equal in rank to itself, and agreed to help it in case of need. The first Hittite relic, a block of basalt engraved with strange hieroglyphic signs, was found by the traveller Burckhardt in 1812 at Hamah, on the Orontes, but he could not decipher the characters, and the matter was forgotten till 1870, when the stone was rediscovered, and similar relics brought to light. But to this day the key of interpretation is lacking, and scholars await the unearthing of some bilingual monument which shall do for the Hittite hieroglyphs what the Rosetta Stonedid for the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Behistun rock for cuneiform writing. Till this, and more, is effected, we remain in the realm of conjecture about the mighty nation whose beardless soldiers are depicted with daggers in their belts and double-headed axes in their hands on the sculptures of the Nile Valley. Minimising, however, our knowledge of the Hittites to the uttermost, their widely distributed relics evidence their proficiency in certain departments of the arts. They smelted silver and wrought in bronze, they were skilful lapidaries and carvers in ivory, and "the independent system of picture-writing which they possessed offers an obvious source from which the Asianic syllabary might have been obtained." In the Hamah inscriptions the characters are raised, and run in parallel transverse lines.

Fig. 67.—Hittite Inscription at Hamah.

"The lines of inscriptions and their boundaries are clearly defined by raised bars about four inches apart. The interstices between the bars and characters have been cut away." The inscriptions are read from right to left andvice versâin "boustrophedon" style (bous, "anox," andstrephō, "to turn," therefore, as an ox ploughs), as in ancient Greek modes of writing.

Returning to Crete, we have to consider its relation to the Mycenæan type of civilisation, under which term is included civilisation in pre-Homeric Greece and the Ægean Sea, crossing thence to Hissarlik, the ancient Troy. The spade has made havoc with some of our standard "authorities." Grote refers to the city of Mycenæ only once in his well-known work, and then incidentally speaks of it as the seat of a legendary dynasty. Sir George Cox, in hisMythology of the Aryan Nations, endorses Professor Max Müller's theory (to which, in part, the veteran philologist still adheres), that the siege of Troy "is a reflection of the daily siege of the East by the solar powers that every evening are robbed of their brightest treasures in the West," and adds that this theory is "supported by a mass of evidence which probably hereafter will be thought ludicrously excessive in amount." The laugh is on the other side now. Schliemann and his successors have broken into the areas within Cyclopean walls whose massive blocks aroused wonder long ages back, giving birth to tales of giant hands that reared them. They have disinterred relics proving an historic element in old traditions, and a nucleus of fact beneath the encrustation of fable over famous names. Like the Empress Helena, who, in searching for the True Cross, of course found that for which she looked, Schliemann too readily assumed that he had discovered the bones of Agamemnon, and the cup from which Nestor drank. But he brought tolight the relics of a culture, knowledge of which involves neither more nor less than the re-writing of the history of man in the Eastern Mediterranean, and, by consequence, in Western Europe.

Fig. 68.—Signs on Vase-handle (Mycenæ)Fig. 69.—Signs on Amphora-handle (Mycenæ)

Fig. 68.—Signs on Vase-handle (Mycenæ)

Fig. 69.—Signs on Amphora-handle (Mycenæ)

Dealing, as the limits of the subject compel, only with the traces of inscriptions on remains from Mycenæ itself, the earliest to be noted is a stone pestle with one incised character which resembles a Cypriote sign. But one sign does not make an alphabet, and hence the satisfaction at the recent discovery of the handle of a stone vase, apparently of a local material, which has four or five signs engraved upon it, and of the handle of a clay amphora from a chambered tomb in the lower town of Mycenæ with three characters, while a tomb at Prousia, near Nauplia, yielded a genuine Mycenæan vessel with three ears, on each of which is graven a sign resembling the Greek H. These may not suffice to demonstrate the existence of a pre-Phœnician systemof writing in Greece, but, taken in conjunction with the numerous discoveries of inscribed signs in Crete, they go far in support of it. What, then, are the facts as thus far, ascertained?

There have been discovered in Crete a number of objects bearing two sorts of writing, one hieroglyphic or pictographic; the other linear and approaching the alphabetic. The pictographic is the older of the two, dating from the earlier part of the third millennium before Christ. It was probably derived from a primitive picture-writing by the non-Hellenic inhabitants of the island, who were called Eteocretans, or "true Cretans," by the Dorians, whose invasion dates, according to the traditional Greek chronology, from about the middle of the twelfth centuryb.c.These "true Cretans" may not, however, be the aboriginal inhabitants, although as to this, and as to their language, we are in ignorance. The recent discovery of an inscription in an unknown language, written in archaic Greek characters, among the ruins of Præsos, the chief Eteocretan settlement, warrants the inference that the old script of the language had been abandoned for the Greek alphabet. That script, the use of which never passed outside the island, obviously had no influence on Mycenæan civilisation.

The linear system is syllabic; perhaps, in some degree, alphabetic. Its possible derivation from the hieroglyphic has been indicated, but although it is a conventionalised form of pictograph, Dr. Tsountas ispositive in denying its connection with the Eteocretan. He suggests that its simplification took place in the East, and among a people or peoples not Greek. Thence it was carried into Greek lands, spreading more in the islands, at least in Crete, than in the Peloponnesus or other portions of the mainland, where, as shown above, the number of inscribed objects is exceedingly small. The question is far from ripe for solution, but Professor Flinders Petrie, with whom lies a large share of honour in contributing towards a settlement, courteously permits me to quote the following from a letter on the subject, dated 2nd September 1899: "A great signary (not hieroglyphic, but geometric in appearance, if not in origin) was in use all over the Mediterranean 5000b.c.It is actually found in Egypt at that period, and was split in two, Western and Eastern, by the cross flux of hieroglyphic systems in Egypt and among the Hittites. This linear signary was developed variously, but retained much in common in different countries. It was first systematised by the numerical values assigned to it by Phœnician traders, who carried it into Greece, whereby the Greek signary was delimited into an alphabet. But the fuller form of the signary survived in Karia with thirty-six signs, and seven more in Iberia, thus giving values to forty-three. This connection of the Iberian with the Karian is striking; so is that of the Egyptian with the West rather than with the East. Signs found in Egypt have thirteen in common with the early Arabian,fifteen in common with Phœnician, and thirty-three in common with Karian and Kelt-Iberian. This stamps the Egyptian signary of the twelfth and eighteenth dynasties as closely linked with the other Mediterranean systems." In an important paper read at the meeting of the British Association, 1899, Professor Flinders Petrie remarks: "We stand therefore now in an entirely new position as to the sources of the alphabet, and we see them to be about thrice as old as had been supposed. That the signs were used for written communications of spelled-out words in the early stages, or as an alphabet, is far from probable. It was a body of signs, with more or less generally understood meanings; and the change of attributing a single letter value to each, and only using signs for sounds to be built into words, is apparently a relatively late outcome of the systematising due to Phœnician commerce." (Jo. Anthrop. Inst., Aug.-Nov., 1899, p. 205.)

Connecting the results of explorations in Asia Minor, Egypt, Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes, Thera, Melos, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean with those in the Peloponnesus, the existence of a pre-Phœnician civilisation, of which Mycenæ may be conveniently regarded as the centre, appears to be demonstrated.

That civilisation, so far as its connection with the prehistoric stages of man's development goes, falls in, like aught else in this wide and ancient world, with the doctrine of continuity, but for purposes oftime-reckoning dates at latest far back in the third millennium before our era. Mycenæan vases have been found in Egypt, and Egyptian scarabs in Mycenæan deposits. They prove an intimate intercourse between the two countries two thousand five hundred years before Christ. And there was intercourse farther afield. The imitations of Babylonian cylinders, the sculptured palms and lions, the figures of Astarte and her doves, show that fifteen hundred years before the date ascribed to the Homeric poems Assyria and Greece had come into contact. But the examples of Oriental art which had found their way to the soil of Argolis remained more or less exotic, the independent features of Mycenæan art being retained unaltered. Now the cumulative effect of this evidence, which is only baldly summarised here, is to shatter to pieces current theories as to the Phœnician origin of European civilisation, and, consequently, what mainly concerns us here, of the Phœnician origin of the European alphabets through the Egyptian hieratic. For that evidence shows that the Mycenæan civilisation is (1) earlier in time, and (2) indigenous in character.

(1) The evidence as to priority can be summarily stated. Civilisation in the Ægean and on the Greek mainland dates from beyond 3000,b.c., and reached its meridian between the sixteenth and the twelfth centuries of that era. Almost all that we know about the Phœnicians is at second-hand, since, if they ever had a literature or native chronicles, these have not survived. Piecing together classical traditionand references in Egyptian and Hebrew records, we gather that for some three centuries onwards from 1600b.c.Phœnicia was a dependency of the Pharaohs. There was a Tyrian quarter at Memphis 1250b.c.Hiram appears to have refounded Tyre 1028b.c., from which time its commercial importance dates; while the refounding of its future great rival Carthage is assigned to the early years of the eighth centuryb.c.The decay of the Mycenæan civilisation, which followed as one of the many results of the Dorian invasion in the twelfth centuryb.c., gave the Phœnicians their chance. They overran the Ægean, and remained the dominant power in the Mediterranean until the Greeks, reviving their ancient traditions, expelled the Phœnicians from their waters, and broke their supremacy when Tyre was sacked by Alexander the Great, 332b.c.Between their rise and fall, their commercial pre-eminence enabled them to impose upon the Greeks the alphabet which was the vehicle of preservation of the intellectual wealth of the Hellenes, and of all literature that followed theirs. What were the probable sources of that alphabet will be considered presently.

(2) After allowing full play for Asian and Egyptian influences, the fact abides that there was a well-developed native Mycenæan art. The decoration of the pottery is non-Oriental and non-Egyptian; the seaweeds and marine creatures depicted are home-products of the island world of Greece; and where sacred trees and pillars appear, we have no Semitic element, but the outcome, as Mr. Evans puts it,of a "religious stage widely represented on primitive European soil, and nowhere more persistent than in the West." But if there were stepping-stones between Argolis and Syria in the islands that lay between, there was continuous passage on the western side, making Mycenæ a link between East and West. The breaks formerly assumed between the Old and the New Stone Ages of prehistoric Europe have been filled up by the accumulation of evidence as to man's continuous tenure of that continent since his primitive ancestors crossed thither by now vanished land-routes from Northern Africa. In like manner theMirage Orientale, as M. Salomon Reinach happily terms it, of a metal-introducing people from the East, who, in successive racial waves, swept the older settlers before them into the remotest corners of the north-west, has vanished. When once peopled, Europe, like Asia and America, ran on independent lines of development, which, however, were not isolated from connecting lines approaching from the East. The striking facts of the use of common trade-signs along both shores of the Mediterranean, and of the existence of remains of Mycenæan monuments in Sardinia, are in keeping with other facts, showing how close was the contact between one part of Europe and another centuries before the Phœnicians had left the shores of the Persian Gulf for the Syrian seaboard. They prepare us for acceptance of the new theory of "an Ægean culture rising in the midst of a vast province extendingfrom Switzerland and Northern Italy through the Danubian basin and the Balkan peninsula, and continued through a large part of Anatolia, till it finally reaches Cyprus." (Evans, Address Brit. Assoc.;Nature, 1st Oct. 1896, p. 529.) They prepare us for the fact that in the Bronze Age, if Scandinavia and its borderlands were the source of amber, the supply of gold for Northern and Central Europe was drawn not from the Ural, but from Ireland.

The centre whence this "Ægean" culture is held to have been diffused is denoted by its name. That name, however, covers the Eastern Mediterranean region, and the question arises whether or not some precise place in that area can be indicated as the cradleland. "Hellas," says Herodotus, "was formerly called Pelasgix" (ii. 56), and this pre-Hellenic Greece was inhabited by Barbarians or Pelasgians, as they are, with equal vagueness, called. There were "Pelasgians" on the mainland and the islands; "the whole of Peloponnesus took the name of Pelasgia; the kings of Tiryns were Pelasgians, and Æschylus calls Argos a Pelasgian city; Pausanias (viii. 4, 6) says that the Arcadians spoke of Pelasgus as the first man who lived in that country, wherefore, in his reign, it was called Pelasgia; an old wall at Athens was attributed to the Pelasgians, and the people of Attica had from all time been so called. Lesbos also was called Pelasgia, and Homer knew of Pelasgians in the Troad. Their settlements are further traced to Egypt, to Rhodes, Cyprus, Epirus—where Dodona was their ancient shrine—and, lastly,to various parts of Italy." (Keane'sMan Past and Present, p. 505.) Herodotus has little to say in favour of the Barbarians (which he uses as a descriptive and not a contemptuous term, the name being given by Greeks to all foreigners whose language was not Greek); he speaks of them as rude, of uncouth speech, and worshippers of repellent deities. Wachsmuth, in hisHistorical Antiquities of the Greeks, published over sixty years ago, says that "numerous traditionary accounts, of undoubted authenticity, describe them as a brave, moral, and honourable people, which was less a distinct stock and tribe than a race united by a resemblance in manners and the forms of life." Professor Keane fitly calls these "remarkable words," in view of the recent discoveries in prehistoric Greece, which warrant us in ascribing to the Pelasgians the development of culture in the Ægean Sea. But in what island, or on what part of the mainland? The important character of the finds at Mycenæ directs quest thither at the start. The débris of that city, and of her elder-sister city, Tiryns, have yielded varied relics of an ancient culture, from gold-masked skeletons in vaulted tombs to gorgeously decorated palaces and Cyclopean ruins of walls and fortresses. But there are traditions that these Argolic cities are of later date than Homer's "great city of Knossos" in Crete, wherein "Minos, when he was nine years old, began to rule, he who held converse with the great Zeus, and was the father of my father, even of Deucalion, high ofheart," traditions pointing to the existence of an important Cretan kingdom which flourished before Agamemnon ruled in Mycenæ.

Water is the birthplace of civilisation, as of life itself, and the original home of the Ægean or Mycenæan civilisation is probably to be found in the island of Crete. It is crammed with remains of pre-Hellenic culture. It is a big stepping-stone from Greece to Asia Minor, Karpathos and Rhodes lying between. It is in the line of communication with Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt on the East, and with Sicily and the coastlines of the Western Mediterranean. The earliest Greek tradition looks back to Crete "as the home of divinely inspired legislation and the first centre of maritime dominion." And, what is of the highest moment to remember, so far as the origin of the art of navigation in Ægean waters goes, there can be no question between the old claims on behalf of the Phœnicians and the present claims on behalf of Crete. The Syrian seaboard is harbourless and unsheltered; the men who first braved the "unvintaged wine dark" waters (how fine are all the Homeric sea-words) were island-dwellers, shooting forth from snug creek and harbour on quick and sudden enterprise, and growing bolder and bolder as they sailed by the rising and setting of the stars and the recurring moon. "The early sea-trade of the inhabitants of the island world of the Ægean gave them a start over their neighbours, and produced a higher form of culture, which was destined to reacton that of a vast European zone, nay, even upon that of the older civilisations of Egypt and Asia." (Evans, Address, B. Assoc., p. 530.) For the diffusion of culture throughout the Ægean was followed by expeditions to the East. While Cyprus yielded the metal to which it has given its name, the gold of Asia Minor was poured into the lap of the pre-Hellenes, and moulded into forms of beauty through which their own artistic skill challenged comparison with that of the Oriental. In his comment on the source of the Mycenæan civilisation Mr. Frazer aptly remarks that "the existence at this early date of a great maritime power in Crete, which by its central position between Greece and the empires of the East was well fitted to receive and amalgamate the characteristics of both, is just what is needed to explain the rise and wide diffusion of a type of civilisation like the Mycenæan, in which Oriental influences seem to be assimilated and transmuted by a vigorous and independent nationality endowed with a keen sense of its own for art. The spade will probably one day decide the question of priority between Argolis and Crete, but in the meantime the probability appears to be that the Mycenæan civilisation rose in Crete and spread from it as a centre, and that it was not until the Cretan power was on the wane that the palmy days of Tiryns and Mycenæ began." (Commentaryon Pausanias, vol. iii. p. 151.) The Mycenæan civilisation perished in a great catastrophe. Somewhere near the middle of the twelfth centuryb.c.the Dorian invaders in their southward march reached the walls of Tiryns and Mycenæ, and sacked and gave those cities to the flames. Then began for Greece "the long dark ages, the mediæval epoch, out of which she emerges only in the Homeric Renaissance." The flower of the survivors of that dread time sought a new home east of the Ægean on the isles and shores of Ionia. There these exiles from Argolis laid the foundation of a culture whose influence will abide while the world stands, because Ionia remains the fatherland of all who hold dear what man has reached in art and literature, in science and philosophy.

The fall of Mycenæ gave Phœnicia her opportunity, and she was quick to seize it in establishing depôts throughout the Ægean, and in securing the overlordship of the Mediterranean. But through her lack of political unity, and her dependence on mercenary aid when troubles came, finally she succumbed to the strong arm of the reinvigorated Greek. Between their rise and decline the Phœnicians had put the alphabet into, practically, its present form, and secured its adoption by the Greeks. But if they did not derive it from the Egyptian hieratic, whence came it?

No definite answer is forthcoming, and perhaps never will be. Canon Rawlinson is not alone in thinking that it will probably never be settled whether the Phœnician characters are modifications of theEgyptian or the Hittite or of Cypriote, or mere abbreviated forms of a picture-writing peculiar to the Phœnicians. That opinion was expressed before the discovery of the Cretan pictographs and linear signs, and these have not settled the question. The Phœnicians came under various influences, and their adaptive character readily took the impress of their surroundings. Probably they had a long history before they appear in Syria. As Semites, they were presumably familiar with cuneiform. The Tyrian quarter at Memphis was one of many settlements where the Egyptian characters would be in use, or, at least, familiar. And when the Phœnicians came into the Ægean they found an ancient script whereby intercourse was facilitated along the Mediterranean, a script of which so pliant a people, eager for trade, would avail themselves. In view of all these probabilities, Mr. Evans remarks that it is at least worth while weighing "the possibility that the rudiments of the Phœnician writing may after all have come in part at least from the Ægean side. The more the relics of Mycenæan culture are revealed to us, the more we see how far ahead of their neighbours on the Canaanite coasts was the Ægean population in arts and civilisation." The spread of their commerce led them to seek plantations in the Nile Valley and the Mediterranean outlets of the Arabian and Red Sea trade. The position was the reverse of that which meets our eye at a later date. It was not Sidon that was then planting mercantile settlements on thecoasts and islands of Greece." (Jo. Hellen. Stud., p. 368.) Whether,per contra, a Semitic element had been introduced into the Ægean is uncertain, but could this be proved, the presence of similarities between the respective scripts would have easy explanation. Putting together, however, what is no longer conjectural, it would seem that the Phœnician alphabet was a compound from various sources, the selection and modification of the several characters being ruled by convenience, and that, primarily and essentially, commercial. Like all business people immersed in many transactions, their method was brevity, and so they aimed as near "shorthand" as they could. They got rid of surplus signs, of the lumber of determinatives and the like, and invented an alphabet which if it was not perfect (as no alphabet can be, because the letters are not revised from time to time to represent changes in sound), was of such signal value as to have been accepted by the civilised world of the past, and to have secured, with but slight modifications, a permanence assured to no other invention of the human race. Therefore, the debt that we owe these old traders is in nowise lessened because the current theory of derivation of our alphabet is doubted. This theory as to the nature of the service rendered by the Phœnicians has corroboration in an ancient Cretan tradition recorded by Diodôros, a contemporary of Julius Cæsar and Augustus, to which Mr. Evans makes reference in the reprint of his essay. According to that tradition, the Phœnicians had not inventedwritten characters, but had simply "changed their shapes." In other words, they had not done more than improve on an existing system, which is precisely what recent evidence goes to show. "We may infer from the Cretan contention recorded by Diodôros that the Cretans claimed to have been in possession of a system of writing before the introduction of the Phœnician alphabet. The present discovery on Cretan soil both of a pictographic and a linear script dating from times anterior to any known Phœnician contact thus affords an interesting corroboration of this little regarded record of an ancient writer." (Cretan Pictographs, p. 372.)

GREEK PAPYRI

The Greeks succeeded to the sovereignty of the sea after they had driven the Phœnicians from the Ægean. They were skilful shipbuilders and navigators, and their maritime enterprise, in which, as has been shown, they preceded the Phœnicians, took a new lease of life from the eighth centuryb.c.Their factories and colonies were planted from east to west, from Odessa to Marseilles, where, as their farthermost point, we find them settled 600b.c.The assistance given by Ionians and Carians to Psammetichus, the first king of the twenty-sixth dynasty (666b.c.) in his war with the Assyrians was rewarded by the assignment of permanent settlements in Egypt, and in the reign of his son, Necho II., the cities of Sais and Naucratis (about both of which Herodotus has much to say, ii. 97, 135, 169, 178, &c.) was full of Greek colonists, to whose commercial and intellectual activity the then prosperous state of Egypt was mainly due. The footing which they obtained there was secured when, three hundred years later, Alexander the Great marked his conquest in the founding of the city which bears his name. It is well tokeep these facts in mind, because in our assessment of the debt of the civilised world to Greece we are apt to forget that it was not wholly intellectual, but also social and industrial. And these facts have bearing on our immediate subject in explaining the spread of the Greek alphabet, or, more precisely, the Western or Chalcidian form of it, whence the Latin, and through it the alphabets of Europe and America, are derived. Although the name was limited to the districts in the south of Italy, in the larger sense of the term Græcia Major corresponds to Greater Britain. As with the area of our home islands compared with that of our colonies, so was it with Hellas and her expansion along the sea whose waters laved the coasts of the civilised world. And the spread of the English language and the English alphabet over half the civilised globe may be compared with "the diffusion of Hellenic culture and Hellenic scripts throughout the Mediterranean region, originating in the pre-Christian centuries various derived alphabets—Iberian, Gaulish, Etruscan, Latin, and Runic, followed at a later time by the Mæso-Gothic, Albanian, &c." (Taylor, ii. 125.)

Palæography, or the decipherment of documents, and Epigraphy, or the decipherment of inscriptions, have been indispensable keys to the history of the alphabet. But the materials with which each has to deal would demand a volume, and, moreover, reference to them here has warrant only in their immediate bearings on the development and diffusion of alphabets. But, as with thePapyrus Prisseand theBook of the Dead, there is a deep interest attaching to some of the venerable records. They are, in the modern phrase, and in the best sense of it, "human documents." Such are the Greek papyri, the oldest-known specimens of which are found in Egypt, and have a range of a thousand years,i.e.from the third centuryb.c.to the seventh centurya.d., so that, as Mr. Kenyon remarks in his monograph on the subject, "we may fairly say that we know how men wrote in the days of Aristotle and Menander, but we have not yet got back to Pindar and Æschylus, much less to Homer or (if a less contentious name be preferred) Hesiod." The use of papyrus as a writing material stretches back in Egypt to a remote antiquity; but we cannot be certain that it was used by the Greeks before the early part of the fifth centuryb.c., while "with the Arab conquest of Egypt (640a.d.) the practice of Greek writing on papyrus received its death-blow." By far the larger number of documents thus far discovered are non-literary, dealing with official and commercial matters, as tax-collectors' receipts (although many of these are scratched on potsherds, orostraca, literally "oyster shells," whenceostracize, the inscribing of the name of a person obnoxious to the state on a shell), acknowledgments of repayment of dowry after divorce, wills, reports of public physicians on autopsy, house-keeping bills, surety deeds, registration of title to inheritance, wedding and dinner invitations, of which last here is an example eighteenhundred years old: "Chæron requests your company at dinner at the table of Lord Serapis in the Serapæum to-morrow, the 15th, at 9 o'clock" (i.e.about 3p.m.). Then there are domestic letters, one, touching human hearts across the centuries, from a father to his son: "Tell me anything I can do for you. Good-bye, my boy;" and another crudely written, and with faulty spelling and grammar, from a boy to his father. "Theon to his father Theon, greeting: It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to Alexandria. I won't write a letter or speak to you, or say good-bye to you, and if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand, nor ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won't take me.... Send me a lyre, I implore you; if you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink. There, now!"

The first discovery of Greek papyri was made at Herculaneum in 1752. They consist of above eighteen hundred charred rolls, which were enclosed in a wooden cabinet, and doubtless formed a portion of the library of one Lucius Piso Cæsonius, in the ruins of whose villa they were found. The condition of the papyri made the unrolling and decipherment of them a very tedious operation, and the work is not even yet completed. "They are written in small uncial letters, and possess little beyond palæographic value, comprising worthless treatises on physics, music, rhetoric, and kindred subjects by Philodemus and other third-rate philosophers of the Epicurean school." A quarter of a century later some rolls of papyrus were found in Egypt, probably inthe Fayum. Of these only one, containing a list of peasants employed in the corvée, survived destruction by the natives, and it was not till 1820 that the discovery of a number of rolls on the site of the Serapeum at Memphis supplied the key to knowledge of Greek writing of the second centuryb.c.Since then, at varying intervals, the finds have increased in number and importance. The earliest known examples, dating from the third centuryb.c., were discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie in 1889 in a number of mummy cases at Gurob. Most of these papyri were non-literary—wills, petitions, and such-like documents—but two valuable relics came to light in fragments of Plato'sPhædoand the lostAntiopeof Euripides. Then followed the discovery of another lost work, Aristotle'sΑθηναίων Πολιτεία; of theMimesof Herodas—an almost unknown writer of the Alexandrian age—part of another oration of Hyperides; a long medical treatise, and fragments of Homer, Demosthenes, and Isocrates. TheMimes, two thousand years old, are as young as yesterday. "Though," Mr. Whibley remarks in a charming paper upon these recovered treasures, "they have survived the searching test of time, they have been unseen of mortal eyes for countless centuries. The emotions which Herodas delineates are not Greek, but human, and no preliminary cramming in archæology is necessary for their appreciation. As the world was never young, so it will never grow old. The archæologist devotes years of research tocompiling a picture of Greek life, and the result isCharicles—a cold and unrelieved mass of 'local colour.' There is no proportion, no atmosphere, no background; all is false save the details, and they merely overload the canvas. Herodas presents not a picture, but an impression, and one mime reveals more of life as it was lived two thousand years ago, than the complete works of Becker, Ebers, and the archæologists." (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1891, p. 748.) Here is one scene by which Mr. Whibley justifies his appreciation. Thedramatis personæare Metriche, a grass-widow; Threissa, her maid; and Gyllis, an old lady.

Metriche.Threissa, there is a knock at the door; go and see if it is a visitor from the country.Threissa.Please push the door. Who are you that are afraid to come in?Gyllis.All right, you see, I am coming in.Threissa.What name shall I say?Gyllis.Gyllis, the mother of Philainis. Go indoors, and announce me to Metriche.Threissa.A caller, ma'am.Metriche.What, Gyllis, dear old Gyllis! Turn the chair round a little, girl. What fate induced you to come and see me, Gyllis? An angel's visit, indeed! Why, I believe it's five months since any one dreamt of your knocking at my door.Gyllis.I live such a long way off, and the mud in the lane is up to your knees. I am ever anxious to come, for old age is heavy upon me, and the shadow of death is at my side.Metriche.Cheer up! don't malign Father Time; old age is wont to lay his hand on others too.Gyllis.Joke away; though young women can find something better to do than that. But, my dear girl, what a long time you've been a widow. It's ten months since Mandris was despatched to Egypt, and he hasn'tsent you a single line; doubtless he has forgotten you, and is drinking at a new spring; for in Egypt you may find all things that are or ever were—wealth, athletics, power, fine weather, glory, goddesses, philosophers, gold, handsome youths, the shrine of the god and goddess, the most excellent king, the finest museum in the world, wine, all the good things you can desire, and women, by Persephone, countless as the stones and beautiful as the goddesses that appealed to Paris.

Metriche.Threissa, there is a knock at the door; go and see if it is a visitor from the country.

Threissa.Please push the door. Who are you that are afraid to come in?

Gyllis.All right, you see, I am coming in.

Threissa.What name shall I say?

Gyllis.Gyllis, the mother of Philainis. Go indoors, and announce me to Metriche.

Threissa.A caller, ma'am.

Metriche.What, Gyllis, dear old Gyllis! Turn the chair round a little, girl. What fate induced you to come and see me, Gyllis? An angel's visit, indeed! Why, I believe it's five months since any one dreamt of your knocking at my door.

Gyllis.I live such a long way off, and the mud in the lane is up to your knees. I am ever anxious to come, for old age is heavy upon me, and the shadow of death is at my side.

Metriche.Cheer up! don't malign Father Time; old age is wont to lay his hand on others too.

Gyllis.Joke away; though young women can find something better to do than that. But, my dear girl, what a long time you've been a widow. It's ten months since Mandris was despatched to Egypt, and he hasn'tsent you a single line; doubtless he has forgotten you, and is drinking at a new spring; for in Egypt you may find all things that are or ever were—wealth, athletics, power, fine weather, glory, goddesses, philosophers, gold, handsome youths, the shrine of the god and goddess, the most excellent king, the finest museum in the world, wine, all the good things you can desire, and women, by Persephone, countless as the stones and beautiful as the goddesses that appealed to Paris.

Metriche protests, and Gyllis, suggesting that Mandris is dead, reveals the purpose of her visit.

Now listen to the news I have brought you after this long time. You know Gyllus, the son of Matachene, who was such a famous athlete at school, got a couple of blues at his university, and is now amateur champion bruiser? Then he is so rich, and he leads the quietest life; see, here is his signet-ring. Well, he saw you the other day in the street, and was smitten to the heart. And, my dear girl, he never leaves my house day or night, but bemoans his fate, and calls upon your name; he is positively dying of love.

Metriche becomes righteously indignant when Gyllis suggests that she return this love.

By the fates, Gyllis, your white hairs blunt your reason. There is no cause yet to deplore the fate of Mandris. By Demeter, I shouldn't like to have heard this from another woman's lips. And you, my dear, never come to my house with such proposals again. For none may make mock of Mandris.... But, if what the world says be true, I needn't speak to Gyllis like this. Threissa, let us have some refreshments; bring the decanter and some water, and give the lady something to drink. Now, Gyllis, drink, and show that you aren't angry.

And so with delightful interchange of civilities the quarrel is brought to an end.

Passing by other discoveries, some of these including fragments of a play by Menander, of whose hundred comedies none are perfect, we come to the thousands of Greek papyri found in 1896-97 by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt on the site of the ancient Oxyrhynchus, the capital of a nome of Middle Egypt. The full list of these relics has not yet been published, and it will take some years to decipher them all; but among the literary portion are fragments of works known and unknown. Among the latter is a papyrus of the second century, containing a collection ofLogia, orSayings, of Jesus Christ, some of which are familiar, whilst others are wholly new. The following translation of these, made by the Rev. A. C. Headlam, is based on the text as provisionally settled by Professors Lock and Sanday.

1. (Jesus saith, Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye), and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye.2. Jesus saith, Except ye fast to the world, ye shall not find the kingdom of God; and unless ye keep the true Sabbath, ye shall not see the Father.3, 4. Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in my flesh I was seen of them, and I found all men drunken, not one found I thirsty among them; and my soul is weary for the sons of men, for they are blind in their heart, and see (not, poor and know not) their poverty.5. Jesus saith, Wherever there be (two, they are not without) God, and if anywhere there be one, I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I.6. Jesus saith, A prophet is not received in his own country, nor doth a physician heal his neighbours.7. Jesus saith, A city built on the summit of a loftymountain, and firmly established, cannot fall nor be hidden.8. Jesus saith, Thou hearest with (one ear), but the other hast thou closed.

1. (Jesus saith, Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye), and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye.

2. Jesus saith, Except ye fast to the world, ye shall not find the kingdom of God; and unless ye keep the true Sabbath, ye shall not see the Father.

3, 4. Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in my flesh I was seen of them, and I found all men drunken, not one found I thirsty among them; and my soul is weary for the sons of men, for they are blind in their heart, and see (not, poor and know not) their poverty.

5. Jesus saith, Wherever there be (two, they are not without) God, and if anywhere there be one, I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I.

6. Jesus saith, A prophet is not received in his own country, nor doth a physician heal his neighbours.

7. Jesus saith, A city built on the summit of a loftymountain, and firmly established, cannot fall nor be hidden.

8. Jesus saith, Thou hearest with (one ear), but the other hast thou closed.

Discoveries of this sort bring with them temptation to dwell on their significance, but that must be resisted. There is also temptation to refer to other materials bearing on the history of the Greek alphabet—notably to the inscriptions on the stupendous statue at Abu Simbel, near the second cataract of the Nile—the mere abstract of which would fill this little volume. But the excerpts—varied enough—already given will suffice to indicate what wealth of literature for our knowledge of the past these venerable relics yield, and how poor beyond redemption would the world be if shorn of those records of human thought and feeling, of those grave and gay pictures of life, so closely resembling our own, whereby, too, we learn how superficial have been the changes in human nature throughout the ages of man's tenancy of the earth.

In the remaining pages the course of the history of the Phœnician alphabet, as we may for convenience still call it, must now be outlined, and for this purpose the following table, an abstract of that given in Canon Isaac Taylor'sHistory of the Alphabet(i. 81), is a convenient guide.

The several alphabets, it will be seen, are grouped under three principal heads: (a)Aramean, whence most of the alphabets of Western Asia are derived; (b)Sabæan, the source of the alphabets of India; and (c)Hellenic, the source of the alphabets of Europe.

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