CHAPTER VIIIHANDWRITING

It is manifestly important to determine whether the term used by the Ninevite, the Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and other ancient nations for the right hand was exclusively limited to the member of the body on what is now universally recognised as the right side; or was applicable to either hand, implying no more than the one habitually and preferentially employed. But the true right and left of the Hebrew and other ancient Semitic nations has a special significance, in view of the fact that, whilst the great class of Aryan languages, as well as the Etruscan and others of indeterminate classification, appear, from a remote date, to have been written from left to right; all the Semitic languages, except the Ethiopic, as well as those of other races that have derivedtheir written characters from the Arabian,—such as the Turks, Malays, and Persians,—are written from right to left. Habit has so largely modified our current handwriting, and adapted its characters to forms best suited for continuous and rapid execution in the one direction, that the reversal of this at once suggests the idea of a left-handed people. But the assumption is suggested by a misinterpretation of the evidence. So long as each character was separately drawn, and when, moreover, they were pictorial or ideographic, it was, in reality, more natural to begin at the right, or nearer side, of the papyrus or tablet, than to pass over to the left. The forms of all written characters are largely affected by their mode of use, as is abundantly illustrated in the transformation of the Egyptian ideographs in the later demotic writing. The forms of the old Semitic alphabet, like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, are specially adapted to cutting on stone. The square Hebrew characters are of much later date; but they also, like the uncials of early Christian manuscripts, were executed singly, and therefore could be written as easily from right to left as in a reverse order. The oldest alphabets indicate a special adaptation for monumental inscription.The Runic characters of northern Europe owe their peculiar form apparently to their being primarily cut on wood. When papyrus leaves were substituted for stone, a change was inevitable; but the direction of the writing only becomes significant in reference to a current hand. The Greek fashion ofboustrophedon, or alternating like the course of oxen in ploughing, illustrates the natural process of beginning at the side nearest to the hand; nor did either this, or the still earlier mode of writing in columns, as with the ancient Egyptians, or the Chinese, present any impediment, so long as it was executed in detached characters. But so soon as the reed or quill, with the coloured pigment, began to supersede the chisel, the hieratic writing assumed a modified form; and when it passed into the later demotic handwriting, with its seemingly arbitrary script, the same influences were brought into play which control the modern penman in the slope, direction, and force of his stroke. One important exception, however, still remained. Although, as in writing Greek, the tendency towards the adoption of tied letters was inevitable, yet to the last the enchorial or demotic writing was mainly executed in detached characters, and does not, therefore, constitutea true current handwriting, such as in our own continuous penmanship leaves no room for doubt as to the hand by which it was executed. Any sufficiently ambidextrous penman, attempting to copy a piece of modern current writing with either hand, would determine beyond all question its right-handed execution. But no such certain result is found on applying the same test to the Egyptian demotic. I have tried it on two of the Louvre demotic MSS. and a portion of a Turin papyrus, and find that they can be copied with nearly equal dexterity with either hand. Some of the characters are more easily and naturally executed, without lifting the pen, with the left hand than the right. Others again, in the slope and the direction of the thickening of the stroke, suggest a right-handed execution; but habit in the forming of the characters, as in writing Greek or Arabic, would speedily overcome any such difficulty either way. I feel assured that no habitually left-handed writer would find any difficulty in acquiring the unmodified demotic hand; whereas no amount of dexterity of the penman compelled to resort to his left hand in executing ordinary current writing suffices to prevent such a modification in the slope, the stroke and theformation of the characters, as clearly indicates the change.

Attention has been recently called to this special aspect of the subject in a minutely detailed article in theArchivio Italiano per le Malatie Nervose, of September 1890, by Dr. D’Abundo Guiseppe, of the University of Pisa. The inquiry was suggested to the Pisan professor by the peculiar case of a left-handed patient, thus stated by him: “I was treating electrically a gentleman, thirty-three years of age, who had been affected for two years with difficulty in writing, and which proved to be a typical case of the spasm calledwriter’s cramp. The fact to which I desire to draw attention is that the gentleman was left-handed, and had been so from his birth, so that he preferentially used the left hand except in writing, as he had learned to write with the right hand. He was a person of good intellect and superior culture; and he had taught himself to sketch and paint with the left hand. Under the electric treatment he improved, but in view of the liability to relapse, I advised him to commence practising writing with the left hand; more especially as he is left-handed. But he informed me that in the first attempts made by him he felt, in addition to thedifficulty; that they produced painful sensations in the right arm, as if he were writing with it. Wishing to master the facts, I caused him to write in my presence; and I observed that, instead of commencing from left to right, he automatically proceeded from right to left. At my request, he began with the greatest readiness and rapidity to write some lines which I dictated to him. What struck me was the rapidity with which he wrote, the regularity of the writing, and the ease with which, with unruled paper, he went on writing from right to left. He assured me that he had never before made any attempt to write in that way; and he was himself really surprised.”[7]

[7]Archivio Italiano, Milan, September 1890, “Su di alcune particolarità della scrittura dei mancini,” p. 298.

Dr. Guiseppe’s attention being thus directed to this aspect of the subject, his next aim was to determine whether the phenomenon might not be physiological, and specially characteristic of left-handed persons; and he naturally reverted to the pathological evidence bearing on left-handed manifestations. He points out that Buchwald, in three cases of aphasia, had found a very peculiar disturbance of written language, which consisted in the factthat the letters were written by the patient from right to left, with reverted slope. He accordingly made further research, with a special view to determine whether this peculiar manifestation was due to morbid causes. Unfortunately, although he states that the subjects of his observation included a considerable number of left-handed persons, the cases stated by him in detail are mainly those of the right-handed who, by reason of injury or loss of the right hand, had been compelled to cultivate the use of the other. Such cases, however, amount to no more than evidence of the extent to which the left hand may be educated, and so made to perform all the functions of the right hand. To one, indeed, familiar by practical experience with the exceptional facilities and the impediments of the left-handed, it is curious to observe the difficulty experienced by a highly intelligent scientific student of the phenomena, to appreciate what seems to the ordinary left-handed man not only natural but inevitable. In the case of Dr. Guiseppe’s original patient, he wrote reversely instinctively, and with ease, on the first attempt to use the unfamiliar pen in his left hand. Acquired left-handedness revealed itself, on the contrary, in the writer placing the paper obliquely;or in other ways showing that, with all the facility derived from long practice, it was the result of effort and a persevering contest with nature. Dr. Guiseppe accordingly adds in a summary of results: “In general, I have discovered that right-handed persons who became the subjects of disease affecting the right arm from their infancy were forced to learn to write with the left hand; and they wrote from right to left with sufficient facility, varying the slope of the letters. Those, however, who had become affected with disease in the right arm in adult life, when they had already familiarly practised writing with the right hand, and in consequence of disease had been obliged to resort to the left hand, were less successful in writing with the reversed slope.”[8]

[8]Archivio Italiano, September 1890, p. 304.

To the naturally left-handed person, especially when he has enjoyed the unrestrained use of the pencil in his facile hand, the reversed slope is the easiest, and the only natural one. But this is entirely traceable to the comparatively modern element of cursive writing. No such cause affected the graver, or the hieroglyphic depictor of ideographs, even when reduced to their most arbitrary demotic forms, so long as they were executed singly.

So soon as the habitual use of the papyrus, with the reed pen and coloured pigments, had developed any uniformity of usage, the customary method of writing by the Egyptian appears to have accorded with that in use among the Hebrew and other Semitic races; though examples do occur of true hieroglyphic papyri written from left to right. But the pictorial character of such writings furnishes another test. It is easier for a right-handed draftsman to draw a profile with the face looking towards the left; and the same influence might be anticipated to affect the direction of the characters incised on the walls of temples and palaces. This has accordingly suggested an available clue to Egyptian right or left-handedness. But the evidence adduced from Egyptian monuments is liable to mislead. A writer inNature(J. S., 14th April 1870) states as the result of a careful survey of the examples in the British Museum, that the hieroglyphic profiles there generally look to the right, and so suggest the work of a left-handed people. Other and more suggestive evidence from the monuments of Egypt points to the same conclusion, but it is deceptive. The hieroglyphic sculptures of the Egyptians, like the cufic inscriptionsin Arabian architecture, are mainly decorative; and are arranged symmetrically for architectural effect. The same principle regulated their introduction on sarcophagi. Of this, examples in the British Museum furnish abundant illustration. On the great sarcophagus of Sebaksi, priest of Phtha, the profiles on the right and left column look towards the centre line; and hence the element of right-handedness is subordinated to decorative requirements. If this is overlooked, the left-handedness ascribed above to the ancient Egyptians may seem to be settled beyond dispute by numerous representations both of gods and men, engaged in the actual process of writing. Among the incidents introduced in the oft-repeated judgment scene of Osiris,—as on the Adytum of the Temple of Dayr el Medineh, of which I have a photograph,—Thoth, the Egyptian God of Letters, stands with the stylus in his left hand, and a papyrus or tablet in his right, and records concerning the deceased, in the presence of the divine judge, the results of the literal weighing in the balance of the deeds done in the body. In other smaller representations of the same scene, Thoth is similarly introduced holding the stylus in his left hand. So also, in the decorations on thewall of the great chamber in the rock-temple of Abou Simbel, Rameses is represented slaying his enemies with a club, which is held in his left hand; and the goddess Pasht is shown decapitating her prisoners with a scimitar also in the left hand. This evidence seems sufficiently direct and indisputable to settle the question; yet further research leaves no doubt that it is illusory. Ample evidence to the contrary is to be found in Champollion’sMonuments de l’Egypte et de la Nubie; and is fully confirmed by Maxime du Camp’sPhotographic Pictures of Egypt, Nubia, etc., by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’sManners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, and by other photographic and pictorial evidence. In a group, for example, photographed by Du Camp, from the exterior of the sanctuary of the palace of Karnac, where the Pharaoh is represented crowned by the ibis and hawk-headed deities, Thoth and Horus, the hieroglyphics are cut on either side so as to look towards the central figure. The same arrangement is repeated in another group at Ipsamboul, engraved by Champollion,Monuments de l’Egypte(vol. i. Pl. 5). Still more, where figures are intermingled, looking in opposite directions,—as shown in a photograph of the elaborately sculpturedposterior façade of the Great Temple of Denderah,—the accompanying hieroglyphics, graven in column, vary in direction in accordance with that of the figure to which they refer. Columns of hieroglyphics repeatedly occur, separating the seated deity and a worshipper standing before him, and only divided by a perpendicular line, where the characters are turned in opposite directions corresponding to those of the immediately adjacent figures.

When, as in the Judgment scene at El Medineh and elsewhere, Osiris is seated looking to the right, Thoth faces him, holding in the off-hand—as more extended, by reason of the simple perspective,—the papyrus or tablet; while the pen or style is held in the near or left hand. To have placed the pen and tablet in the opposite hands would have required a complex perspective and foreshortening, or would have left the whole action obscure and unsuited for monumental effect. Nevertheless, the difficulty is overcome in repeated examples: as in a repetition of the same scene engraved in Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’sManners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians(Pl. 88), and on a beautifully executed papyrus, part ofThe Book of the Dead, now in the Louvre, and reproduced in facsimile in Sylvestre’sUniversal Palæography(vol. i. Pl. 46), in both of which Thoth holds the pen or style in the right hand. The latter also includes a shearer holding the sickle in his right hand, and a female sower, with the seed-basket on her left arm, scattering the seed with her right hand. Examples of scribes, stewards, and others engaged in writing, are no less common in the scenes of ordinary life; and though when looking to the left, they are at times represented holding the style or pen in the left hand, yet the preponderance of evidence suffices to refer this to the exigencies of primitive perspective. The steward in a sculptured scene from a tomb at Elethya (Monuments de l’Egypte, Pl. 142) receives and writes down a report of the cattle from the field servants, holding the style in his right hand and the tablet in his left. So is it with the registrar and the scribes (Wilkinson, Figs. 85, 86), the steward who takes account of the grain delivered (Fig. 387), and the notary and scribes (Figs. 73, 78)—all from Thebes, where they superintend the weighing at the public scales, and enumerate a group of negro slaves.

In the colossal sculptures on the facades of the great temples, where complex perspective and foreshorteningwould interfere with the architectural effect, the hand in which the mace or weapon is held appears to be mainly determined by the direction to which the figure looks. At Ipsamboul, as shown inMonuments de l’Egypte, Pl. 11, Rameses grasps with his right hand, by the hair of the head, a group of captives of various races, negroes included, while he smites them with a scimitar or pole-axe, wielded in his left hand; but an onlooker, turned in the opposite direction, holds the sword in his right hand. This transposition is more markedly shown in two scenes from the same temple (Pl. 28). In the one Rameses, looking to the right, wields the pole-axe in the near or right hand, as he smites a kneeling Asiatic; in the other, where he looks to the left, he holds his weapon again in the near, but now the left hand, as he smites a kneeling negro. On the same temple soldiers are represented holding spears in the near hand, right or left, according to the direction they are looking (Pl. 22); and swords and shields are transposed in like manner (Pl. 28). The same is seen in the siege scenes and military reviews of Rameses the Great, on the walls of Thebes and elsewhere. The evidence is misleading if the primary aim of architectural decoration is not keptin view. In an example from Karnac—appealed to in proof that the Egyptians were a left-handed people,—where Thotmes III. hold his offering in the extended left hand, his right side is stated to be towards the observer. Nor are similar examples rare. Thoth and other deities, sculptured in colossal proportions, on the Grand Temple of Isis, at Philæ, as shown by Du Camp, in like manner have their right sides towards the observer, and hold each the mace or sceptre in the extended left hand. But on turning to the photographs of the Great Temple of Denderah, where another colossal series of deities is represented in precisely the same attitude, but looking in the opposite direction, the official symbols are reversed, and each holds the sceptre in the extended right hand. Numerous similar instances are given by Wilkinson; as in the dedication of the pylon of a temple to Amun by Rameses III., Thebes (No. 470); the Goddesses of the West and East, looking in corresponding directions (No. 461), etc.

Examples, however, occur where the conventional formulæ of Egyptian sculpture have been abandoned, and the artist has overcome the difficulties of perspective; as in a remarkable scene in the Memmonium,at Thebes, where Atmoo, Thoth, and a female (styled by Wilkinson the Goddess of Letters) are all engaged in writing the name of Rameses on the fruit of the Persea tree. Though looking in opposite directions, each holds the pen in the right hand (Wilkinson, Pl. 54A). So also at Beni Hassan, two artists kneeling in front of a board, face each other, and each paints an animal, holding the brush in the right hand. At Medinet Habou, Thebes, more than one scene of draught-players occurs, where the players, facing each other, each hold the piece in the right hand. Similar illustrations repeatedly occur.

Among another people, of kindred artistic skill, whose records have been brought anew to light in recent years, their monumental evidence appears to furnish more definite results; while the curiously definite reference in the Book of Jonah leaves no room to doubt that among the ancient Ninevites it was recognised that at the earliest stage when voluntary action co-operated with the rational will, a specific hand was habitually in use. That the ancient dwellers on the Euphrates and the Tigris were a right-handed people appears to be borne out by their elaborate sculpture, recovered at Kourjunjik, Khorsabad,Nimroud, and other buried cities of the great plain. The sculptures are in relief, and frequently of a less conventional character than those of the Egyptian monuments, and are consequently less affected by the aspect and position of the figures. The gigantic figure of the Assyrian Hercules—or, as supposed, of the mighty hunter Nimrod,—found between the winged bulls, in the great court of the Palace of Khorsabad, is represented strangling a young lion, which he presses against his chest with his left arm, while he holds in his right hand a weapon of the chase, supposed to be analogous to the Australian boomerang. On the walls of the same palace the great king appears with his staff in his right hand, while his left hand rests on the pommel of his sword. Behind him a eunuch holds in his right hand, over the king’s head, a fan or fly-flapper; and so with other officers in attendance. Soldiers bear their swords and axes in the right hand, and their shields on the left arm. A prisoner is being flayed alive by an operator who holds the knife in the right hand. The king himself puts out the eyes of another captive, holding the spear in his right hand, while he retains in his left the end of a cord attached to his victim. Similar evidenceabounds throughout the elaborate series of sculptures in the British Museum and in the Louvre. Everywhere gods and men are represented as “discerning between their right hand and their left,” and giving the preference to the former.

It has been already shown that in languages of the American continent, as in those of the Algonquins and the Iroquois, the recognition of the distinction between the right and left hand is apparent; and on turning to the monuments of a native American civilisation, evidence similar to that derived from the sculptures of Egypt and Assyria serves to show that the same hand had the preference in the New World as in the Old. In the Palenque hieroglyphics of Central America, for example, in which human and animal heads frequently occur among the sculptured characters, it is noticeable that they invariably look towards the left, indicating, as it appears to me, that they are the graven inscriptions of a lettered people who were accustomed to write the same characters from left to right on paper or skins. Indeed, the pictorial groups on the Copan statues seem to be the true hieroglyphic characters; while the Palenque inscriptions correspond to the abbreviated hieraticwriting. The direction of the profile was a matter of no moment to the sculptor, but if the scribe held his pen or style in his right hand, like the modern clerk, he would as naturally draw the left profile as the penman slopes his current hand to the right. In the pictorial hieroglyphics, reproduced in Lord Kingsborough’sMexican Antiquities, as in other illustrations of the arts of Mexico and Central America, it is also apparent that the battle-axe and other weapons and implements are most frequently held in the right hand. But to this exceptions occur; and it is obvious that there also the crude perspective of the artist influenced the disposition of the tools, or weapons, according to the action designed to be represented, and the direction in which the actor looked. Such are some of the indications which seem to point to a uniform usage, in so far as we can recover evidence of the practice among ancient nations; while far behind their most venerable records lie the chronicles of palæolithic ages: of the men of the drift and of the caves of Europe’s prehistoric dawn.

So far, then, it seems to be proved that not only among cultured and civilised races, but among the barbarous tribes of both hemispheres,—in Australia,Polynesia, among the Arctic tribes of our northern hemisphere at the present day, and among the palæolithic men of Europe’s post-pliocene times,—not only has a habitual preference been manifested for the use of one hand rather than the other, but among all alike the same hand has been preferred. Yet, also, it is no less noteworthy that this prevailing uniformity of practice has always been accompanied by some very pronounced exceptions. Not only are cases of exceptional facility in the use of both hands of frequent occurrence, but while right-handedness everywhere predominates, left-handedness is nowhere unknown. The skill of the combatant in hitting with both hands is indeed a favourite topic of poetic laudation, though this is characteristic of every well-trained boxer. In the combat between Entellus and Dares (Æn.v. 456), the passionate Entellus strikes now with his right hand and again with his left—

Præcipitemque Daren ardens agit æquore toto,Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra.

Præcipitemque Daren ardens agit æquore toto,

Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra.

But the more general duty assigned to the left hand is as the guard or the shield-bearer, as where Æneas gives the signal to his comrades, in sight of the Trojans (Æn.x. 261)—

Stans celsa in puppi; clipeum cum delude sinistraExtulit ardentem.

Stans celsa in puppi; clipeum cum delude sinistra

Extulit ardentem.

The right hand may be said to express all active volition and all beneficent action, as inÆn.vi. 370, “Da dextram misero,” “Give thy right hand to the wretched,”i.e.give him aid; and so in many other examples, all indicative of right-handedness as the rule. The only exception I have been able to discover occurs in a curious passage in theEcloguesof Stobæus Περὶ ψυχῆς, in a dialogue between Horus and Isis, where, after describing a variety of races of men, and their peculiarities, it thus proceeds: “An indication of this is found in the circumstance that southern races, that is, those who dwell on the earth’s summit, have fine heads and good hair; eastern races are prompt to battle, and skilled in archery, for the right hand is the seat of these qualities. Western races are cautious, and for the most part left-handed; and whilst the activity which other men display belongs to their right side, these races favour the left.” Stobæus, the Macedonian, belongs, at earliest, to the end of the fifth century of our era, but he collected diligently from numerous ancient authors, some of whom would otherwise be unknown; but the passage is part of a description inwhich he speaks of the earth as having its apex or head to the south, the right shoulder to the east, and the left to the south-west; and the left-handed races of the west may be so merely in a figurative sense. This description, at any rate, is the only indication, vague and dubious as it is, of a belief in the existence of a left-handed race.

Thus all evidence appears to conflict with the idea that the preferential employment of one hand can be accounted for by a mere general compliance with prevailing custom. Everywhere, in all ages, and in the most diverse conditions of civilised and savage life, the predominant usage is the same. Not that there are not everywhere marked exceptions to the prevailing practice, in left-handed athletes, handi-craftsmen, artificers, and artists, generally characterised by unusual dexterity; but the farther research is carried, it becomes the more apparent that these are exceptional deviations from the normal usage of humanity.

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