Possible Babylonian Contributions to the So-Called Phoenician Alphabet

Abstract

Although recent excavations in the Near East have compelled us to make almost daily readjustments in our views on the development of ancient history, nevertheless the tradition, mentioned by Herodotus (Book v. 58) and other classical writers, that the Greeks (lonians) adopted for their writing the letters of the Phoenicians, seems to maintain an unshaken hold on the credence of scholars. And rightly so: for the Semitic names of the Greek letters would in themselves be the strongest evidence of an Asiatic origin of the European alphabet, even if we did not have the proof positive in the archaic forms of the letters of the early Greek and Phoenician (North Semitic) inscriptions which have survived to our own day. But the moment we raise the question of the origin of the Phoenician alphabet we are confronted by the widest divergence of opinion. prevalent theory, universally accepted till a few years ago, was that of Viscomte Emmanuel de Roug6, first propounded to the Acad6mie des Inscriptions in 1859, but unnoticed by the world at large till republished, after de Roug6's death, by his son in 1874. According to this view the alphabet was borrowed by the Phoenicians from the cursive (hieratic) form of Egyptian hieroglyphics.' This theory was popularized and disseminated throughout the English-speaking world by two volumes, entitled The Alphabet, by Canon Isaac Taylor, published in 1883.2 It received even wider publicity through the same writer's presentation of it in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (art. Alphabet). But today even an Egyptologist is ready to admit that it enjoyed a wholly undeserved popularity.3 It is not the purpose of this article to pass in review the onslaughts which have been made on the theory of de Roug6, much less to defend