The alphabets of the Semitic peoples are not merely objects of curiosity. They restore many pages of nearly or wholly forgotten history. The map of Arabia platted with its ancient letters is a picture of its tribal and religious divisions, overlaid with the lines of commercial travel and the track of war, and showing the points where literature and civilization entered, the dates of their entrances, with the courses, the helps and the hindrances of their progress. The present generation, however, still sees the subject as a new study, and by the discovery or collation of formerly unknown or neglected inscriptions has thrown upon the field of view an hitherto unimaginable illumination. Although some confusion exists from the imperfectness and great differences of professed facsimiles of inscriptions, as published by different explorers and scholars, the history of the letters of the peoples north of Sinai may be supposed to be well illustrated as far back as the tenth ante-christian century. And yet, for full assurance as to the origin of the old Semitic alphabet, and its primitive forms, we must refer as much as we are able to the Southern Arabic and North African alphabets. The southern part of Arabia is and has been almost closed to Europeans by an unfriendly climate and the ill will of the natives. The people are Arabic, speaking various dialects. Those of the extreme south were anciently called Himyarin, either from a king of Yemen, or, as some suppose, from their dusky hue. Some scholars are of opinion that in Kahtan, an ancient prince, and in Hadramaut, the name of the region, are to be recognized the biblical Joktan and Hazarmaveth, descendants of Arphaxad. That the southern Arabs had a peculiar alphabet has been known from the preservation of most of its characteristics in the letters of Abyssinia. Over these peculiarities the imagination of scholars exhausted itself in conjecturing Greek, Roman, Syriac and Numidian influences as the modifying forms. The Ethiopic literature is Christian, and its words are written from left to right, both of which facts suggest Greek or Roman influence. But these are delusive conjectures; for the Ethiopic letters bear little resemblance to Greek or Roman, while yet the Ethiopians use Greek letters for numerals, and thus emphasize the distinction. In writing from left to right the Ethiopians have only yielded to the constant suggestion and pressure of nature. The Egyptian hieroglyphics were written indifferently to right or left, and pointed or faced against the advance of the reader, as a weathercock against the moving wind. In painted or drawn figures having many parts it was equally natural to move the brush to right or left, but it is most natural for a painter or writer to place himself squarely before his tablet, and begin at the right hand. Hence the Egyptians in hieratic and demotic writing always moved from right to left, but made the several letters usually with the chief strokes as we now write, as is often shown by their unfinished ends. Most of the Semitic tribes, by linking letters, and by making connecting lines constituent elements, were constrained to preserve the same direction in writing, but it was always awkward. The Ethiopians, retaining the isolated forms of their letters, and rather erecting and