Show first use of alphabet the two nations credited with the invention of the alphabet are the phoenicians and the persians but it is not usually conceded that the two are entitled to anything like equal credit the persians probably in the time of cyrus the great used certain characters of the babylonian script for the construction of an alphabet but at this time the phoenician alpha bet had undoubtedly been in use for some centuries and it Is more than probable that the persian borrowed his idea of an alphabet from a phoe source and that of course makes all the difference granted the idea of an alphabet it requires no great reach of construct ive genius to supply a set of alphabet leal characters though even here it be added parenthetically a study of the development ot alphabets will show that mani ind has all along bad a propensity to copy rather than to invent regarding the persian alphabet maker then as a copyist rather than a true it remains to turn at to the phoenician source whence as Is commonly believed tho original alphabet which became tho mother of all existing alphabets came into being it must be admitted at the outlet that evidence for the phoenician origin of tah alphabet 1 rather than the phoenicians were the great traders of antiquity undoubtedly they were largely responsible tor the transmission ot the alphabet from one part of the world to another once it had been invented henry smith williams in harper s magazine |