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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. Tho Persians, probably In the time of CyniB the Great, used certain characters of the Babylonian script for tho construction of an alphabet; but at this time tho Phoenician alphabet alpha-bet had undoubtedly been In use for some centuries, and it is moro than probable that tho Persian borrowed his Idea of an alphabet from a Phoenician Phoe-nician source. And that, of course, makes all tho difference. Granted the Idea of an alphabet, it requires no great reach of constructive construct-ive genius to supply a set of alphabetical alphabet-ical characters; though oven hero, It may be added parenthetically, a study of the development of alphabets will show that mankind has all along had a characteristic propensity to copy rather than to Invent. Regarding the Persian alphabet maker, then, as a copyist rather than a truo inventor, it remains to turn attention at-tention to tho Phoenician source whence, as is commonly belloved, tho original alphabet which became "the mother of all existing alphabets" came Into being. It must bo admitted admit-ted at the outset that ovldenco for the Phoenician origin of this alphabet Ib traditional rather than demonstrative. Tho Phoenicians were the great trad ors of antiquity; undoubtedly they wero largely responsible for the transmission of tho alphabet from one part of tho world to another, once It had been Invented. Henry Smith Williams Wil-liams In Harper's Magazine. |