THE STORY OF

THE ALPHABET

by
EDWARD CLODD

AUTHOR OF

"THE STORY OF PRIMITIVE MAN", "PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION", "THE STORY OF CREATION", ETC. ETC.

"The two greatest inventions of the human mind are writing and money—the common language of intelligence, and the common language of self-interest."—

Marquis de Mirabeau.

WITH NINETY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED

SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND

1900

THIS LITTLE HISTORY OF

A B C

IS DEDICATED TO

DOROTHY DAY

BY HER LOVING GRANDFATHER

PREFACE

If this little book does not supply a want, it fills, however imperfectly, a gap; for the only work in the English language on the subject—Canon Isaac Taylor's "History of the Alphabet"—is necessarily charged with a mass of technical detail which is stiff reading even for the student of graphiology. Moreover, invaluable and indispensable as is that work, it furnishes only a meagre account of those primitive stages of the art of writing, knowledge of which is essential for tracing the development of that art, so that its place in the general evolution of human inventions is made clear. Prominence is therefore given to this branch of the subject in the following pages.

In the recent reprint of Canon Taylor's book no reference occurs to the important materials collected by Professor Flinders Petrie and Mr. Arthur J. Evans in Egypt and Crete, the result of which is to revolutionise the old theory of the source of the Alphabet whence our own and others are derived. This opens up a big question for experts to settle; and here it must suffice to present a statement of the new evidence, and to point out its significance, so that the reader be not taken into the troubled atmosphere of controversy. That he may, further, not be distracted by footnotes, references to the authorities cited are printed in the text.

E. C.

Rosemont, 19 Carleton Road,
  Tufnell Park, N.

CONTENTS