The familiar Greek legend assures us that a Phoenician named Kadmus was the first to bring a knowledge of letters into Europe. An elaboration of the story, current throughout classical times, offered the further explanation that the Phoenicians had in turn acquired the art of writing from the Egyptians or Babylonians. Knowledge as to the true origin and development of the art of writing did not extend in antiquity beyond such vagaries as these. Nineteenth-century studies gave the first real clews to an understanding of the subject. These studies tended to authenticate the essential fact on which the legend of Kadmus was founded; to the extent, at least, of making it probable that the later Grecian alphabet was introduced from Phoenicia--though not, of course, by any individual named Kadmus, the latter being, indeed, a name of purely Greek origin. Further studies of the past generation tended to corroborate the ancient belief as to the original source of the Phoenician alphabet, but divided scholars between two opinions: the one contending that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were the source upon which the Phoenicians drew; and the other contending with equal fervor that the Babylonian wedge character must be conceded that honor. But, as has often happened in other fields after years of acrimonious controversy, a new discovery or two may suffice to show that neither contestant was right. After the Egyptologists of the school of De Rouge(1) thought they had demonstrated that the familiar symbols of the Phoenician alphabet had been copied from that modified form of Egyptian hieroglyphics known as the hieratic writing, the Assyriologists came forward to prove that certain characters of the Babylonian syllabary also show a likeness to the alphabetical characters that seemingly could not be due to chance. And then, when a settlement of the dispute seemed almost hopeless, it was shown through the Egyptian excavations that characters even more closely resembling those in dispute had been in use all about the shores of the Mediterranean, quite independently of either Egyptian or Assyrian writings, from periods so ancient as to be virtually prehistoric.