Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
It thus appears that the very signs d and r, in the Phoenician, early
Greek, and ancient Hebrew, which are lacking in the Maya, were supplied
by imitating the Maya sign for b; and it is a curious fact that while
the Phoenician legends claim that Taaut invented the art of writing, yet
they tell us that Taaut made records, and "delivered them to his
successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris, the
Egyptian god), the inventor of the three letters." Did these three
letters include the d and r, which they did not receive from the
Atlantean alphabet, as represented to us by the Maya alphabet?
In the alphabetical table which we herewith append we have represented
the sign V, or vau, or f, by the Maya sign for U. "In the present
so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac, Sabæic, Palmyrenic, and some other
kindred writings, the vau takes the place of F, and indicates the sounds
of v and u. F occurs in the same place also on the Idalian tablet of
Cyprus, in Lycian, also in Tuarik (Berber), and some other writings."
("American Cyclopædia," art. F.)
Since writing the above, I find in the "Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society" for December, 1880, p. 154, an interesting
article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and
the Egyptian. I quote:
It is astonishing to notice that while Landa's first B is, according to
Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are
pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the
human leg.
"Still more surprising is it that the H of Landa's alphabet is a tie of
cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord.... But the most
striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line
representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian
curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should
Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and
abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely like
Landa's alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable
coincidence between Landa's and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way,
the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it.
Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed
Mexican symbol for a day or sun. So far as sound is concerned, the
English day represents it; so far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian
'cake,' ideograph for (1) country and (2) the sun's orbit is essentially
the same."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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