Paleographically, the stone is of far greater value, and happily of nearly as much value in its mutilated condition, as it would have been if perfect. It is the very oldest Semitic lapidary record of importance yet discovered, the most ancient specimen of the alphabetic writing still in common use amongst us--a century and a half earlier than any other inscription in the same Phoenician character, and three centuries earlier than any other such inscription of any length. Its significance in this respect is, however, only in process of being studied, and uniformity of opinion has not yet been arrived at. The names of the Hebrew letters are all significant of certain objects--_aleph_, _bêth_, _gimel_, _daleth_, for instance = ox, house, camel, door, &c.; and it has been maintained by Semitic scholars that the letters themselves were originally slight and abridged representations of the visible objects, the resemblance being more clearly seen in the older Phoenician than in the later Phoenician, the Assyrian or square character, and archaic Greek.[39] Mr. Deutsch, who was so careful in the matter of translation, was bold to express himself here, and to assert from the evidence of the Moabite stone that 'the more primitive the characters the _simpler_ they become; not, as often supposed, the more complicated, as more in accordance with some pictorial prototype.'[40] This view is controverted by Professor Rawlinson, in the _Contemporary Review_ for August, 1870, and, as it appears to us, successfully; for while the later characters in some instances present a greater complication to the eye, they are far simpler to the mind as soon as you imagine yourself engaged in writing them and exerting the volition separately for each stroke. 'In _samech_ for instance, apparently the most complicated of the later letters, a gradual diminution in the number of strokes may be traced from first to last. Originally the letter was written like an early Greek _xi_--thus, [hand printed character], with four distinct strokes; then the four were reduced to two by changing the three horizontal bars into a zigzag, which could be written without taking the hand from the paper, and adding a vertical bar beneath it; finally, the vertical bar was attached to one end of the zigzag, and thus made a continuation of it, so that a single continuous stroke sufficed for the whole letter.... In like manner, the original _zain_ required three distinct strokes, two horizontal and one oblique ([hand printed character]), which were subsequently represented by the form still in use (Z), a form producible by a single effort, without any removal of the pen from the paper.'