Scaliger supposes the Phœnician to have been the original Hebrew character, otherwise the Samaritan,—which is generally supposed to be that which was used by the Jews from the time of Moses to the Captivity. The alphabet of the Sanscrit is called the devanagari. The Oriental alphabets are the Hebrew, ancient and modern; Rabbinical; Samaritan, ancient and modern; Phœnician; Egyptian hieroglyphic; Chinese characters. The Irish alphabet is the Phœnician. III. Origin of the Materials of Writing, Tablets, etc. The art of writing is very ancient. Its origin is actually lost in the distance of time. From one point, however,—this side of the gulf of lost ages, in which high art perished, and with it the key to all its antediluvian greatness,—we date our history. The Bible gives us the earliest notice on the subject that is anywhere to be found. The most ancient mode of writing was on _cinders_, on bricks, and on _tables of stone_; afterwards on _plates_ of various materials, on _ivory_ and similar articles. One of the earliest methods was to cut out the letters on a tablet of stone. Moses, we are told, received the two tables of the Covenant on Mount Sinai, written with the finger of God; and before that, Moses himself was not ignorant of the use of letters.[9] [Exodus xxiv. 4; xvii. 14.] A learned writer says:—“In Genesis v. 1, ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam,’ reference is made to the book of genealogy; whence it irresistibly follows that writing must have been in use among the antediluvian patriarchs; and, under the view that writing was a divine revelation, the same almighty power that, according to the preceding proposition, instructed Moses, could have equally vouchsafed a similar inspiration to any patriarch from Adam to Noah. Nor does it seem consistent with the merciful dispensation which preserved Noah’s family through the grand cataclysm, and had condescended, according to the biblical record, to teach him those multitudinous arts indispensably necessary to the construction of a vessel destined to pass uninjured through the tempests of the Deluge, that the Almighty, by withholding the art of writing, should have left the account of antediluvian events to the vicissitudes of oral tradition, or denied to Noah’s family the practice of this art, which, it is maintained, was conceded first to Moses.”