On the whole, it seems most probable that the Phoenicians began with their own hieroglyphical system, selecting an object to represent the initial sound of its name, and at first drawing that object, but that they very soon followed the Egyptian idea of representing the original drawing in a conventional way, by a few lines, straight or curved. Their hieroglyphic alphabet which is extant is an alphabet in the second stage, corresponding to the Egyptian hieratic, but not derived from it. Having originally represented their _alef_ by an ox’s head, they found a way of sufficiently indicating the head by three lines {...}, which marked the horns, the ears, and the face. Their _beth_ was a house in the tent form; their _gimel_ a camel, represented by its head and neck; their _daleth_ a door, and so on. The object intended is not always positively known; but, where it is known, there is no difficulty in tracing the original picture in the later conventional sign. The Phoenician alphabet was not without its defects. The most remarkable of these was the absence of any characters expressive of vowel sounds. The Phoenician letters are, all of them, consonants; and the reader is expected to supply the vowel sounds for himself. There was not even any system of pointing, so far as we know, whereby, as in Hebrew and Arabic, the proper sounds were supplied. Again, several letters were made to serve for two sounds, as _beth_ for both _b_ and _v_, _pe_ for both _p_ and _f_, _shin_ for both _s_ and _sh_, and _tau_ for both _t_ and _th_. There were no forms corresponding to the sounds _j_ or _w_. On the other hand, there was in the alphabet a certain amount of redundancy. _Tsade_ is superfluous, since it represents, not a simple elemental sound, but a combination of two sounds, _t_ and _s_. Hence the Greeks omitted it, as did also the Oscans and the Romans. There is redundancy in the two forms for _k_, namely _kaph_ and _koph_; in the two for _t_, namely _teth_ and _tau_; and in the two for _s_, namely _samech_ and _shin_. But no alphabet is without some imperfections, either in the way of excess or defect; and perhaps we ought to be more surprised that the Phoenician alphabet has not more faults than that it falls so far short of perfection as it does.