VII. MESOPOTAMIAN INFLUENCE, 85 VIII. BABYLONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS, 99 IX. THE TEL-EL-AMARNA LETTERS, 113 X. PROTO-MEDIC ALPHABET, 134 XI. ZOROASTER AND MAHOMET, 147 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ILLUSTRATIONS. MRS. FRANCES D. JERMAIN, Frontispiece The Rosetta Stone, Opp. Page  9 Hieratic and Hieroglyphic Writings, “   20 Cuneiform Vowels and Consonants, “   26 Form of Rebus Script, “   34 Hieroglyphic and Hieratic Figures, “   40 Hieroglyphic Translation, “   54 Hieroglyphic Hymn of Praise, “   66 Hieroglyphic Signs and Equivalents, “   98 Hieroglyphs and Translation, “  112 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THE ROSETTA STONE.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I. OF all the splendid achievements of archæological research during the present century, there are none of more universal interest and importance than those which are revealing the origin and history of letters; this, not alone for the historic values of these discoveries, for their illumination of a past of which hitherto there was but a faint conception; but also for what letters have to tell us in explanation or confirmation of Biblical narrative, of their bearing upon our most sacred beliefs. At the beginning of the present century the great mass of testimony now laid open before us was an apparently impenetrable mystery. Egyptian hieroglyphics and cuneiform inscriptions yet remained, for the most part, but confusion of ornament and meaningless signs. Some little advance, it is true, had been reached during the latter part of the eighteenth century, as to the signification of certain hieroglyphic characters, but these were as yet but conjecture; a groping in the dark, with no means to verify, uncertain, unassured. With the opening of the present century two events occurred which were to place in the hands of scholars the keys to these mysteries. The first in date of these discoveries, though not in results, was the finding of the Rosetta Stone in 1799.