This is (in chronological sequence) the place at which mention should be made of the Greek myth that alphabetical letters were introduced into Boeotia by Cadmus the Phoenician. It has always been accepted as substantially true, even by those who knew that Cadmus in Semitic speech meant simply The Ancient, or The Eastern; and has usually been assigned to about 1500 B.C. The story requires some modification, and the date is probably a good deal out of reckoning. Here it is only referred to as showing the early use of letters by the Phoenicians. There are really no extant monuments to prove the anteriority of the Semite alphabet to that of the Greeks, but there can be no question as to the fact. The names of the Greek letters are manifestly borrowed from a Semitic speech, and the Cadmus story is in {11}itself a sufficient acknowledgment of the secondary position of the Hellenes. It is generally held that the Phoenicians derived their alphabet by means of a selection from the phonetic symbols of the Egyptian hieratic script. Whether the process was due to the Phoenicians themselves, is not so clearly asserted. Mr. Maunde Thompson, following Lenormant and the Vicomte de Rougé, seems to consider that it gradually took place in Egypt after the Arabs had conquered the country, and when the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings had established their dynasty (2000 B.C.). During the five hundred years of their rule there must have been a large Semitic immigration, and it is not unlikely that the Semitic alphabet was then derived from the Egyptian for the use of the Syrians and Arabs who dwelt in Lower Egypt. There is, on the other hand, a modern theory that the Semitic alphabet was not evolved in this way, but from the hieratic Babylonian writing. It is true that similarities may be found between them, and it is also demonstrable that the Greek names of the alphabet were drawn from the speech, not of Phoenicia or Palestine, but of Aram or Semitic Chaldæa. Nothing is certain as to the origin of the Semitic alphabet, notwithstanding the elaborate comparative tables produced by Rougé and others, beyond the fact that several letters resemble Egyptian (and Chaldæo-Assyrian) symbols having sometimes the same phonetic value. The names given to their characters by the Semites are undoubtedly descriptive of their apparent iconism, and the initial sound of each name is the power of the letter. This, on the face of it, would imply that the Aramaic alphabet was an original invention. The Greeks who first received it, must have been those of Asia Minor, not those of Hellas; and the first transmitters were neither Arabs, nor Jews, nor Phoenicians, but Babylonian Aramæans in contact with Cilicia and Cappadocia. The names of the letters, as sounded by the Syrians of Palestine (Phoenicians, Israelites, Jews), were: _Aleph_, _Beth_, _Gimel_, _Daleth_, _He_, _Vau_, _Zain_ (_Zai_), _Hheth_ (_Kheth_), _Teth_, _Yod_, {12}_Caph_, _Lamed_, _Mem_