I. Egyptian Hieroglyphics, facing to the left. II. Egyptian Hieratic characters, facing to the right. III. The oldest Phœnician letters, mostly from the Baal Lebanon inscription. IV. The oldest Greek letters, from inscriptions at Thera and Athens, reading from right to left. V. The lapidary Greek alphabet at the time of the Persian war, reading from left to right. VI. Greek uncials, from the Codex Alexandrinus, about 400 A.D. VII. Greek minuscules. VIII. The old alphabet of Italy. IX. Lapidary Latin alphabet at the time of Cicero. X. Latin uncials and minuscules. XI. Modern square Hebrew, derived from the Phœnician letters in Col. III. [Illustration: Egyptian, Pœnician, Greek Latin and Hebrew Alphabet symbols.] Our examples of M. de Rougé's method may be taken from the letters _b_ and _h_. _b._ The Egyptians had two signs for this, the "leg," [Symbol] which is the normal sign, and the "crane" (see fig. 2 in foregoing table), which letter should be taken as the prototype of the Phœnician (see fig. 2, col. iii.). The reason may be that the sound of the first symbol seems to have been nearer to _v_ than to _b_, the "crane" being used as the equivalent of _beth_ in the translation of several Semitic names, such as Berytus (Beyrout) and Khirba. The hieratic trace of the "leg" would, moreover, be easily confused with that of some other letters, such as the "chick" and the "arm," and would therefore be inconvenient for adoption. The Semitic character [Symbol] differs from its hieratic prototype [Symbol] in having acquired a closed loop. The closed form is so much easier to write that the change presents no difficulty. But there is a curious bit of indirect evidence which seems to show that the Semitic in its earlier form was open, something in the shape of an [Symbol]. The Greek alphabet used at Corinth, one of the earliest Phœnician colonies in Hellas, must have been derived from a type of the Semitic alphabet more archaic than that which appears on the Moabite Stone (see p. 147). Now, in the old Corinthian alphabet the letter _beta_ is not closed, but open, [Symbol], its form being almost identical with the hieratic prototype.