Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original chart illustrating various alphabets. See 62374-h.htm or 62374-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/62374/62374-h/62374-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/62374/62374-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/storyofalphabet00egeorich Some characters might not display properly in this UTF-8 text file (e.g., empty squares). If so, the reader should consult the html version or the original page images noted above. THE STORY OF THE ALPHABET by OTTO F. EGE The Cleveland School of Art “Many thanks to old Cadmus, Who made us his debtors By inventing, one day, those CAPITAL LETTERS.” —Saxe Published by Norman T. A. Munder & Co. Printers Baltimore, Maryland Copyright 1921 by Norman T. A. Munder & Co. THE STORY OF THE ALPHABET Its Evolution and Development Do you know your A B C’s? Each Letter Character Has a History and a Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin and Significance of the Alphabet? Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed to the alphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions such as the making of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the axle, and even our modern marvelous applications of steam and electricity pale into insignificance when compared with the power of the alphabet. Simple as it now appears after the accustomed use of ages, it can be accounted not only the most difficult, but also the most fruitful of all the achievements of the human intellect. Man lived by “bread alone” and without the alphabet untold ages, and with a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000 years. So important and wonderful was this step deemed by those who lived nearer the time of its inception—in the time before the wonder of its extraordinary powers had been blunted by long possession and common use—that its invention, as well as that of writing, was invariably attributed to divine origin. Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological ones, and thus the science of ancient handwriting, paleography, came into existence. In the last hundred and twenty-five years the writing of the ancient Egyptians, which was a “sealed book” for nearly twenty centuries, has been deciphered through the efforts of Champollion and Young; the mysterious cuneiform characters of ancient Assyria and Babylon have been interpreted by Grotofend and Rawlinson, and the “missing link” to connect our present alphabetic system to these ancient ones is being partly completed by Sir Arthur Evans, who is compiling and analyzing Cretan characters and pre-Phoenician writing. The story, however, will probably never be told in its entirety.