ure. This is the cup
of the Baal of the Lebanon.

This was an alphabet, the first in point of time, but so ingenious and
so pliable that the majority of ancient and modern nations have found
it able to supply all their needs--Greeks and Europeans of the western
Mediterranean on the one hand, and Semites of all kinds, Persians and
Hindus on the other.

[Illustration: 107.jpg Table of Alphabets]

It must have originated between the end of the XVIIIth and the beginning
of the XXIst dynasties, and the existence of Pharaonic rule in Phoenicia
during this period has led more than one modern scholar to assume that
it developed under Egyptian influence.*

* The hypothesis of an Egyptian origin, suggested casually
by Champollion, has been ably dealt with by E. de Rouge. E.
de Rouge derives the alphabet from the Hieratic, and his
identifications have been accepted by Lauth, by Brugsch, by
P. Lenormant, and by Isaac Taylor. Halevy would take it from
the Egyptian hieroglyphics directly without the intervention
of the Hieratic. The Egyptian origin, strongly contested of
late, has been accepted by the majority of scholars.

Some affirm that it is traceable directly to the hieroglyphs, while
others seek for some intermediary in the shape of a cursive script,
and find this in the Hieratic writing, which contains, they maintain,
prototypes of all the Phoenician letters. Tables have been drawn up,
showing at a glance the resemblances and differences which appear
respectively to justify or condemn their hypothesis. Perhaps the
analogies would be more evident and more numerous if we were in
possession of inscriptions going back nearer to the date of origin. As
it is, the divergencies are sufficiently striking to lead some scholars
to seek the prototype of the alphabet elsewhere--either in Babylon, in
Asia Minor, or even in Crete, among those barbarous hieroglyphs which
are attributed to the primitive inhabitants of the island. It is no easy
matter to get at the truth amid these conflicting theories. Two points
only are indisputable; first, the almost unanimous agreement among
writers of classical times in ascribing the first alphabet to the
Phoenicians; and second, the Phonician origin of the Greek, and
afterwards of the Latin alphabet which we employ to-day.

To return to the religion of the Phoenicians: the foreign deities were
not content with obtaining a high place in the estimation o