CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII.
Edkins, Introduction to Study of the Chinese Characters.
Lenormant, Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet Phénicien.
Mahaffy, Prolegomena to History.
Rawlinson, Five Monarchies.
Rougé (Vte de), Origine Égyptienne de l’Alphabet Phénicien.
Taylor, The Alphabet.
Tylor, Early History of Mankind.
None of the Semitic alphabets can be considered as quite complete; as a complete alphabet requires a subdivision of sounds into their smallest divisions, and an appropriate sign for each of these. But none of the Semitic alphabets in their original forms seem to have possessed these qualifications. They never get nearer to the expression of vowel sounds than by letters which may be considered half vowels. Each of their consonants (in Phœnician, Hebrew, Arabic) carried a vowel sound with it, and was therefore a syllabic sign and not a true letter.
No account is here given of the theory that the Chinese and the Babylonian writing are derived from the same source, as this new and startling theory is not sufficiently upon the tapis to be treated of in a book of this kind. The reader who is desirous of informing himself upon the subject may do so (as far as is yet possible) by obtaining the pamphlet by M. Terrien de la Couperie, Early History of Chinese Civilization, wherein this theory was first expounded, as also another and subsequent brochure, History of Archaic Chinese Writing.