Drawing for Printers. / A practical treatise on the art of designing and illustrating in connection with typography. Containing complete instruction, fully illustrated, concerning the art of drawing, for the beginner as well as the more advanced student.

by Ernest Knaufft

CHAPTER VII.

THE GROWTH OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE — SIGNS AND SYMBOLS BECOME HIEROGLYPHS — EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS BECOME HIERATIC OR CURSIVE — THE HIERATIC BECOMES ANGULAR IN THE PHŒNICIAN — PHŒNICIAN ALPHABET A MONUMENTAL ONE AND THE LETTERS LIKE OURS — FROM THE PHŒNICIAN COME THE GREEK AND LATIN ALPHABETS, WHICH ARE USED THROUGHOUT EUROPE TODAY.

THE GROWTH of written language is briefly recorded as follows. Primitive man used signs and symbols, as does the North American Indian. Noah understood the symbol of the dove with the olive branch. Had he wished to record the event of the flood he would probably have drawn several waved lines to represent water, and a mountain peak underneath, to show that the water rose above the mountains. A second picture of a dove with an olive branch would have indicated that the waters had subsided. This method of writing was used by the Assyrians and Egyptians 5000 B. C. With the Assyrians the symbols developed into “cuneiform,” or wedge-shaped signs, stamped on clay. With this form we have nothing to do, as it never influenced our writing; but with the Egyptians (as with the Chinese) the symbols soon took a written form called hieratic (used by the priests), which is the direct parent of our own handwriting. In hieroglyphs on monuments in Egypt, the sign for water was a horizontal zigzag, and for a mountain a silhouette of hill-like form. These {208} were painted, and sometimes partly incised on soft stone or stucco, and had a pictorial character. But when the priests had to write voluminous rituals, they used a reed pen on papyrus, and reduced the silhouette pictures to shorthand-like marks. The first example in the Larousse Dictionary (page [201]), represents the hieratic shorthand of the hieroglyph of a bird. But not only did the Egyptians use their signs as hieroglyphic word symbols, but they also used them as phonetic signs, so that the sign for water stood for both water (mu) and the sound n. The Phœnicians and Hebrews are supposed to have borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptian hieratic writing; and in the transition the irregular character of the markings of the reed pen on papyrus disappeared and monumental regularity took its place, as nearly all of the early Phœnician and Hebrew writing was in the form of inscriptions on stone and metal. But in this transition the letters did not revert to the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol, but simply became an angular, simplified form of the hieratic, so that the A became a V or caret-like form with a line crossing it.

With the Phœnicians and Hebrews the signs were never used for word signs, but for syllabic (or letter) forms, so that with them N was simply a phonetic sign (plus variable vowel accompaniments).

This alphabet was used by the Phœnicians, Hebrews, Moabites and other Semitic inhabitants of Palestine. It is supposed to have been carried by the Phœnicians to Greece, and possibly to countries farther west, but until investigation throws further light upon the subject it is well to suppose that all the other countries of Europe {209} received their alphabets from Greece, so that, virtually, all the alphabets of Europe—Latin, English, German and Russian-are simply modifications of the Greek (see the succeeding specimens in the Larousse Dictionary page). The Greek alphabet was modified in two ways: first, in the monumental form it became more regular—more right-angled—than the Phœnician; secondly, in the manuscript it became much more irregular—cursive in general, with angles not at right angles (see cursive examples, third row of Larousse Dictionary page)—so that in some third century manuscripts there is as much irregularity as in the Egyptian. This character, however, is more apt to be found in the late Greek manuscripts—that is, those written during the Christian era—than in classic Greek manuscripts where simplicity and regularity prevail. It is particularly interesting to the printer to realize this fact: for when he sees a difference in European lettering—as, for instance, the difference between Russian and German text on the one hand, and English on the other—he must remember that Russian and German are outgrowths of the late Greek or ornamental lettering; while English, Italian, Spanish and French are the outgrowths of the simpler classical Greek forms. To distinguish the two we have called the first (most of which is irregular) Gothic, the second (which is generally regular) Latin. But many an irregular manuscript was written by other than Gothic scribes, and there are some Latin manuscripts that are as irregular as the Gothic.

No matter how a letter may vary in ornamentation in a German, Russian, or English book, it is an outcome {210} of a Greek original. In the Russian, in one or two cases, a sign is a compound of two Greek letters, but in English each letter has its Greek prototype. Now anyone who stops to think will notice that monumental letters on stone are about the same in all countries. (The letters on Gothic brasses, however, are dissimilar to the usual monumental letters.) For the monumental letter is usually made by measuring, as in the first Bauernfeind alphabet, and is cut by an ordinary workman who follows a pattern, which should be simple. Therefore, an A is nearly always two oblique uprights and one horizontal crosspiece, like the sixth Larousse example. The two uprights are not always at the same angle, but they are nearly always oblique, though one may be very near the perpendicular. The crosspiece is sometimes oblique, but rarely at an angle greater than fifteen degrees. So a monument erected in Greece 600 B. C., one in Rome 60 B. C., one in Italy in 1400 A. D., and one in Paris today, have virtually the same letter A upon them as one written in Paris today, and a child who had just learned its letters could recognize it in each.

It must not be expected that in a short treatise of this kind we can cover the whole field of paleography, but our few notes on the subject may indicate to some readers a line of study that will repay anyone who undertakes it. The easiest method is to examine manuscripts of Bible text, where the subject matter is pretty well known, and, following the different styles of writing, acquaint oneself with the development of writing in different centuries and in different countries. A valuable handbook giving facsimiles of many Bible pages is “Bible Illustrations,” published by Henry Frowde, New York—it costs but $1.

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SOMMAIRE Headpiece for a French periodical.