THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND
The Egypt Exploration Fund is arranging a series of lectures to be given in the rooms of the Royal Society, Burlington House (by the kind permission of the President and Council). The lectures are primarily for the benefit of its own members and subscribers, but others will be admitted by tickets, which can be obtained gratis by application to the Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 13 Tavistock Square, W.C.1. The first of these lectures was delivered on Friday, November 21st, at 8.30 p.m. The chair was taken by Professor Percy G. Newberry, and the lecture, entitled "The Egyptian Origin of the Alphabet," was given by Mr. T. Eric Peet, who urged the view that both the North Semitic and South Semitic alphabets, from which together the Greek alphabet was derived, were derived in their turn from a common source which was taken, on the acrophonic principle, from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This argument is largely based on the inscriptions discovered in 1905 at Serâbît-el-Khâdim, in the Sinai peninsula, by an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The fund has recently published a pamphlet dealing with its aims and accomplishments, in which it is pointed out that Egyptology to-day demands more precise and scientific methods than were formerly employed, and that, as Egypt is now a protectorate of the British Empire, the responsibility for safeguarding the records of its history must be accepted by this country in a fuller measure than heretofore.