and to the mat
. The peoples of the Euphrates stopped half way, and admitted actual letters for the vowel sounds a, i and u only[114]."
In the process of evolution, metaphor and analogy of course played a large part, as in the evolution of language itself. Thus a lion might stand both for the animal and for courage, and so on. The first essays in phonetics took somewhat the form of a modern rebus, thus:
= khau = sieve,
= pu = mat;
= ru = mouth, whence