. The Greek alphabet used at Corinth, one of the earliest Phœnician colonies in Hellas, must have been derived from a type of the Semitic alphabet more archaic than that which appears on the Moabite Stone ([see p. 147]). Now, in the old Corinthian alphabet the letter beta is not closed, but open,
, its form being almost identical with the hieratic prototype.
h. The letter he corresponds to the "mæander" and the "knotted cord." The hieratic forms show that the former must be taken as the prototype. In the Papyrus Prisse there are two of this character; one, which is comparatively rare, is open at the bottom,
, and corresponds to the Moabite
. It is much more usual, however, to find the character completely closed. The name of the Semitic letter, which is generally supposed to mean a "window," would indicate that the previous form of the letter agreed with the more usual hieratic trace. This conjecture is curiously confirmed by the evidence afforded by the early inscriptions of Corinth, which, as we have seen in the case of beta, occasionally preserve alphabetic forms of a more archaic type than those found on the Moabite Stone itself. Now, in the primitive alphabet of Corinth we find, instead of the usual form of epsilon, a closed character
which is nearly identical with the form of the "mæander," most usual in the Papyrus Prisse. (Taylor, i. pp. 102, 114.)