Canon Taylor admits that if, among the objections raised by Professor Lagarde, that based on the want of adequate resemblance between the Semitic letters and the hieratic forms can be sustained, M. de Rougé's theory falls to the ground. The Canon, a staunch, although perfectly candid, supporter of that theory, very properly lays stress on the tendency of things borrowed to partake of the character of the borrower. That they are borrowed at all implies a certain adaptableness in them which permits modification of type, especially when the writing has to be inscribed on another kind of material. The early hieratic writing was traced on papyrus with a soft reed-stump, while the Semitic was cut upon a stone with a chisel, to the loss of flowing lines and curves. "Looking broadly at the two scripts, Hieratic and Moabite, we see in the first place that the Semitic writing is distinguished by greater symmetry and greater simplicity. The letters have become more regular and uniform: more angular, more firm, and more erect; the differences in relative size have diminished; the complicated and difficult characters especially being straightened or curtailed." (History of the Alphabet, i. 125.) Summing up the several objections, of which only the more important have been noted here, Canon Taylor, amending nothing in the recent reprint of his book, remains satisfied as to the soundness of M. de Rougé's theory. "Not only is it on a priori grounds the probable solution, not only does it agree with the ancient tradition, not only does it supply a possible and reasonable explanation of the facts, not only is it confirmed by all sorts of curious coincidences, but no objection has been urged against it to which a sufficient answer cannot be found. If we reject M. de Rougé's explanation of the origin of the alphabet, there is practically no rival theory on which to fall back. There are only three other possible sources, none of which can, at present, be regarded in any higher light than as a mere guess. If the Semitic letters were not derived from Egypt they must have been invented by the Phœnicians, or they must have been developed either out of the Hittite hieroglyphics, or out of one of the cuneiform syllabaries." (Ib., p. 130.) The possible relation of the still undeciphered Hittite hieroglyphs to other scripts will have reference presently, and perhaps Deecke's theory of the derivation of the Phœnician from the Assyrian cuneiform has some measure of truth in it. For cuneiform appears to be essentially a Semitic script, and the Phœnicians in their contact with other Semitic peoples would, it may be assumed, have retained and adapted some, if not all, of the cuneiform characters long before they became familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphic or hieratic. Granting, however, all that the upholders of M. de Rougé's theory may demand, their inference as to the direct connection between the Greek and other alphabets and the Phœnician alphabet is not necessarily to be accepted. On this question of relation new and important light is thrown by recent discoveries, whose significance will be dealt with in the following section.
CHAPTER IX
THE CRETAN AND ALLIED SCRIPTS
When treating of the sources whence civilisation flowed westward centuries before Greece and Rome appear, the historian turns to the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates. For Egypt and Chaldea have meant so much to us all in our search after the chief influences on man's intellectual and spiritual history, and this with increasing warrant, because the more widely investigation is pushed, the more venerable is the past of both countries found to have been. In the case of Babylon we have seen that the art of writing—that index of culture—had passed the pictographic stage long before eight thousand years ago, while the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which probably came in with the dynasties, and therefore date from the reign of Menes, the first historical king, are some thirteen hundred years later, so far as their use in the Nile Valley is concerned. Hence the Babylonian script carries the palm in point of age. Fortunately the records of both these ancient civilisations are fairly continuous, of Babylonia to the downfall of the empire, and of Egypt to the present time. Assessing the contributions of each to human progress, the verdict appears to be in favour of Babylonia, and "we now know that, high as was the development of Egyptian civilisation in certain directions, it was by no means the fertile mother of other civilisations. All modern writers are agreed that religious cults and national customs are exactly what the Greeks did not borrow from Egypt, any more than the Hebrews borrowed thence their religion, or the Phœnicians their commerce." (Mr. Percy Gardner's New Chapters in Greek History, p. 193.) But if Egypt was no "house of bondage" to Israel, it has been the enslaver of Christendom. It fettered a faith, which had flourished in the freedom of the spirit, with Trinitarianism, Mariolatry, and Monasticism. Out of one or another of its triads emerged the dogma of the Christian Trinity, and in the child Horus, seated in the lap of Isis, we see the profound significance of the words, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." The obelisk that fronts St. Peter's at Rome symbolises the historical fact that approach to the Christian Church is through the pronaos of the Egyptian temple.
Explorations in Greece and the surrounding archipelago within the last few years have brought to light a third venerable centre of culture. About thirty years ago Dr. Schliemann, digging in prehistoric soil, believed that he had found the palace of Odysseus and the towers of Ilios. "The bones of Agamemnon are a show." The world laughed at him, but, if it takes a more sober view of his discoveries than Schliemann did, it has come to recognise their value and to prosecute his work. The remarkable result of these discoveries is, in the words of Mr. D. G. Hogarth, to show that "man in Hellas was more highly civilised before history than when history begins to record his state; and there existed human society in the Hellenic area, organised and productive, to a period so remote that its origins were more distant from the age of Pericles than that age is from our own. We have probably to deal with a total period of civilisation in the Ægean not much shorter than in the Nile Valley." (Authority and Archæology, p. 230.) The general subject cannot be pursued here, and we have to keep to the narrower track opened up within the past five years in the island of Crete by Mr. Arthur J. Evans. His discoveries there establish (1) the fact of an indigenous culture, and (2) of an active intercourse between Crete and Greece, Egypt, Syria, and other countries centuries before the Phœnicians launched their craft upon the midland sea and trafficked with Cypriote and Cretan, or sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Full accounts of Mr. Evans's important work have for the most part been contributed by him from time to time to the memoirs of learned societies, but no statement in popular form has yet appeared. What now follows will therefore be in large degree an abstract of his paper on "Primitive Pictographs and a Præ-Phœnician Script from Crete and the Peloponnese," published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xiv., Part II., 1894, pp.270-372, and reprinted under the title Cretan Pictographs, 1895.
Fig. 55.—Vase with incised Characters (Crete)