GENEALOGY OF THE ALPHABET
| Phœnician. |  | Aramean. |  | Hebrew. Syriac. Mongolian. Arabic. Pehlevi. Armenian. Georgian. | ||||
| Sabæan. |  | Ethiopic. | Amharic. | |||||
| Indian. |  | Pali. | | Burmese. Siamese. Javanese. Singalese. Corean. | ||||
| Nagari. | | Tibetan. Kashmiri. Gujarati. Marathi. Bengali. Malayan. | ||||||
| Dravidian. |  | Tamil. Telugu. Canarese. | ||||||
| Hellenic. | | Greek. Latin. Russian. Coptic. | ||||||
This table, based on the studies of Canon Isaac Taylor, is taken from Clodd’s “Story of the Alphabet.”
CHAPTER II
Writing Materials
As already indicated, the writing materials in use in different places and at different times have varied greatly. Obviously anything capable of receiving an impression or bearing a mark of any kind may be used as material for receiving records or bearing communications.
The surface of a stone, a bone, or a shell, a flat piece of wood, bark or leaf of a tree, a plate of metal, the facet of a gem, any one of a thousand things can be used and has been used for this purpose. The Egyptians and Greeks were in the habit of using the fragments of broken pottery for their less important records. The materials which have been most used, however, have been the Assyrian clay tablet, which has been already described, papyrus, vellum, and paper.