Fig. 1286.—Grave creek stone.
Copy No. 3, now Fig. 1286, was used by Monsieur Jomard at Paris, 1843.
From this copy M. Jomard considered the letters to be Lybian, a language derived from the Phenician. At the right of the upper line one is omitted and another bears no resemblance to the original. The fifth character of the second line is equally defective and objectionable. The second, fifth, and sixth of the lower line are little better. In the rude profile of a human face beneath an eye has been introduced and the slender cross lines attached to it have assumed the proportions of a dagger or sword. For the linguist or ethnologist this copy is entirely worthless.
Fig. 1287.—Grave creek stone.
Copy No. 4, now Fig. 1287, was sent to Prof. Rafn, Copenhagen, 1843.
This is so imperfect and has so many additions that it is little better than a burlesque upon the original. No one will be surprised that the learned Danish antiquarian could find in it no resemblance to the Runic, with which he was thoroughly familiar.
A mere collocation of letters from various alphabets is not an alphabet. Words can not be formed or ideas communicated by that artifice. When a people adopts the alphabetical signs of another it adopts the general style of the characters and more often the characters in detail. Such signs had already an arrangement into syllables and words which had a vocalic validity as well as known significance. A jumble of letters from a variety of alphabets bears internal evidence that the manipulator did not have an intelligent meaning to convey by them, and did not comprehend the languages from which the letters were selected. In the case of the Grave creek inscription the futile attempts to extract a meaning from it on the theory that it belongs to an intelligent alphabetic system show that it holds no such place. If it is genuine it must be treated as pictorial and ideographic, unless, indeed, it is cryptographic, which is not indicated.