Such is the most probable account of the origin of letters. Tradition variously ascribes their invention to Thoth, an Egyptian god, to Cadmus of Phœnicia, to Odin the supreme deity of the Scandinavians, and to others. Of the varied exports of the Phœnicians, their alphabet was the most precious. Wherever their sails were spread, their letters were made known, and all nations sooner or later profited by this great Semitic invention. In the table on page 87 may be traced a decided resemblance between several of the Phœnician characters and the hieroglyphics in which they originated; also the successive changes by which they were modified in the earlier and later Greek and Latin letters—whence most of our English capitals. (See Taylor’s “The Alphabet.”)
Modes of Writing and Pointing.—As regards the direction in which their writing ran, ancient nations differed. In the Egyptian hieroglyphics there was no established order; but the figures of men and animals, facing the beginning of the lines, often gave a clue to the direction in which they were meant to be read. As a general rule, the Indo-Europeans wrote from left to right, the Semites from right to left. The Laws of Solon and other Greek writings of that period (about 600 B.C.) appeared in lines running alternately from right to left and from left to right, as an ox walks in ploughing; this “ox-turning system” (boustrophedon), however, was soon followed by our present method. The Chinese, Japanese, and Mongols, wrote in columns, which were read from the top of the page, and from right to left. In the ancient Mexican pictographs, similar columns were read from the bottom.
The ancients did not separate sentences, or their subdivisions, with points; but wrote their words together, leaving the meaning to be deciphered from the context. Rings, ovals, or squares, were sometimes drawn around proper names, and words were occasionally separated by some device—a diagonal bar or wedge
, as in ancient Persian inscriptions; or a letter placed on its side, as between the following words: CONJUGI
KARISSIMAE. In a Roman inscription found near Bath, England, a small v occurs after every word: JULIUSvVITALISvFABRI. A peculiar sign was used, in some cases, immediately before the name of a god or of a person.
In the third century B.C., a system of punctuation, devised by Aristophanes, a grammarian of Alexandria, became known to the Greeks. It employed a dot (.), which had the force of our period, colon, or comma, according as it was placed after the top, middle, or bottom of the final word. The better system of modern times was not invented till the sixteenth century.
ANCIENT WRITING MATERIALS.
Stylus and Tablets.—The first writing was done on rocks with sharp-pointed instruments of iron or bronze, to record great events. Next came tracings on bricks of soft clay, afterward sun-dried or baked; and then writing with a metal or ivory stylus on sheets of lead or layers of wax, from which erasures could be made, if needful, with the flattened end of the instrument.