[XIV]
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PALÆOGRAPHY
Palæography is defined as "that department of historical science which treats of ancient writing." "In the study of handwriting," it has been said, "it is difficult to exaggerate the great and enduring influence which the character of the material employed for receiving script has had upon the formation of the letters." Whether the material was clay, waxen surface, or papyrus, largely determined the formation of the letters. In the broad sense in which it is used in our discussion the term applies, not only to all written records whether upon rolls or codices and without regard to the material, or their form and content, but also includes epigraphy which has to do with inscriptions on monuments or seals, and numismatics which, specifically, designates the inscriptions of coins.
Palæography is both an art and a science. Modern penmanship, while commonly regarded as more of an art than a science, is, in reality, less an art than a science. Indeed, in a broad and a not unwarranted generalization, present-day handwriting is seldom either an art or a science, but rather a desultory and questionable though necessary accomplishment. The invention of the typewriter has not added, in general, to the achievements of penmanship. Penmanship is one of the almost universally neglected sciences of modern times. Unquestionably, if there were more of the "science" of penmanship taught and practiced, and more time and attention devoted to its study and its cultivation, we would have more of the art of handwriting to delight our esthetic sensibilities.
The science of palæography, being related fundamentally to language, links us with prehistoric times. Writing is crystallized speech in visible record, as the phonographic "record" is speech in audible perpetuity. (The author once had the great privilege of hearing the voice of Mr. Gladstone in a thrilling address before the House of Lords;—it was a phonographic "record.") Speech is the most distinguishing of all man's characteristics;—long held to be such. Mr. Huxley once likened human speech to the "Alps or Andes—high over everything else in animal life." Intelligent speech is the broadest line of cleavage to a tenable evolutionary hypothesis of man's origin and development. The capacity of speech at once and forever differentiates man from, and elevates him to, a plane above all other of the manifold creations of God. While speech must be recognized as the most distinguishing faculty of man, writing may be considered the noblest achievement of man. Handwriting may also be regarded the vehicle of expressing and the mode of treasuring and communicating to distant times and places the conceptions of the mind by means of symbols—symbols representing objects or sounds and thus ideas in all their wide applications.
Concerning the genesis and the development of handwriting (and handwriting is a development—a development from very rudimentary beginnings) Professor Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., says: "The use of writing is to put something before the eye in such a way that its meaning may be known at a glance, and the earliest way of doing this was by a picture. Picture-writing was thus used for many ages, and is still found among savage races in all parts of the globe. On rocks, stone, slabs, trees, and tombs, pictures were employed to record an event or tell some message. In course of time, instead of this tedious mode, men learned to write signs for certain words or sounds. Then the next step was to separate the words into letters; and so arose alphabets. The shape of the letters of the alphabet is thought by some to bear traces of the early picture writing."[38] The late Wm. Frost Bishop, D.D., affirms with more of positiveness: "Every letter was at first a picture and perhaps it is but a return to first principles when the children are taught to say, 'O was an Orange, S was a Swan, B was a Butterfly'; or when the alphabet invokes the aid of both pictures and poetry,
'A was an Archer, who shot at a frog;
B was a Butcher, who had a great dog.'"
And the eminent Egyptologist, M. Emmanuel De Roget, has shown from sources antedating the Shepherd Kings in Egypt that the letters of the mother alphabet were but modifications of the earliest Hieratic or priestly script as these were modifications of the picture-writing upon the oldest monuments of Egypt. The alphabets of all languages are thus traced back, step by step, to the pictured hieroglyphs from which they have all come. The alphabets of the world are akin, as they all had one common parentage in the picture-writing of the Egyptians.
There have been developed in the long course of time—how long can only be approximately determined—three somewhat independent though not unrelated sources of literature whence all written language has been evolved. These three sources emerge in history, whatever the genesis and however the process, respectively, in the hieroglyphic, the cuneiform, and the alphabetic writings.
(1) The hieroglyphic writing. In Egypt, and probably in Accadia, the hieroglyphic or picture-writing was the earliest mode of expressing ideas. The new world, also, presents a similar phenomenon, as some of the tribes of the ancient Toltecs of Mexico developed a system of picture-writing resembling somewhat that of North American Indians and akin to the ancient hieroglyphs. With Egyptians this term means, literally, the "sacred" writings. The late Amelia B. Edwards, an Egyptologist of recent years, defines the hieroglyphic or "ideographic" writing as "pictures of objects arranged for the purpose of conveying sequences of ideas, but without any of the connecting links which language supplies." And of picture-writing—in recognition of the universal limitations of this earliest form of written records—one connected with the British Museum says, further: "Picture-writing, moreover, could only place images and symbols side by side, and leave the connection between them to be guessed at or imagined; it could neither show the distinction between the different parts of speech, nor note the flections and tenses of the verbs and the number and case of the nouns, nor fill up the gaps of thought with adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, etc."[39] The earliest literature of Egypt was recorded in this picture-writing wherein symbols and delineations were cut into or written on stone, as on the obelisks; or in wood, as in the mummy-cases; or were written or painted on papyrus, as in "The Book of the Dead," deposited with the mummies of royal personages in their entombment. Some of these papyri are of very great age. One of these, The Prisse Papyrus, so named from its procurer, is held to be the oldest papyrus in existence. It was found near the middle of the last century in a Theban tomb of the eleventh dynasty and is thus older by centuries than the time of Moses and perhaps antedates the time of Abraham. This Papyrus consists of eighteen pages of beautiful hieratic (priestly) writing and is treasured in the National Library at Paris.