As a specimen of antiquity in language and writing, I believe I may venture to say that this book is unique of its kind.
The writing suggests an observation which may be of great importance.
The Greeks know and acknowledge that their writing was not their own invention. They attribute the introduction of it to Kadmus, a Phenician. The names of their oldest letters, from Alpha to Tau, agree so exactly with the names of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with which the Phenician will have been nearly connected, that we cannot doubt that the Hebrew was the origin of the Phenician. But the form of their letters differs so entirely from that of the Phenician and Hebrew writing, that in that particular no connection can be thought of between them. Whence, then, have the Greeks derived the form of their letters?
From “thet bok thêra Adela folstar” (“The Book of Adela’s Followers”) we learn that in the time when Kadmus is said to have lived, about sixteen centuries before Christ, a brisk trade existed between the Frisians and the Phenicians, whom they named Kadhemar, or dwellers on the coast.
The name Kadmus comes too near the word Kadhemar for us not to believe that Kadmus simply meant a Phenician.
Further on we learn that about the same time a priestess of the castle in the island of Walcheren, Min-erva, also called Nyhellenia, had settled in Attica at the head of a Frisian colony, and had founded a castle at Athens. Also, from the accounts written on the walls of Waraburch, that the Finns likewise had a writing of their own—a very troublesome and difficult one to read—and that, therefore, the Tyrians and the Greeks had learned the writing of Frya. By this representation the whole thing explains itself, and it becomes clear whence comes the exterior resemblance between the Greek and the old Fries writing, which Cæsar also remarked among the Gauls; as likewise in what manner the Greeks acquired and retained the names of the Finn and the forms of the Fries writing.
Equally remarkable are the forms of their figures. We usually call our figures Arabian, although they have not the least resemblance to those used by the Arabs. The Arabians did not bring their ciphers from the East, because the Semitic nations used the whole alphabet in writing numbers. The manner of expressing all numbers by ten signs the Arabs learned in the West, though the form was in some measure corresponding with their writing, and was written from left to right, after the Western fashion. Our ciphers seem here to have sprung from the Fries ciphers (siffar), which form had the same origin as the handwriting, and is derived from the lines of the Juul?
The book as it lies before us consists of two parts, differing widely from each other, and of dates very far apart. The writer of the first part calls herself Adela, wife of Apol, chief man of the Linda country. This is continued by her son Adelbrost, and her daughter Apollonia. The first book, running from page 1 to 88, is written by Adela. The following part, from 88 to 94, is begun by Adelbrost and continued by Apollonia. The second book, running from page 94 to 114, is written by Apollonia. Much later, perhaps two hundred and fifty years, a third book is written, from page 114 to 134, by Frethorik; then follows from page 134 to 143, written by his widow, Wiljow; after that from page 144 to 169 by their son, Konereed; and then from page 169 to 192 by their grandson, Beeden. Pages 193 and 194, with which the last part must have begun, are wanting, therefore the writer is unknown. He may probably have been a son of Beeden.
On page 134, Wiljow makes mention of another writing of Adela. These she names “thet bok thêra sanga (thet boek), thêra tellinga,” and “thet Hellênia bok;” and afterwards “tha skrifta fon Adela jeftha Hellênia.”
To fix the date we must start from the year 1256 of our era, when Hiddo overa Linda made the copy, in which he says that it was 3449 years after Atland was sunk. This disappearance of the old land (âldland, âtland) was known by the Greeks, for Plato mentions in his “Timæus,” 24, the disappearance of Atlantis, the position of which was only known as somewhere far beyond the Pillars of Hercules. From this writing it appears that it was land stretching far out to the west of Jutland, of which Heligoland and the islands of North Friesland are the last barren remnants. This event, which occasioned a great dispersion of the Frisian race, became the commencement of a chronological reckoning corresponding with 2193 before Christ, and is known by geologists as the Cimbrian flood.