Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/241

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THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET.
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and ; now, if we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures, the essential characteristic found in each is the circle, in the first case pendant from the hieroglyph; in the other, in the centre of the lower part of it. And that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyph, and used alone, as in the case of the m, is proved by the very sign used at the foot of Landa's alphabet, which is, . Landa calls this ma, me, or mo; it is probably the latter, and in it we have the circle detached from the hieroglyph.

We find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle, or a dot within a circle, repeated in the Phœnician forms for o, thus, and , and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; in the Runic we have the circle in the circle; in one form of the Greek o the dot was placed along-side of the circle instead of below it, as in the Maya.

Are these another set of coincidences?

Take another letter:

The letter n of the Maya alphabet is represented by this siirn, itself probably a simplification of some more ornate form, . This is something like our letter S, but quite unlike our N. But let us examine into the pedigree of our n. We find in the archaic Ethiopian, a language as old as the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is ; in archaic Phœnician it comes still closer to the S shape, thus, , or in this form, ; we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya n; in Troy this form was found, . The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phœnicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became ; then it passed into : the archaic Greek form is ; the later Greeks made , from which it passed into the present form, N. All these forms seem to be representations of a serpent; we turn to the