Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/245

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THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET.
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of the p given thus, , a very fair representation of an r lying upon its face. Is it not another remarkable coincidence that the p, in both Maya and Phœnician, should contain this singular sign?

The form of pp in the Maya alphabet is this, . If we are asked, on the principle already indicated, to reduce this to its elements, we would use a figure like this, ; in time the tendency would be to shorten one of these perpendicular lines, thus, ; and this we find is very much like the Phœnician p, . The Greek ph is Φ.

The letter l in the Maya is in two forms; one of these is , the other is . Now, if we again apply the rule which we observed to hold good with the letter m—that is, draw from the inside of the hieroglyph some symbol that will briefly indicate the whole letter—we will have one of two forms, either a right-angled figure formed thus, , or an acute angle formed by joining the two lines which are unconnected, thus, ; and either of these forms brings us quite close to the letter l of the Old World. We find l on the Moab stone thus formed, . The arcnaic Phœnician form of l was , or ; the archaic Hebrew was and ; the hieratic Egyptian was ; the Greek form was —the Roman L.

The Maya letter b is shaped thus, . Now, if we turn to the Phœnician, we find that b is represented by the same crescent-like figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph, but reversed in the direction of the writing, thus, ; while in the archaic Hebrew we have the same crescent figure as in the Maya, turned in the same direction, but accompanied by a line drawn downward, and to the left, thus, ; a similar form is also found in the Phœnician ; and this in the earliest Greek changed into , and in the later Greek into Β. One of the Etruscan signs for b was , while the Pelasgian b was repre-