IV.

On the Origin of Writing.

[Read before the General Meeting of the German Oriental Society at Würzburg, October 3, 1868.]

IF I undertake to submit for renewed investigation to a meeting of highly honoured colleagues the question as to the origin of writing, it is not my intention once more here to discuss before you the origin of alphabetic writing, or of any other fully developed system. I rather propose to treat here the prehistoric beginnings of writing, so far as they may be inferred from the course which their development has taken since their appearance in history, and from other analogies. Only in this sense I beg you will permit me to take a brief survey of what has been revealed to us by historical discoveries about the origin of the systems of writing at present in use. The alphabets proper, it is well known, radiate, notwithstanding all their variety, from but a few centres. We not only know that our European characters are all primarily of Greek and secondarily of Semitic origin, but through Professor Mommsen's researches we also know exactly in what way the Italic alphabets have deve

loped. The Gothic alphabet of Ulfilas is not less of Greek origin than the Cyrillian of the Slavs; nay, even the Runes are undoubtedly a form of development from the same source, having probably come at an early date to the Gauls by way of Massilia, and from them to the Teutons.1 Professor Albrecht Weber has made a Semitic origin of the Indian Devanagari, too, appear very probable, whereby a great number of Asiatic systems of writing are referred to the same source, since not only the indigenous systems of Hindostan and Farther India, such as Bengali, Uriya, Telinga, Tamil, as well as the Burmese and Javanese systems, but also the Tibetan, are offsprings or sister-systems of the Devanagari. The writings of the Mongols, Tunguses, and Manchus, as Klaproth has already observed, are formed out of the Syrian by changing the horizontal into the upright position of the Chinese columns. If we add to these the still preserved characters of the fundamental Semitic alphabet itself in its Hebrew, Ethiopian, Samaritan, Zend or Middle Persian, Syrian, and Arabic branches, and if we further consider that the latter branch has been adopted by the Turks, Persians, Malays, and the Hindustani, we cannot but be astonished at the capability in such a discovery of being diffused from one point. Permit me only, for the sake of completeness, to mention the two youngest and

1 Lauth, on the contrary, assumes the German Runes to have come from the Teutons to the Gauls, and at the same time gives a different and satisfactory explanation of the passage in Tacitus, which has been construed to imply the unacquaintance of the Germans with alphabetic writing, by referring it to a merely epistolary intercourse.

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not least noteworthy scions of our alphabet, which are not borrowed from it, but merely invented in imitation of it from vague report, viz., the writing of the Cherokees, invented by Sequoyah about 1823, and that of the Negroes of the Vei country, dating ten years later, by Doalu Bukere. The two inventions present interesting points of agreement. Both the Indian and the African inventor, by observing the epistolary intercourse of the Europeans, were set to reflect on the possibility of writing their mother tongue; both had an imperfect knowledge of the English alphabet. Neither of them set up an alphabetic, but both a syllabic writing. Sequoyah, indeed, had at first set up, as the Vei writing had, about 200 characters, but subsequently reduced them to 85. Leaving these psychologically interesting phenomena of the most recent times out of the question, of all the modes of writing in use on the whole earth, only the Chinese and the syllabic writing of the Japanese, formed out of it, may be with certainty excluded from the universal descent from the one Semitic alphabet. But the ever-memorable discoveries of the present century have made us acquainted, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs, with a most remarkable antique parallel to the Chinese; in various species of arrow-headed writing with very complete alphabets; in the Assyrian with an intermediate stage between word- and syllabicwriting, promising the most important clues; and by the side of these we have the hieroglyphs of the aborigines of America, being an as yet unsolved though not insolvable problem. Have we thus arrived at a last

and radical variety? Do the three systems of picturewriting of the Egyptians, Chinese, and Americans, the mixed system of the Assyrians, and, finally, the alphabetic writings of the Persians and Semites, offer us at least six independent solutions of the gigantic problem as to the exhibition of our ideas to the eye? Although the time for the final decision of this question has not yet arrived, I cannot forbear stating it as my conviction that such a sixfold origin of the most marvellous art which it was at all possible for man to create appears to me incredible. Nay, from what has in other respects forced itself upon my mind as probable with regard to a primeval intercourse between the entire human race, the diffusion of that art from one common centre seems by no means impossible. The original home of the alphabet destined to such wide dissemination was doubtless Babylon, which, since Professor Böckh, we have known to be the starting-point of the system of weights and measures universally adopted in antiquity, and come down thence to us, and the importance of which to astronomy and mathematics is perhaps not even yet sufficiently appreciated. The names of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are of Chaldean origin; at least the occurrence of the camel as the name of the third letter precludes our thinking of Palestine proper. The Phoenicians may indeed have been the disseminators, but cannot have been the inventors, of the alphabet. Although the connecting links are not yet discovered, according to all analogy hardly any one, considering the close vicinity, will be inclined to be

lieve that the ancient Persian alphabetic writing should have had a second independent origin. But I ask, did this Persian mode of writing originate independently of the varieties of the cuneiform writing connected with it, especially independently of the Assyrian? Should not Egypt have been able to influence Assyrian writing in the earliest time, in the same way as at a later period Assyrian influence on the hieroglyphs becomes perceptible? The similarity of the principle of Semitic writing to that of the hieroglyphics, expressing as these do only the initial consonant of the word represented in the picture, was noticed already by Champollion at an early date.1

On the other hand, the most ancient pictures, which, according to Prof. Oppert, belong to a Scythian or Turanian people, and from which the arrow-headed forms are derived, have in them something that, as regards at least their general impression, reminds one of the ancient Tchuen writing of the Chinese. Considered on the whole, there is no reason why we should think a transmission, at a very early period, of the rudiments of a system of writing from one people and part of the earth to another impossible. Nay, the traces discovered by

1 Already, in his "Lettre à M. Dacier," Champollion expresses himself clearly on this subject. He says, "J'oserai dire plus : il serait possible de retrouver, dans cette ancienne écriture phonétique égyptienne, quelque imparfaite qu'elle soit en elle-même, sinon l'origine, du moins le modèle sur lequel peuvent avoir été calqués les alphabets des peuples de l'Asie occidentale," &c. After dwelling upon the resemblance of the two systems, he arrives at the conclusion, and says: "C'est dire enfin que l'Europe, qui reçut de la vieille Egypte les éléments des sciences et des arts, lui devrait encore l'inappréciable bienfait de l'écriture alphabétique."