The alphabet; an account of the origin and development of letters

by Isaac Taylor

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 ...but has been shown by Halevy to be untenable on philological grounds. The whole difficulty however disappears if we go to the Hieratic prototype, in which it is easy to detect a representation of the head, neck, body, tail, and saddle of a camel, in the characteristic recumbent posture. Placing side by side the prototype from the Papyrus Prisse and a sketch of a recumbent camel, O ifti the difficulty which has perplexed so many eminent scholars vanishes at once, while a curious incidental confirmation of de Rouge's theory is supplied. Daleth means 'a door,' not the aperture itself, which is pethach, but the 'leaf of a door,' or the moveable covering of the aperture. The triangular form of the character suggests the curtain hung before the opening of a tent rather than the wooden quadrangular door of a house. He is a word of less certain meaning. It is usually referred to a Semitic root meaning 'behold,' 'look,' and is supposed to have denoted a 'window.' The Moabite letter, however, does not lend much support to this explanation. The normal closed form of the Hieratic prototype, which is retained in the Carian letter g, and in the ancient Corinthian epsilon, may suggest that the primitive form of the Semitic letter was LX1, which would sufficiently explain the usual translation of the name. Vau denotes a 'nail' or 'peg'; rather a hook driven into a wall for hanging things, than a tent-peg. The word is used in the Bible to designate the 'hooks' for the curtains of the tabernacle (Exodus xxvi. 32). The form of the primitive letter ( supports this explanation. Zayin has been supposed to mean a 'sickle,' but is more probably to be connected with the Syriac zaino, a word which corresponds to the Greek panoplia, and denotes 'weapons,' offensive and defensive, or ...

84 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2013

About the author

Isaac Taylor was an English philosophical and historical writer, artist, and inventor.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.