; we turn to the Ethiopian q (khua), and we find it
, or as qua,
; while the Phœnician comes still nearer the supposed Maya form in
; the Moab stone was
; the Himyaritic Arabian form became
; the Greek form was
, which graduated into the Roman Q. But a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phœnician alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the q, the Maya cu, which is
. Now, if we apply the Maya rule to this, and discard the outside circle, we have this left,
. In time the curved line would be made straight, and the figure would assume this form,
; the next step would be to make the cross on the straight line, thus,
. One of the ancient Phœnician forms is
. Can all this be accident?
The letter c or g (for the two probably gave the same sound as in the Phœnician) is given in the Maya alphabet as follows, . This would in time be simplified into a figure representing the two sides of a triangle with the apex upward, thus,
. This is precisely the form found by Dr. Schliemann in the ruins of Troy,
. What is the Phœnician form for g, as found on the Moab stone? It is
. The Carthaginian Phœnicians gave it more of a rounded form, thus,
. The hieratic Egyptian figure for g was
; in the earlier Greek form the left limb of the figure was shortened, thus,
; the later Greeks reversed it, and wrote it
; the Romans changed this into
, and it finally became C.
In the Maya we have one sign for p, and another for pp. The first contains a curious figure, precisely like our r laid on its back, . There is, apparently, no r in the Maya alphabet; and the Roman r grew out of the later Phœnician r formed thus,
; it would appear that the earliest Phœnician alphabet did not contain the letter r. But if we now turn to the Phœnician alphabet, we will find one of the curious forms