Maya, were supplied by imitating the Maya sign for b; and it is a curious fact that while the Phœnician legends claim that Taaut invented the art of writing, yet they tell us that Taaut made records, and "delivered them to his successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris, the Egyptian god), the inventor of the three letters." Did these three letters include the d and r, which they did not receive from the Atlantean alphabet, as represented to us by the Maya alphabet?
In the alphabetical table which we herewith append we have represented the sign V, or vau, or f, by the Maya sign for U. "In the present so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac, Sabæic, Palmyrenic, and some other kindred writings, the vau takes the place of F, and indicates the sounds of v and u. F occurs in the same place also on the Idalian tablet of Cyprus, in Lycian, also in Tuarik (Berber), and some other writings." ("American Cyclopædia," art. F.)
Since writing the above, I find in the "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society" for December, 1880, p. 154, an interesting article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian. I quote:
"It is astonishing to notice that while Landa's first B is, according to Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the human leg.
Still more surprising is it that the H of Landa's alphabet is a tie of cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord.… But the most striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their precisely like Landa's alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable coincidence between Landa's and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way, the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it. Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed Mexican symbol for a day or sun.
