II
Alphabetic Letters in Pre-dynastic and Early-Dynastic Egypt and Theories thereon
But fully-fledged "Phœnician" alphabetic letters of a period much earlier than these, and supposed to be several thousand years earlier than the "Semitic" and Cadmean Phœnician are found in Egypt, "The Land of Ham," with which the Hebrews so intimately associated the Phœnicians. Professor (now Sir Flinders) Petrie about twenty-six years ago unearthed at the royal tombs of Menes and his First Dynasty at Abydos in Upper Egypt the fully-formed letters of the complete Phœnician alphabet mostly in the Aryan or non-reversed Cadmean Phœnician style (see Plates I and II), cut upon Pre-dynastic and Early-Dynastic baked pottery.[1] They were all, with a few exceptions, isolated letters and did not form continuous writing, and hence were supposed to be merely conventional "owner's marks" or "signaries" like masons' marks. But now they appear to have been presumably the names of the owners or makers in syllabic form, in view of our discovery that Menes and some, if not all, of the Pre-dynastic kings were Sumero-Phœnicians and Aryans in race,[2] and that the alphabetic letters are derived from Sumerian "syllabic" writing.
Besides these early alphabetic letters in Early Egypt, it had long been known that the Ancient Egyptians from the
- ↑ PA. Pl. II-IV.
- ↑ These alphabetic marks in the Pre-dynastic period "were all marked by the owner, being cut into the finished [baked?] pot. … It is seldom that two signs are found together. … The First Dynasty signs are also cut in pottery, but more firmly and sometimes mixed with regular hieroglyphs. Groups of two or three signs are not uncommon." PA. 10.
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