Book Description

Excerpt from An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography Although the task which lies before us of investigating the growth and changes of Greek and Latin palaeography does not require us to deal with any form of writing till long after the alphabets of Greece and Rome had assumed their final shapes, yet a brief sketch of the developement of those alphabets, as far as it is known, forms a natural introduction to the subject. The alphabet which we use at the present day is directly derived from the Roman alphabet; the Roman, from a local form of the Greek; the Greek, from the Phoenician. Whence the Phoenician alphabet was derived we are not even yet in a position to declare. The ingenious theory set forth, in 1859, by the French Egyptologist de Rouge of its descent from the ancient cursive form of Egyptian hieratic writing, which had much to recommend it, and which for a time received acceptance, must now be put aside, in accordance with recent research. Until the alphabetic systems Of Crete and Cyprus and other quarters of the Mediterranean shall have been solved, we must be content to remain in ignorance of the actual materials out of which the Phoenicians constructed their letters. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."