Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 13

XII
FOREWORD
These are all separate inventions, great inventions no doubt, but not so great as to be unique. It is very interesting to note how close to each other were the mental processes by which the three great systems were built up.
Then he clears the syllabaries out of the way, poor half and half things derived from more complicated scripts without reaching true simplicity.
Finally he attacks the thorny problem of the real alphabet. He bids us give up our hope that the key is in the Sinaitic script, but will not say more than that alphabet-making was in the air in Syria during the first half of the second millennium B.C. We must commend his selfrestraint in not leading us beyond the edge of solid ground.
The writings of Asia, either ideographic or alphabetic, amount to about a hundred, another hundred fills the Indian world and its derivatives. No one has explored this last labyrinth as deeply as our author-I am not sure that many would wish to do so.
The climax is the story of the Greek alphabet and its descendants, some fifty scripts, the part of the tale which comes nearest to us. But it has its surprises, we have to accept that our Latin alphabet would not be what it is if it had been derived directly from western Greek: to those like me who dislike the Etruscans, it is a grief that we should have got our alphabet through them; for myself I think it would have been better without their share in it. To the Etruscans also, through small neighbouring peoples, it seems that we northern Teutons owed our runic writing: for many years scholars derived it alternately from Greek and from Latin-now the strife is over and we can happily credit the Raetians or some such tribe with teaching our ancestors to write.
Here is the story duly enlightened by a great series of illustrations. We owe much to the publishers for their liberality in this respect. Taylor had to manage with some hundred pictures, they have allowed us generous measure, nearly one thousand illustrations grouped in over two hundred and fifty "figures." These enable us to follow the fascinating story in all its ramifications as set out so clearly and diligently by our author. At last we have in English a worthy successor to Isaac Taylor.