THE ALPHABET.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4863, 29 October 1894, Page 2

THE ALPHABET.

The following reference to the lecturc'to be repeated at St Matthew's Schoolroom, to-morrow (Tuesday) evening, by tho Uov. A, 0. Yorke, is taken from the Hawke's Buy Herald Although tho weather was cold there was a fair attendance at the Atlieniuum last night, when the Rev. A. C. Yorke delivered a lecture on " Tho Origin of our Alphabet," It was a most instructive and well-reasoned out address displaying unmistakeable signs of long and careful study of the subject on the part of the lecturer. It was illustrated by. reproductions of old alphabets, inscriptions, andEgyptiau writing. After a general view of the subject of alphabetical writing, with geographical and othnolog: ical sallies as literary and statistical fringes, he took his hearers back to tho period when an alphabet was being used in Grceco, ten centuries before the Christian era. This alphabet, as ho in a pleasantly conversational style showed, earno to tho Greeks as aresultofintercourse witli tho Phoenicians, tho groat buyers and sollors and discoverers of markets in those days. Then from- this thcro was a glide to the old Hebrews, with' their " aleph," " belli," " gimel," and " daletli," as the counterparts of the Greek "alpha," "beta," "gamma," and "delta." These again in their Hebrew form, were shown to have originally represented things, as for instance—aleph, an ox; betli, a house; gimel, a camel; daleth, a door; and so on. Chattily descriptive reference was then made to the Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic forms of writing, Cartouches taken from inscriptions, some of them belonging to a period six or seven thousand years before Christ, were shown and explained; and tho principles upon which they were built up wore illustrated, Ho referred to the old theory that the Phoenicians derived their, alphabet from tho Egyptians, and very clearly explained the force of the modern discoveries which went toprove that tho Phoenicians, to whom the civil-' ised world owestlio alphabot, derived it from a.people in Southern Arabia, 1 somo of whose known and translated inscriptions, cut in the rooks, dated back to 7000 years before tho present dfiy, At the,conclusion of the lecture Mr Yorke;thanked those present' for their attendance, and stated that he 1 would likely try to induce them to hear him deliver anothor lecture at ,au early date,