ANTIQUITY OF WRITING.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2931, 28 April 1891, Page 4

ANTIQUITY OF WRITING.

It would appear that Palestine, or at all events the tribes immediately surrounding it, wen: in close contact with a civilised power which had established trade-routes from the south, and protected them from the attacks of the nomad Dedouin. The part now performed, or supposed to be performed, by Turkey, was performed before the days of Solomon by the princes and merchants of Ma'in. A conclusion of unexpected interest follows this discovery. The Miincans were a literary people : they used an alphabetic system of writing, and set up their inscriptions, not only in their southern homes, but also in their colonies in the north. If their rccorc's really mount back to the age now claimed for ihem—and it is difficult to see where counterarguments are to come from—they will be far older than the oldest known inscription in Phoenician letters. Instead of deriving the Minieatt alphabet from the Phoenician we must derive the Phoenician alphabet from the Minsuan, or from one of the Arabian alphabets of which the Minteati was the mother; instead of seeking in Phccnicia the primitive home of the alphabets of our modern world, we shall have to look for it in Arabia. Canon Isaac Taylor, in his " History of the Alphabet," has already found himself compelled by pahvographic evidence to assign a much earlier date to the alphabet of South Arabia than that which lmd previously been ascribed to it, and the discoveries of Glaser and Hommel show that he was right. . . The discovery of the antiquity of writing among the populations of Arabia cannot fail to influence the views that have been current of late years in regard to the earlier history of the Old Testament. We have hitherto taken it for granted that the tribes i-o whom the Israelites were related were illiterate nomads, and that in Midi an or Edom the invaders of Palestine would have had no opportunity of making acquaintance with books and written records. J>efore the time of Samuel and David it has been •strenuously maintained that letters were unknown in Israel; but such assumptions must now be considerably modified. The ancient Oriental world, even in northern Arabia, was a far more literary one than we havo been accustomed to imagine; and us for Canaan, the country in which the Israelites settled, fought and intermarried, we now have evidence that education was carried in it to a surprisingly high point. In the principal cities of Palestine an active literary correspondence was not only carried on, bur. was maintained by means of a foreign language and an extremely complicated script. There must have been plenty of schools and teachers, as well as of pupils and books.—Professor A. H. Sayce, in " Contemporary Review."