| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/storyofalphabet00egeorich |
Do you know your A B C’s? Each Letter Character Has a History and aReason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin andSignificance of the Alphabet?
Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed to thealphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions such as themaking of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the axle, and even ourmodern marvelous applications of steam and electricity pale intoinsignificance when compared with the power of the alphabet. Simple asit now appears after the accustomed use of ages, it can be accounted notonly the most difficult, but also the most fruitful of all theachievements of the human intellect.
Man lived by “bread alone” and without the alphabet untold ages, andwith a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000 years. Soimportant and wonderful was this step deemed by those who lived nearerthe time of its inception—in the time before the wonder of itsextraordinary powers had been blunted by long possession and commonuse—that its invention, as well as that of writing, was invariablyattributed to divine origin.
Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological ones,and thus the science of ancient handwriting, paleography, came intoexistence. In the last hundred and twenty-five year