hardly be questioned that when these pictures were first used
calligraphically they were meant to represent the idea of a bird
or animal. In other words, the first stage of picture-writing did
not go beyond the mere representation of an eagle by the picture
of an eagle. But this, obviously, would confine the presentation
of ideas within very narrow limits. In due course some inventive
genius conceived the thought of symbolizing a picture. To him the
outline of an eagle might represent not merely an actual bird,
but the thought of strength, of courage, or of swift progress.
Such a use of symbols obviously extends the range of utility of a
nascent art of writing. Then in due course some wonderful
psychologist--or perhaps the joint efforts of many generations of
psychologists--made the astounding discovery that the human
voice, which seems to flow on in an unbroken stream of endlessly
varied modulations and intonations, may really be analyzed into a
comparatively limited number of component sounds--into a few
hundreds of syllables. That wonderful idea conceived, it was only
a matter of time until it would occur to some other enterprising
genius that by selecting an arbitrary symbol to represent each
one of these elementary sounds it would be possible to make a
written record of the words of human speech which could be
reproduced--rephonated--by some one who had never heard the words
and did not know in advance what this written record contained.
This, of course, is what every child learns to do now in the
primer class, but we may feel assured that such an idea never
occurred to any human being until the peculiar forms of
pictographic writing just referred to had been practised for many
centuries. Yet, as we have said, some genius of prehistoric Egypt
conceived the idea and put it into practical execution, and the
hieroglyphic writing of which the Egyptians were in full
possession at the very beginning of what we term the historical
period made use of this phonetic system along with the
ideographic system already described.

So fond were the Egyptians of their pictorial symbols used
ideographically that they clung to them persistently throughout
the entire period of Egyptian history. They used symbols as
phonetic equivalents very frequently, but they never learned to
depend upon them exclusively. The scribe always interspersed his
phonetic signs with some other signs intended as graphic aids.
After spelling a word out in full, he added a picture, sometimes
even two or three pictures, representative of the individual
thing, or at least of the type of thing to which the word
belongs. Two or three illustrations will make this clear.

Thus qeften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a
monkey is added as a determinative; second, qenu, cavalry, after
being spelled, is made unequivocal by the introduction of a
picture of a horse; third, temati, wings, though spelled
elaborately, has pictures of wings added; and fourth, tatu,
quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of a quadruped,
and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual determinative
of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the plural
number.

It must not be supposed, however, that it was a mere whim which
led the Egyptians to the use of this system of determinatives.
There was sound reason back of it. It amounted to no more than
the expedient we adopt when we spell "to," "two," or "too," in
indication of a single sound with three different meanings. The
Egyptian language abounds in words having more than one meaning,
and in writing these it is obvious that some means of distinction
is desirable. The same thing occurs even more frequently in the
Chinese language, which is monosyllabic. The Chinese adopt a more
clumsy expedient, supplying a different symbol for each of the
meanings of a syllable; so that while the actual word-sounds of
their speech are only a few hundreds in number, the characters of
their written language mount high into the thousands.


BABYLONIAN WRITING

While the civilization of the Nile Valley was developing this
extraordinary system of hieroglyphics, the inhabitants of
Babylonia were practising the art of writing along somewhat
different lines. It is certain that they began with
picture-making, and that in due course they advanced to the
development of the syllabary; but, unlike their Egyptian cousins,
the men of Babylonia saw fit to discard the old system when they
had perfected a better one.[5] So at a very early day their
writing--as revealed to us now through the recent
excavations--had ceased to have that pictorial aspect which
distinguishes the Egyptian script. What had originally been
pictures of objects--fish, houses, and the like--had come to be
represented by mere aggregations of wedge-shaped marks. As the
writing of the Babvlonians was chiefly inscribed on soft clay,
the adaptation of this wedge-shaped mark in lieu of an ordinary
line was probably a mere matter of convenience, since the
sharp-cornered implement used in making the inscription naturally
made a wedge-shaped impression in the clay. That, however, is a
detail. The essential thing is that the Babylonian had so fully
analyzed the speech-sounds that he felt entire confidence in
them, and having selected a sufficient number of conventional
characters--each made up of wedge-shaped lines--to represent all
the phonetic sounds of his language, spelled the words out in
syllables and to some extent dispensed with the determinative
signs which, as we have seen, played so prominent a part in the
Egyptian writing. His cousins the Assyrians used habitually a
system of writing the foundation of which was an elaborate
phonetic syllabary; a system, therefore, far removed from the old


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