crude pictograph, and in some respects much more developed than
the complicated Egyptian method; yet, after all, a system that
stopped short of perfection by the wide gap that separates the
syllabary from the true alphabet.

A brief analysis of speech sounds will aid us in understanding
the real nature of the syllabary. Let us take for consideration
the consonantal sound represented by the letter b. A moment's
consideration will make it clear that this sound enters into a
large number of syllables. There are, for example, at least
twenty vowel sounds in the English language, not to speak of
certain digraphs; that is to say, each of the important vowels
has from two to six sounds. Each of these vowel sounds may enter
into combination with the b sound alone to form three syllables;
as ba, ab, bal, be, eb, bel, etc. Thus there are at least sixty
b-sound syllables. But this is not the end, for other consonantal
sounds may be associated in the syllables in such combinations as
bad, bed, bar, bark, cab, etc. As each of the other twenty odd
consonantal sounds may enter into similar combinations, it is
obvious that there are several hundreds of fundamental syllables
to be taken into account in any syllabic system of writing. For
each of these syllables a symbol must be set aside and held in
reserve as the representative of that particular sound. A perfect
syllabary, then, would require some hundred or more of symbols to
represent b sounds alone; and since the sounds for c, d, f, and
the rest are equally varied, the entire syllabary would run into
thousands of characters, almost rivalling in complexity the
Chinese system. But in practice the most perfect syllabary, Such
as that of the Babylonians, fell short of this degree of
precision through ignoring the minor shades of sound; just as our
own alphabet is content to represent some thirty vowel sounds by
five letters, ignoring the fact that a, for example, has really
half a dozen distinct phonetic values. By such slurring of sounds
the syllabary is reduced far below its ideal limits; yet even so
it retains three or four hundred characters.

In point of fact, such a work as Professor Delitzsch's Assyrian
Grammar[6] presents signs for three hundred and thirty-four
syllables, together with sundry alternative signs and
determinatives to tax the memory of the would-be reader of
Assyrian. Let us take for example a few of the b sounds. It has
been explained that the basis of the Assyrian written character
is a simple wedge-shaped or arrow-head mark. Variously repeated
and grouped, these marks make up the syllabic characters.

To learn some four hundred such signs as these was the task set,
as an equivalent of learning the a b c's, to any primer class in
old Assyria in the long generations when that land was the
culture Centre of the world. Nor was the task confined to the
natives of Babylonia and Assyria alone. About the fifteenth
century B.C., and probably for a long time before and after that
period, the exceedingly complex syllabary of the Babylonians was
the official means of communication throughout western Asia and
between Asia and Egypt, as we know from the chance discovery of a
collection of letters belonging to the Egyptian king Khun-aten,
preserved at Tel-el-Amarna. In the time of Ramses the Great the
Babylonian writing was in all probability considered by a
majority of the most highly civilized people in the world to be
the most perfect script practicable. Doubtless the average scribe
of the time did not in the least realize the waste of energy
involved in his labors, or ever suspect that there could be any
better way of writing.

Yet the analysis of any one of these hundreds of syllables into
its component phonetic elements--had any one been genius enough
to make such analysis-- ould have given the key to simpler and
better things. But such an analysis was very hard to make, as the
sequel shows. Nor is the utility of such an analysis
self-evident, as the experience of the Egyptians proved. The
vowel sound is so intimately linked with the consonant--the
con-sonant, implying this intimate relation in its very
name--that it seemed extremely difficult to give it individual
recognition. To set off the mere labial beginning of the sound by
itself, and to recognize it as an all-essential element of
phonation, was the feat at which human intelligence so long
balked. The germ of great things lay in that analysis. It was a
process of simplification, and all art development is from the
complex to the simple. Unfortunately, however, it did not seem a
simplification, but rather quite the reverse. We may well suppose
that the idea of wresting from the syllabary its secret of
consonants and vowels, and giving to each consonantal sound a
distinct sign, seemed a most cumbersome and embarrassing
complication to the ancient scholars--that is to say, after the
time arrived when any one gave such an idea expression. We can
imagine them saying: "You will oblige us to use four signs
instead of one to write such an elementary syllable as 'bard,'
for example. Out upon such endless perplexity!" Nor is such a
suggestion purely gratuitous, for it is an historical fact that
the old syllabary continued to be used in Babylon hundreds of
years after the alphabetical system had been introduced.[7]
Custom is everything in establishing our prejudices. The Japanese
to-day rebel against the introduction of an alphabet, thinking it
ambiguous.

Yet, in the end, conservatism always yields, and so it was with
opposition to the alphabet. Once the idea of the consonant had
been firmly grasped, the old syllabary was doomed, though
generations of time might be required to complete the
obsequies--generations of time and the influence of a new nation.
We have now to inquire how and by whom this advance was made.


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