The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet, Waddell
Col. 6 gives the Phrygian form of the Cadmean letters from "the tomb of Midas," usually dates to about the eighth or seventh century BC, but certainly much earlier. its early date for an eastern alphabet is evidenced by the letter F and the early forms for U, P, and G.[1] [1] Cp. TA. 2, 109. Col. 7 gives the Carian. The Carians or Karians were a famous seafaring people and military mercenaries of western Asia Minor and occupied the greater part of Ionia there before the arrival of the Greeks. They were presumably a colony of Phœnicians. An ancient name for Caria was " Phœnice,"[1] which I have shown was a common name for Phœnician colonies all over the Mediterranean.[2] Whilst the chief mountain in Caria was names Mt. Phœnix.[3] The Tyrian Phœnicians assisted the Carians in defending themselves against Greek invaders. Caria was in intimate confederate relations with Carthage and Crete; and the Carians were allies of the Trojans in the Great War (Iliad 2 867 f). The Cadmean alphabet of the later Phœnician colonies in Iberia or Spain is generally identical with the Carian. The signs are after Sayce. [1] CAH. 2, 27. [2] WPOB. 39 f; 146 f., and see map facing p. 420. [3] Strabo, 651. Col. 8 gives the Cadmean letters carved by Carians, Ionians or Dorians on the famous rock-cut temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, one of the "Wonders of the World," near the second cataract of the Nile, from the facsimiles by Lepsius[1] and dated to "about 650 BC." [1] TA. 2, 11 f. Col. 9 gives the Lydian form of the Cadmean. Lydia was the old middle state of the Ægean border of Asia Minor, between the Trojan state of Mysia on the north and Caria on the south. Its chief seaport was Smyrna with its rock-cut Hittite hieroglyphs and Sumerian inscription,[1] and the western terminus of the old Hittite "royal road" of the overland route to Babylonia. The Lydians who claimed descent from Hercules of the Phœnicians were a sea-going merchant people, the first to coin gold and silver money.[2] And their port of Phocaea held the tin-trade traffic with Cornwall in the fifth century BC. They kept the light Babylonian talent of weight, whilst that at Phocaea was based on the Phœnician. They are supposed to have held Troy after the Trojan War,[3] and about that time they sent out a colony to N.W. Italy which founded there the state called Etrusca or Tyrrene, the letters of which resemble in many ways those of Lydia, but are mostly written reversed (see col. 15). [1] WPOB, 238 f; 255 f. [2] Herod, 1, 7, 94. [3] Schliemann, Ilios, 587 f, and cp. Strabo, 582.
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