Emile Zola - "Le Docteur Pascal"

John Galt - "The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq."

Alice B. Emerson - "Ruth Fielding at the War Front"

Arthur Conan Doyle - "The Last Galley Impressions and Tales"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World




And even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the continued
existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on
their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and pressing forward
under the force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse. The speech that
may be heard to-day in the synagogues of Chicago and Melbourne resounded
two thousand years ago in the streets of Rome; and, at a still earlier
period, it could be heard in the palaces of Babylon and the shops of
Thebes--in Tyre, in Sidon, in Gades, in Palmyra, in Nineveh. How many
nations have perished, how many languages have ceased to exist, how many
splendid civilizations have crumbled into ruin, bow many temples and
towers and towns have gone down to dust since the sublime frenzy of
monotheism first seized this extraordinary people! All their kindred
nomadic tribes are gone; their land of promise is in the hands of
strangers; but Judaism, with its offspring, Christianity, is taking
possession of the habitable world; and the continuous life of one
people--one poor, obscure, and wretched people--spans the tremendous
gulf between "Ptah-hotep" and this nineteenth century.

If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression--of whose frame
the stars are the infinite molecules--can be supposed ever to interfere
with the laws of matter and reach down into the doings of men, would it
not be to save from the wreck and waste of time the most sublime fruit
of the civilization of the drowned Atlantis--a belief in the one, only,
just God, the father of all life, the imposer of all moral obligations?

CHAPTER VII.

THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET

One of the most marvellous inventions for the advancement of mankind is
the phonetic alphabet, or a system of signs representing the sounds of
human speech. Without it our present civilization could scarcely have
been possible.

No solution of the origin of our European alphabet has yet been
obtained: we can trace it back from nation to nation, and form to form,
until we reach the Egyptians, and the archaic forms of the Phoenicians,
Hebrews, and Cushites, but beyond this the light fails us.

The Egyptians spoke of their hieroglyphic system of writing not as their
own invention, but as "the language of the gods." (Lenormant and Cheval,
"Anc. Hist. of the East," vol. ii., p. 208.) "The gods" were, doubtless,
their highly civilized ancestors--the people of Atlantis--who, as we
shall hereafter see, became the gods of many of the Mediterranean races.

"According to the Phoenicians, the art of writing was invented by
Taautus, or Taut, 'whom the Egyptians call Thouth,' and the Egyptians
said it was invented by Thouth, or Thoth, otherwise called 'the first
Hermes,' in which we clearly see that both the Phoenicians and Egyptians
referred the invention to a period older than their own separate
political existence, and to an older nation, from which both peoples
received it." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p. 91.)

The "first Hermes," here referred to (afterward called Mercury by the
Romans), was a son of Zeus and Maia, a daughter of Atlas. This is the
same Maia whom the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg identifies with the Maya
of Central America.

Sir William Drummond, in his "Origines," said:

"There seems to be no way of accounting either for the early use of
letters among so many different nations, or for the resemblance which
existed between some of the graphic systems employed by those nations,
than by supposing hieroglyphical writing, if I may be allowed the term,
to have been in use among the Tsabaists in the first ages after the
Flood, when Tsabaisin (planet-worship) was the religion of almost every
country that was yet inhabited."

Sir Henry Rawlinson says:

"So great is the analogy between the first principles of the Science of
writing, as it appears to have been pursued in Chaldea, and as we can
actually trace its progress in Egypt, that we can hardly hesitate to
assign the original invention to a period before the Hamitic race had
broken up and divided."

It is not to be believed that such an extraordinary system of
sound-signs could have been the invention of any one man or even of any
one age. Like all our other acquisitions, it must have been the slow
growth and accretion of ages; it must have risen step by step from
picture-writing through an intermediate condition like that of the
Chinese, where each word or thing was represented by a separate sign.
The fact that so old and enlightened a people as the Chinese have never
reached a phonetic alphabet, gives us some indication of the greatness
of the people among whom it was invented, and the lapse of time before
they attained to it.

Humboldt says:

"According to the views which, since Champollion's great discovery, have
been gradually adopted regarding the earlier condition of the
development of alphabetical writing, the Phoenician as well as the
Semitic characters are to be regarded as a phonetic alphabet that has
originated from pictorial writing; as one in which the ideal
signification of the symbols is wholly disregarded, and the characters
are regarded as mere signs for sounds." ("Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 129.)

Baldwin says (" Prehistoric Nations," p. 93):

"The nation that became mistress of the seas, established communication
with every shore, and monopolized the commerce of the known world, must
have substituted a phonetic alphabet for the hieroglyphics as it
gradually grew to this eminence; while isolated Egypt, less affected by
the practical wants and tendencies of commercial enterprise, retained
the hieroglyphic system, and carried it to a marvellous height of
perfection."

It must be remembered that some of the letters of our alphabet are
inventions of the later nations. In the oldest alphabets there was no c,
the g taking its place. The Romans converted the g into c; and then,
finding the necessity for a g Sign, made one by adding a tail-piece to
the c (C, G). The Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the upsilon,
shaped like our V or Y, the two forms being used at first indifferently:
they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phoenicians into th,
or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the
Phoenician y (yod) into i (iota). The Greeks converted the Phoenician
alphabet, which was partly consonantal, into one purely phonetic--"a
perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language." The w was
also added to the Phoenician alphabet. The Romans added the y. At first
i and j were both indicated by the same sound; a sign for j was
afterward added. We have also, in common with other European languages,
added a double U, that is, VV, or W, to represent the w sound.

The letters, then, which we owe to the Phoenicians, are A, B, C, D, E,
H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, Z. If we are to trace out
resemblances with the alphabet of any other country, it must be with
these signs.

Is there any other country to which we can turn which possessed a
phonetic alphabet in any respect kindred to this Phoenician alphabet? It
cannot be the Chinese alphabet, which has more signs than words; it
cannot be the cuneiform alphabet of Assyria, with its seven hundred
arrow-shaped characters, none of which bear the slightest affinity to
the Phoenician letters.

It is a surprising fact that we find in Central America a phonetic
alphabet. This is in the alphabet of the Mayas, the ancient people of
the peninsula of Yucatan, who claim that their civilization came to them
across the sea in ships from the east, that is, from the direction of
Atlantis. The Mayas succeeded to the Colhuas, whose era terminated one
thousand years before the time of Christ; from them they received their
alphabet. It has come to us through Bishop Landa, one of the early
missionary bishops, who confesses to having burnt a great number of Maya
books because they contained nothing but the works of the devil. He
fortunately, however, preserved for posterity the alphabet of this
people. We present it herewith.

###

LANDA'S ALPHABET (From "North Amer. of Antiquity," p. 434.)

Diego de Landa was the first bishop of Yucatan. He wrote a history of
the Mayas and their country, which was preserved in manuscript at Madrid
in the library of the Royal Academy of History. . . . It contains a
description and explanation of the phonetic alphabet of the Mayas.
Landa's manuscript seems to have lain neglected in the library, for
little or nothing was heard of it until it was discovered by the French
priest Brasseur de Bourbourg, who, by means of it, has deciphered some
of the old American writings. He says, 'the alphabet and signs explained
by Landa have been to me a Rosetta stone.'" (Baldwin's "Ancient
America," p. 191.)

When we observe, in the table of alphabets of different European nations
which I give herewith, how greatly the forms of the Phoenician letters
have been modified, it would surprise us to find any resemblance between
the Maya alphabet of two or three centuries since and the ancient
European forms. It must, however, be remembered that the Mayas are one
of the most conservative peoples in the world. They still adhere with
striking pertinacity to the language they spoke when Columbus landed on
San Salvador; and it is believed that that language is the same as the
one inscribed on the most ancient monuments of their country. Senor
Pimental says of them, "The Indians have preserved this idiom with such
tenacity that they will speak no other; it is necessary for the whites
to address them in their own language to communicate with them." It is
therefore probable, as their alphabet did not pass from nation to
nation, as did the Phoenician, that it has not departed so widely from
the original forms received from the Colhuas.

###

The Alphabet

But when we consider the vast extent of time which has elapsed, and the
fact that we are probably without the intermediate stages of the
alphabet which preceded the archaic Phoenician, it will be astonishing
if we find resemblances between any of the Maya letters and the European
forms, even though we concede that they are related. If we find decided
affinities between two or three letters, we may reasonably presume that
similar coincidences existed as to many others which have disappeared
under the attrition of centuries.

The first thought that occurs to us on examining the Landa alphabet is
the complex and ornate character of the letters. Instead of the two or
three strokes with which we indicate a sign for a sound, we have here
rude pictures of objects. And we find that these are themselves
simplifications of older forms of a still more complex character. Take,
for instance, the letter pp in Landa's alphabet, ### : here are
evidently the traces of a face. The same appear, but not so plainly, in
the sign for x, which is ### . Now, if we turn to the ancient
hieroglyphics upon the monuments of Central America, we will find the
human face appearing in a great many of them, as in the following, which
we copy from the Tablet of the Cross at Palenque. We take the
hieroglyphs from the left-hand side of the inscription. Here it will be
seen that, out of seven hieroglyphical figures, six contain human faces.
And we find that in the whole inscription of the Tablet of the Cross
there are 33 figures out of 108 that are made up in part of the human
countenance.

###

We can see, therefore, in the Landa alphabet a tendency to
simplification. And this is what we would naturally expect. When the
emblems--which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions,
where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated--were placed in the
hands of a busy, active, commercial people, such as were the Atlanteans,
and afterward the Phoenicians, men with whom time was valuable, the
natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them; and when the
original meaning of the picture was lost, they would naturally slur it,
as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet, where the
figure of the human face remains only in rude lines.

The same tendency is plainly shown in the two forms of the letter h, as
given in Landa's alphabet; the original form is more elaborate than the
variation of it. The original form is ### The variation is given as ###
. Now let us suppose this simplification to be carried a step farther:
we have seen the upper and lower parts of the first form shrink into a
smaller and less elaborate shape; let us imagine that the same tendency
does away with them altogether; we would then have the letter H of the
Maya alphabet represented by this figure, ### ; now, as it takes less
time to make a single stroke than a double one, this would become in
time ### . We turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew, and we
find the letter h indicated by this sign, ### , precisely the Maya
letter h simplified. We turn to the archaic Hebrew, and we find ### .
Now it is known that the Phoenicians wrote from right to left, and just
as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right, so
did the Phoenicians slope their letters to the left. Hence the Maya sign
becomes in the archaic Phoenician this, ### . In some of the Phoenician
alphabets we even find the letter h made with the double strokes above
and below, as in the Maya h. The Egyptian hieroglyph for h is ### while
ch is ### . In time the Greeks carried the work of simplification still
farther, and eliminated the top lines, as we have supposed the
Atlanteans to have eliminated the double strokes, and they left the
letter as it has come down to us, H.

Now it may be said that all this is coincidence. If it is, it is
certainly remarkable. But let us go a step farther:

We have seen in Landa's alphabet that there are two forms of the letter
m. The first is ### . But we find also an m combined with the letter o,
a, or e, says Landa, in this form, ### . The m here is certainly
indicated by the central part of this combination, the figure ### ;
where does that come from? It is clearly taken from the heart of the
original figure wherein it appears. What does this prove? That the
Atlanteans, or Mayas, when they sought to simplify their letters and
combine them with others, took from the centre of the ornate
hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they
represented the whole figure. Now let us apply this rule:

We have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language, from our
own day to the time of the Phoenicians, o has been represented by a
circle or a circle within a circle. Now where did the Phoenicians get
it? Clearly from the Mayas. There are two figures for o in the Maya
alphabet; they are ### and ### ; now, if we apply the rule which we have
seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures, the essential
characteristic found in each is the circle, in the first case pendant
from the hieroglyph; in the other, in the centre of the lower part of
it. And that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyph, and used
alone, as in the case of the m, is proved by the very sign used at the
foot of Landa's alphabet, which is, ### Landa calls this ma, me, or mo;
it is probably the latter, and in it we have the circle detached from
the hieroglyph.

We find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle, or a dot within a
circle, repeated in the Phoenician forms for o, thus, ### and ### , and
by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; in the Runic we
have the circle in the circle; in one form of the Greek o the dot was
placed along-side of the circle instead of below it, as in the Maya.

Are these another set of coincidences?

Take another letter:

The letter n of the Maya alphabet is represented by this sign, itself
probably a simplification of some more ornate form, ### . This is
something like our letter S, but quite unlike our N. But let us examine
into the pedigree of our n. We find in the archaic Ethiopian, a language
as old as the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the
Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is ### ; in archaic Phoenician it
comes still closer to the S shape, thus, ### , or in this form, ### ; we
have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the
Maya n; in Troy this form was found, ### . The Samaritan makes it ### ;
the old Hebrew ### ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ### ; the later
Phoenicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became
### ; then it passed into ### : the archaic Greek form is ### ; the
later Greeks made ### , from which it passed into the present form, N.
All these forms seem to be representations of a serpent; we turn to the
valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for n was
the serpent, ### ; the Pelasgian n was ### ; the Arcadian, ### ; the
Etruscan, ### .

Can anything be more significant than to find the serpent the sign for n
in Central America, and in all these Old World languages?

Now turn to the letter k. The Maya sign for k is ### . This does not
look much like our letter K; but let us examine it. Following the
precedent established for us by the Mayas in the case of the letter m,
let us see what is the distinguishing feature here; it is clearly the
figure of a serpent standing erect, with its tail doubled around its
middle, forming a circle. It has already been remarked by Savolini that
this erect serpent is very much like the Egyptian Uraeus, an erect
serpent with an enlarged body--a sacred emblem found in the hair of
their deities. We turn again to the valley of the Nile, and we find that
the Egyptian hieroglyphic for k was a serpent with a convolution or
protuberance in the middle, precisely as in the Maya, thus, ### ; this
was transformed into the Egyptian letter ### ; the serpent and the
protuberance reappear in one of the Phoenician forms of k, to wit, ### ;
while in the Punic we have these forms, ### and ### . Now suppose a busy
people trying to give this sign: instead of drawing the serpent in all
its details they would abbreviate it into something like this, ### ; now
we turn to the ancient Ethiopian sign for k (ka), and we have ### , or
the Himyaritic Arabian ### ; while in the Phoenician it becomes ### ; in
the archaic Greek, ### ; and in the later Greek, when they changed the
writing from left to right, ### . So that the two lines projecting from
the upright stroke of our English K are a reminiscence of the
convolution of the serpent in the Maya original and the Egyptian copy.

Turn now to the Maya sign for t: it is ### , . What is the distinctive
mark about this figure? It is the cross composed of two curved lines,
thus, ### . It is probable that in the Maya sign the cross is united at
the bottom, like a figure 8. Here again we turn to the valley of the
Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyph for t is ### and ### ;
and in the Syriac t it is ### . We even find the curved lines of the
Maya t which give it something of the appearance of the numeral 8,
repeated accurately in the Mediterranean alphabets; thus the Punic t
repeats the Maya form almost exactly as ### and ### . Now suppose a busy
people compelled to make this mark every day for a thousand years, and
generally in a hurry, and the cross would soon be made without curving
the lines; it would become X. But before it reached even that simplified
form it had crossed the Atlantic, and appeared in the archaic Ethiopian
sign for tsa, thus, ### . In the archaic Phoenician the sign for ### is
### and ### ; the oldest Greek form is ### or ### and the later Greeks
gave it to the Romans ### , and modified this into ### ; the old Hebrew
gave it as ### and ### ; the Moab stone as ### ; this became in time ###
and ### .

Take the letter a. In the Maya there are three forms given for this
letter. The first is ### ; the third is ### . The first looks very much
like the foot of a lion or tiger; the third is plainly a foot or boot.
If one were required to give hurriedly a rude outline of either of
these, would he not represent it thus, ### ; and can we not conceive
that this could have been in time modified into the Phoenician a, which
was ### ? The hieratic Egyptian a was ### ; the ancient Hebrew, which
was ### or ### ; the ancient Greek was the foot reversed, ### ; the
later Greek became our A.

Turn next to the Maya sign for q (ku): it is ### . Now what is the
peculiarity of this hieroglyph? The circle below is not significant, for
there are many circular figures in the Maya alphabet. Clearly, if one
was called upon to simplify this, he would retain the two small circles
joined side by side at the top, and would indicate the lower circle with
a line or dash. And when we turn to the Egyptian q we find it in this
shape, ### ; we turn to the Ethiopian q (khua), and we find it ### , as
qua, ### ; while the Phoenician comes still nearer the supposed Maya
form in ### ; the Moab stone was ### ; the Himyaritic Arabian form
became ### ; the Greek form was ### , which graduated into the Roman Q.
But a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phoenician
alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the q, the Maya cu,
which is ### . Now, if we apply the Maya rule to this, and discard the
outside circle, we have this left, ### . In time the curved line would
be made straight, and the figure would assume this form, ### ; the next
step would be to make the cross on the straight line, thus, ### . One of
the ancient Phoenician forms is ### . Can all this be accident?

The letter c or g (for the two probably gave the same sound as in the
Phoenician) is given in the Maya alphabet as follows, ### . This would
in time be simplified into a figure representing the two sides of a
triangle with the apex upward, thus, ### . This is precisely the form
found by Dr. Schliemann in the ruins of Troy, ### . What is the
Phoenician form for g as found on the Moab stone? It is ### . The
Carthaginian Phoenicians gave it more of a rounded form, thus, ### . The
hieratic Egyptian figure for g was ### ; in the earlier Greek form the
left limb of the figure was shortened, thus, ### ; the later Greeks
reversed it, and wrote it ### ; the Romans, changed this into ### and it
finally became C.

In the Maya we have one sign for p, and another for pp. The first
contains a curious figure, precisely like our r laid on its back ### .
There is, apparently, no r in the Maya alphabet; and the Roman r grew
out of the later Phoenician r formed thus, ### ; it would appear that
the earliest Phoenician alphabet did not contain the letter r. But if we
now turn to the Phoenician alphabet, we will find one of the curious
forms of the p given thus, ### , a very fair representation of an r
lying upon its face. Is it not another remarkable coincidence that the
p, in both Maya and Phoenician, should contain this singular sign?

The form of pp in the Maya alphabet is this, ### . If we are asked, on
the principle already indicated, to reduce this to its elements, we
would use a figure like this, ### ; in time the tendency would be to
shorten one of these perpendicular lines, thus, and this we find is very
much like the Phoenician p, ### . The Greek ph is ### .

The letter l in the Maya is in two forms; one of these is ### , the
other is ### . Now, if we again apply the rule which we observed to hold
good with the letter m--that is, draw from the inside of the hieroglyph
some symbol that will briefly indicate the whole letter--we will have
one of two forms, either a right-angled figure formed thus, ### , or an
acute angle formed by joining the two lines which are unconnected, thus,
### ; and either of these forms brings us quite close to the letter l of
the Old World. We find l on the Moab stone thus formed, ### . The
archaic Phoenician form of l was ### , or ### ; the archaic Hebrew was
### and ### ; the hieratic Egyptian was ### ; the Greek form was ###
--the Roman L.

The Maya letter b is shaped thus, ### . Now, if we turn to the
Phoenician, we find that b is represented by the same crescent-like
figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph, but reversed in
the direction of the writing, thus, ### ; while in the archaic Hebrew we
have the same crescent figure as in the Maya, turned in the same
direction, but accompanied by a line drawn downward, and to the left,
thus, ### ; a similar form is also found in the Phoenician ### , and
this in the earliest Greek changed into ### , and in the later Greek
into B. One of the Etruscan signs for b was ### , while the Pelasgian b
was represented thus, ### ; the Chaldaic b was ### ; the Syriac sign for
b was ### ; the Illyrian b was ### .

The Maya e is ### ; this became in time ### ; then ### (we see this form
on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and
we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, ### : we even find in some of the
ancient Phoenician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in
making the letter e, thus, ### ; then we find the old Greek form, ### ;
the old Hebrew, ### ; and the later Phoenician, ### : when the direction
of the writing was changed this became ### . Dr. Schliemann found a form
like this on inscriptions deep in the ruins of Troy, ### . This is
exactly the form found on the American monuments.

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