The Alphabet: An Account of the Origin and Development of Letters, Volume 1

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K. Paul, Trench & Company, 1883
 

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Page 209 - Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel : and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.
Page 39 - I, p. 34. period of four thousand years the Chinese, left to themselves, were unable to advance beyond ideographic writing. But this important step was, as we have seen, readily accomplished when the Chinese writing had to be adapted to a language of another type. As a rule it is found that the advance from one stage in the development of writing to the next is only attained by the transmission of a graphic system from one nation to another. The transmission of the Aztec Hieroglyphs to the Mayas...
Page 235 - ... to his neighbour, for there was an excess (?) in the rock on the right. They rose up . . . . they struck on the west of the (4) excavation, the excavators struck, each to meet the other, pick to pick.
Page 82 - Sanchuniathon, from which we gather that the Phoenicians did not claim to be themselves the inventors of the art of writing, but admitted that it was obtained by them from Egypt.
Page 68 - We have letters, syllables, and ideograms piled up one on another in a perplexing confusion. So many crutches were thought necessary that walking became an art of the utmost difficulty. But all the same, in the tangled wilderness of the hieroglyphic writing the letters of the alphabet lay concealed. All that remained to be done was to take one simple step — boldly to discard all the non-alphabetic elements, at once to sweep away the superfluous lumber...
Page 179 - They are pronounced with the forepart of the tongue, the breadth of which approaches the whole anterior space of the hard palate as far as the teeth...
Page 304 - Khan, and was used in Khiva and Bokhara, which now employ the Arabic. The Mongolian is written in vertical columns, from the top to the bottom of the page, instead of from right to left, like the Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew.
Page 232 - There is a very ancient tunnel, about a third of a mile in length, by which water is brought from the Virgin's Pool in the Kedron Valley to the Pool of Siloam in the Tyropceon.
Page 222 - Rephaim," that haunt the vasty halls of death. " I am cut off before my time ; few have been my days, and I am lying in this coffin and in this tomb in the place which I have built. Oh, then, remember this! may no royal race...
Page 96 - If thou art become great, after thou hast been humble, and if thou hast amassed riches after poverty, being because of that the first in thy town ; if thou art known for thy wealth and art become a great lord, let not thy heart become proud because of thy riches, for it is God who is the author of them. Despise not another who is as thou wast ; be towards him as towards thy equal.

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