Mesha Stele

Sayce1892 historical source page 77

n CHAPTER IV. The Moabite Stone and the Inscription of SiLOAM. Modern discovery has as yet thrown little contempo- rary light on the period of Israelitish history which extends from the conquest of Canaan to the time when the kingdom of David was rent into the two monarchies of Israel and Judah. The buried ruins of Phoenicia have not yet been explored, and we have still to depend on the statements of classical writers for what we know, outside the Bible records, of Hiram the Tyrian king, the friend of David and Solomon. It is certain, however, that state archives already existed in the chief cities of Phoenicia, and a library was probably attached to the ancient temple of Baal, the Sun-god, at Tyre, which was restored by Hiram. It was from the Phoenicians that the Israelites, and the nations round about them, received their alphabet. This alphabet was of Egyptian origin. As far back as the monuments of Egypt carry us, we find the Egyptians using their hieroglyphics to express not only ideas and syllables, but also the letters of an alphabet. Even in the remote epoch of the second dynasty they already possessed an alphabet in which the twenty-one simple sounds of the language were repre- sented by special hieroglyphic pictures. Such hiero- glyphic pictures, however, were employed only on the public monuments ; for books and letters and business transactions the Egyptians made use of a running hand.