[Pg i]

TOTEMIC WRITING

INDIAN PETITION TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

(See Page 68)

THE STORY OF

THE ALPHABET

by
EDWARD CLODD

AUTHOR OF

"THE STORY OF PRIMITIVE MAN", "PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION","THE STORY OF CREATION", ETC. ETC.

"The two greatest inventions of the human mindare writing and money—the common language of intelligence, and the common language of self-interest."—

Marquis de Mirabeau.

WITH NINETY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED

SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND

1900

THIS LITTLE HISTORY OF

A B C

IS DEDICATED TO

DOROTHY DAY

BY HER LOVING GRANDFATHER[Pg v]

PREFACE

If this little book does not supply a want, it fills, howeverimperfectly, a gap; for the only work in the English language on thesubject—Canon Isaac Taylor's "History of the Alphabet"—is necessarilycharged with a mass of technical detail which is stiff reading evenfor the student of graphiology. Moreover, invaluable and indispensableas is that work, it furnishes only a meagre account of those primitivestages of the art of writing, knowledge of which is essential fortracing the development of that art, so that its place in the generalevolution of human inventions is made clear. Prominence is thereforegiven to this branch of the subject in the following pages.

In the recent reprint of Canon Taylor's book no referenceoccurs to the important materials collected by Professor Flinders Petrie andMr. Arthur J. Evans in Egypt and Crete, the result of which is torevolutionise the old theory of the source of the Alphabet whence ourown and others are derived. This opens up a big question for expertsto settle; and here it must suffice to present a statement of the newevidence, and to point out its significance, so that the reader benot taken into the troubled atmosphere of controversy. That he may,further, not be distracted by footnotes, references to the authoritiescited are printed in the text.

E. C.

Rosemont, 19 Carleton Road,
  Tufnell Park, N.[Pg vi]

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