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victory of Shalmaneser over Hazael, King of Syria.]

The Cretan civilization has been unknown to us save through a few
uncertain references in Greek literature until within about twenty
years. Within that time many excavations have been made, many objects
recovered, and much progress made in the reconstruction of this ancient
civilization. The written language has been at least partially
recovered, although we are not sure that we have all the signs and we do
not know how to read any of them. These signs were of two sorts,
described as hieroglyphic and linear. The hieroglyphic signs are either
ideograms or phonograms. Whether the linear signs are a true alphabet or
a syllabary (each sign representing a complete syllable) we do not know.
These linear signs have close relations on one hand to the signs used in
the island of Cyprus, which we know to have been a syllabary, and on the
other to the signs used by the Phoenicians, which we know to have been
an alphabet.

There seems to be no question that the final step of discarding all
signs excepting the few representing the primary sounds of human speech,
and thus developing an alphabet pure and simple without concurrent use
of phonograms and ideograms, was made by the Phoenicians. The
Phoenicians were a trading people of Semitic origin (akin to the Jews
and other allied races) whose principal seats were at the eastern end of
the Mediterranean. Various theories have been put forth as to the origin
of their alphabet. It is clear that they did not originate it absolutely
but developed it from previously existing material. Attempts have been
made to connect it with the Assyrian cuneiform, and for many years it
was commonly believed to have been derived from the hieratic form of the
Egyptian. The evidence of later discoveries, together with the
difficulty of reconciling either of these theories with all the known
facts, points strongly to the conclusion that the principal source of
the Phoenician alphabet was the Cretan script, probably modified by
other elements derived from commercial intercourse with the Egyptians
and the Assyrians. From the Phoenician came the Greek alphabet. From
the Greek came the Roman, and from the Roman, with very little change,
came our own familiar alphabet. But that is not all. The Phoenician,
through various lines of descent, is the common mother of all the
alphabets in use to-day including those as different from our own and
from each other