I.--It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of
the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and
this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of
the Tyrian settlement.
II.--Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the
Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.
III.--It can be proved that before the final division and classification
of languages, there existed two languages in every nation: (a) the
profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret
language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries--the latter being
one and universal. Or, in other, words, every great people had, like
the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which
had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and
later on in a phonetic alphabet. Now it requires a stretch of
prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman
Aryans--mystics and metaphysicians above everything--were the only ones
who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the
characters in which it was recorded.
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