Atlantis, the Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly [1882] contents



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thus, ; the Chaldaic b was ; the Syriac sign for b was ב the Illyrian b was .

The Maya e is ; this became in time ; then (we see this form on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, : we even find in some of the ancient Phœnician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter e, thus, ; then we find the old Greek form, ; the old Hebrew, ; and the later Phœnician, : when the direction of the writing was changed this became . Dr. Schliemann found a form like this on inscriptions deep in the ruins of Troy, . This is exactly the form found on the American monuments.

The Maya i is ; this became in time ; this developed into a still simpler form, ; and this passed into the Phœnician form, . The Samaritan i was formed thus, ; the Egyptian letter i is : gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped, and we come to the figure used on the stone of Moab, and ; this in time became the old Hebrew , or ; and this developed into the Greek .

We have seen the complicated symbol for m reduced by the Mayas themselves into this figure, : if we attempt to write this rapidly, we find it very difficult to always keep the base lines horizontal; naturally we form something like this, : the distinctive figure within the sign for m in the Maya is ח or . We see this repeated in the Egyptian hieroglyphics for m, , and , and ; and in the Chaldaic m, ם and in the Ethiopic . We find one form of the Phœnician where the m is made thus, ; and in the Punic it appears thus, ; and this is not unlike the m on the stone of Moab, , or the ancient Phœnician forms , , and the old Greek , or the ancient Hebrew , .

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The , x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward , this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed some thing like this, or ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phœnician, ; or the Moab stone, ; or the later Phœnician or the Hebrew , , or the old Greek, : the later Greek form was Ξ.

The Maya alphabet contains no sign for the letter s; there is, however, a symbol called ca immediately above the letter k; it is probable that the sign ca stands for the soft sound of c, as, in our words citron, circle, civil, circus, etc. As it is written in the Maya alphabet ca, and not k, it evidently represents a different sound. The sign ca is this, . A somewhat similar sign is found in the body of the symbol for k, thus, , this would appear to be a simplification of ca, but turned downward. If now we turn to the Egyptian letters we find the sign k represented by this figure , simplified again into ; while the sign for k in the Phœnician inscription on the stone of Moab is . If now we turn to the s sound, indicated by the Maya sign ca, , we find the resemblance still more striking to kindred European letters. The Phœnician s is ; in the Greek this becomes ; the Hebrew is ; the Samaritan, . The Egyptian hieroglyph for s is ; the Egyptian letter s is ; the Ethiopic, ; the Chaldaic, ; and the Illyrian s c is .

We have thus traced back the forms of eighteen of the ancient letters to the Maya alphabet. In some cases the pedigree, is so plain as to be indisputable.



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