The People Who Made Our A B C’s
LONG before people knew how to write, there lived a carpenter named Cadmus. One day he was at work on a house when he wanted a tool that he had left at home. Picking up a chip of wood, he wrote something on it and, handing it to his slave, told him to go to his home and give the chip to his wife, saying that it would tell her what he wanted. The slave, wondering, did as he was told. Cadmus’s wife looked at the chip, and without a word handed the tool to the amazed slave, who thought the chip in some mysterious way had spoken the message. When he returned to Cadmus with the tool, he begged for the remarkable chip, and when it was given him, hung it around his neck for a charm.
Cadmus’ slave and the chip.
This is the story the Greeks told of the man they say invented the alphabet. We believe, however, that Cadmus was a mythical person, for the Greeks liked to make up such stories, and we think no one man made the alphabet. But Cadmus was a Phenician and we do know that the Phenician people invented the alphabet. You probably call it your A B C’s, but the Greeks had much harder names for the letters. They called A “alpha,” B “beta,” and so on. So the Greek boy spoke of learning his “alpha beta,” and that is why we call it the “alphabet.”
You may never have heard of Phenicia or the Phenician people. Yet, if there had been no such country as Phenicia, you might now be learning at school to read and write in hieroglyphics or in cuneiform.
Up to this time, you know, people had very clumsy ways of writing. The Egyptians had to draw pictures, and the Babylonians made writing like chicken-tracks. The alphabet that the Phenicians invented had twenty-two letters, and from it we get the alphabet we use to-day.
Of course, we do not use just the same alphabet now that the Phenicians did, but some of the letters are almost, if not quite, like those we now have after three thousand years. For instance the
|
Phenician A |
was |
written |
on its side |
— |
|
E |
" |
" |
backward |
—Ǝ |
|
Z |
" |
" |
just the same |
Z |
|
O |
" |
" |
" " " |
O |
The Phenicians lived next door to the Jews; in fact they belonged to the same family—the Semites. Their country was just north of the kingdom of the Jews; that is, above it on the map and lying along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Phenicians had a great king named Hiram who lived at the same time as Solomon. In fact, Hiram was a friend of Solomon and sent him some of his best workmen to help build a temple at Jerusalem. And yet Hiram himself and the Phenicians did not believe in the Jewish God.
The Phenicians worshiped idols, terrible monsters named Baal and Moloch, which they called gods of the sun. They also believed in a goddess of the moon named Astarte and made sacrifices of live children to her idol, Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum; this is a real story and not a fairy-tale. Just suppose you had been a child then!
The Jews, as we have learned, were very religious, but their neighbors, the Phenicians, though Semites and therefore relatives, were business people and thought of nothing but money, money, money—all the time. And they were not particular how they earned it, whether honestly or not. Nowadays, dealers know that they must be honest if they are to be very successful, but the Phenicians were usually tricky in their trading with people. They always drove a good bargain and sometimes even cheated when they had a chance.
The Phenicians made many things to sell, and then they went far and near to sell them.
They knew how to make beautiful cloth and glassware and objects in gold and silver and ivory.
They knew the secret of making a wonderful purple dye from the body of a little shell-fish that lived in the water near the city of Tyre. This dye was known as Tyrian purple from the name of that city, and it was so beautiful that kings’ robes were colored with it.
Tyre and Sidon were the two chief cities of Phenicia, and once upon a time they were two of the busiest cities in the world.
In order to find people to sell to, the Phenicians traveled in boats all over the Mediterranean Sea and even went outside this sea into the Great Ocean. This opening is now called the Strait of Gibraltar but was then known as the Pillars of Hercules. They went as far as the British Isles. Other people in those days had not dared to go so far in boats; they thought they would come to the edge of the ocean and tumble off. But the Phenicians had no such fear, and so they were the greatest sailors as well as the greatest traders of their times. Their ships were built from the cedar-trees that grew on the slopes of their hills, which were called Lebanon.
Wherever the Phenicians found good harbors for their boats, they started little towns where they traded with the natives, who at that time were almost savage. With ignorant savages they found they could drive a good bargain. For a few glass beads or a piece of purple dyed cloth worth very little they could get in return gold and silver and other things worth a great deal. On the African coast, one of these towns they started was called Carthage. Of Carthage we shall hear more by and by, for it grew to be so wealthy and important that—but wait until I come to that story.
