 section 21 part 3 chapter 6 of Atlantis the antediluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Nicholas James Bridgewater Atlantis the antediluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly section 21 chapter 6 Genesis contains a history of Atlantis the Hebrews are a branch of the great family of which that powerful commercial race the Phoenicians who are the merchants of the world 1500 years before the time of Christ were apart the Hebrews carried out from the common storehouse of their race a mass of traditions many of which have come down to us in that oldest and most venerable of human compositions the book of Genesis I have shown that the story of the deluge plainly refers to the destruction of Atlantis and that it agrees in many important particulars with the account given by Plato the people destroyed were in both instances the ancient race that had created civilization they had formerly been in a happy and sinless condition they had become great and wicked they were destroyed for their sins they were destroyed by water but we can go farther and it can be asserted that there is scarcely a prominent fact in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis that cannot be duplicated from the legends of the American nations and scarcely accustomed known to the Jews that does not find its counterpart among the people of the new world even in the history of the creation we find these similarities the Bible tells us Genesis 1 to that in the beginning the earth was without form and void and covered with water in the quiche legends we are told quote at first all was see no man animal bird or green herb there was nothing to be seen but the sea and the heavens end quote the Bible says Genesis 1 to quote and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters end quote the quiche legend says quote the creator the former the dominator the feathered serpent those that give life moved upon the waters like a glowing light end quote the Bible says Genesis 1 9 quote and God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and it was so end quote the quiche legend says quote the creative spirits cried out earth and in an instant it was formed and rose like a vapor cloud and immediately the plains and the mountains arose and the cypress and pine appeared end quote the Bible tells us quote and God said that it was good end quote the quiche legend says quote then kukumats was filled with joy and cried out blessed be thy coming oh heart of heaven huracan thunderbolt end quote the order in which the vegetables animals and man were formed is the same in both records in Genesis chapter 2 7 we are told quote and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground end quote the quiche legend says quote the first man was made of clay but he had no intelligence and was consumed in the water end quote in Genesis the first man is represented as naked the Aztec legend says quote the sun was much nearer the earth then than now and his grateful warmth rendered clothing unnecessary end quote even the temptation of Eve reappears in the American legends Lord Kingsborough says quote the Toltecs had paintings of a garden with a single tree standing in the midst round the root of the tree is entwined a serpent whose head appearing above the foliage displays the face of a woman Torquemada admits the existence of this tradition among them and agrees with the Indian historians who affirm that this was the first woman in the world who bore children and from whom all mankind are descended end quote Mexican antiquities volume 8 page 19 there is also a legend of such a guy who disobediently gathered roses from a tree and thereby disgraced and injured herself and all her posterity Mexican antiquities volume 6 page 401 the legends of the old world which underlie Genesis and were used by Milton in the Paradise Lost appear in the Mexican legends of a war of angels in heaven and the fall of Zutemke Zutem Satan Arabic Shatana and the other rebellious spirits we have seen that the Central Americans possessed striking parallels to the accounts of the deluge in Genesis there is also clearly established legend which singularly resembles the Bible record of the Tower of Babel father Durran in his manuscript Historia Antica de la Nueva España AD 1585 quotes from the lips of a native of Cholula over 100 years old a version of the legend as to the building of the great pyramid of Cholula it is as follows quote in the beginning before the light of the world had been created this land Cholula was in obscurity and darkness and void of any created thing all was a plane without hill or elevation encircled in every part by water without tree or created thing and immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men of deformed stature and possess the land and desiring to see the nativity of the sun as well as his oxidant proposed to go and seek them dividing themselves into two parties some journey to the west and others to war these these traveled until the sea cut off their road whereupon they determined to return to the place from which they started and arriving at this place Cholula not finding the means of reaching the sun enamored of his light and beauty they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky having collected materials for the purpose they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen with which they speedily commenced to build the tower and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude so that they say it reached to the sky the Lord of the heavens enraged said to the inhabitants of the sky quote have you observed how they of the earth have built a high and haughty tower to mount hither being enamored of the light of the sun and his beauty come and confound them because it is not right that they of the earth living in the flesh should mingle with us end quote immediately the inhabitants of the sky salient forth like flashes of lightning they destroyed the edifice and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the earth end quote one can recognize in this legend the recollection by a rudor race of a highly civilized people for only a highly civilized people would have attempted such a vast work their mental superiority and command of the arts gave them the character of giants who arrived from the east who had divided into two great emigrations one moving eastward toward Europe the other westward toward America they were sun worshipers for we are told quote they were enamored of the light and beauty of the sun end quote and they built a high place for his worship the pyramid of Cholula is one of the greatest constructions ever erected by human hands it is even now in its ruined condition a hundred and sixty feet high one thousand four hundred feet square at the base and covers forty five acres we have only to remember that the greatest pyramid of Egypt key ops covers but twelve or thirteen acres to form some conception of the magnitude of this American structure it must not be forgotten that this legend was taken down by a Catholic priest shortly after the conquest of Mexico from the lips of an old Indian who was born before Columbus sailed from Spain observed the resemblances between this legend and the Bible account of the building of the tower of Babel all was plain without hill or elevation says the Indian legend they found a plane in the valley of Shinar and they dwelt there says the Bible they built a brick in both cases let us build us a tower whose top may reach unto heaven says the Bible they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky says the Indian legend and the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had build it and the Lord said behold nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do go to let us go down and confound them says the Bible record the Lord of the heavens and raged said to the inhabitants of the sky have you observed etc come and confound them says the Indian record and the Lord scattered them abroad from thence on all the face of the earth says the Bible they scattered its builders to all parts of the earth says the Mexican legend can anyone doubt that these two legends must have sprung in some way from one another or from some common source there are enough points of difference to show that the American is not a servile copy of the Hebrew legend in the former the story comes from a native of Cholula it is told under the shadow of the mighty pyramid it commemorates it is a local legend which he repeats the men who built it according to his account were foreigners they built it to reach the Sun that is to say a Sun temple while in the Bible record Babel was built to perpetuate the glory of its architects in the Indian legend the God stopped the work by a great storm in the Bible account by confounding the speech of the people both legends were probably derived from Atlantis and referred to some gigantic structure of great height built by that people and when the story emigrated to the east and west it was in the one case a fix to the Tower of the Chaldeans and in the other to the pyramid of Cholula precisely as we find the Ark of the Deluge resting upon separate mountain chains all the way from Greece to Armenia in one form of the Tower of Babel legend that of the Toltecs we are told that the pyramid of Cholula was erected as a means of escape from a second flood should another occur but the resemblances between Genesis and the American legends do not stop here we are told Genesis 2 21 that quote the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam end quote and while he slept God made Eve out of one of his ribs according to the Keche tradition there were four men from whom the races of the world descended probably a recollection of the red black yellow and white races and these men were without wives and the Creator made wise for them quote while they slept end quote some wicked mason throat refer to these traditions when he said quote and man's first sleep became his last repose end quote in Genesis chapter 3 22 quote and the Lord God said behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever end quote therefore God drove him out of the garden in the Keche legends we are told quote the God's feared that they had made men too perfect and they breathe the cloud of mist over their vision end quote when the ancestors of the Keche's migrated to America the divinity parted the sea for their passage as the red sea was parted for the Israelites the story of Samson is paralleled in the history of a hero named Zipanka told of in the popul who who being captured by his enemies and placed in a pit pulled down the building in which his captors had assembled and killed 400 of them there were giants in those days says the Bible a great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of Giants called Queen Amis this parallelism runs through a hundred particulars both the Jews and Mexicans worshiped toward the east both called the south quote the right hand of the world end quote both burnt incense toward the four corners of the earth confession of sin and sacrifice of atonement were common to both peoples both were punctilious about washings and ablutions both believed in devils and both were reflected with leprosy both considered women who died in childbirth as worthy of honor as soldiers who fell in battle both punished adultery with stoning to death as David leaped and danced before the Ark of the Lord so did the Mexican monarchs before their idols both had an arc the abiding place of an invisible God both had a species of serpent worship compare our representation of the great serpent mound in Adams County Ohio with the following description of a great serpent mound in Scotland quote serpent worship in the west some additional light appears to have been thrown upon ancient serpent worship in the west by the recent archaeological explorations of Mr. John S. Fenay FGS FRGS in Scotland Mr. Fenay has just investigated a curious earthen mound in Glen Fiechen Argelshire referred to by him at the late meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh as being in the form of a serpent or Saurian the mound says the Scotsman is a most perfect one the head is a large cairn and the body of the earthen reptile three hundred feet long and in the center of the head there were evidences when Mr. Fenay first visited it of an altar having been placed there the position with regard to Ben Kruachen is most remarkable the three peaks are seen over the length of the reptile while a person is standing on the head or a cairn the shape can only be seen so as to be understood when looked down upon from an elevation as the outline cannot be understood unless the whole of it can be seen this is most perfect when the spectator is on the head of the animal form or on the lofty rock to the west of it the mound corresponds almost entirely with one seven hundred feet long in America an account of which was lately published after careful study by Mr. Squire the altar toward the head in each case agrees in the American mound three rivers also objects of worship with the ancients were evidently identified the number three was a sacred number in all ancient mythologies the sinuous winding and articulations of the vertebral spinal arrangement are anatomically perfect in the Argelshire mound the gentleman present with Mr. Fenay during his investigation state that beneath the cairn forming the head of the animal was found a megalithic chamber in which was a quantity of charcoal and burnt earth and charred nutshells a flint instrument beautifully and minutely serrated at the edge and burnt bones the back or spine of the serpent which as already stated is 300 feet long was found beneath the peat moss to be formed by a careful adjustment of stones the formation of which probably prevented the structure from being obliterated by time and weather end quote Paul Maul gazette we find a striking likeness between the works of the Stone Age in America and Europe as shown in the figures here given the same singular custom which is found among the Jews and the Hindus for quote a man to raise up seed for his deceased brother by marrying his widow end quote was found among the Central American Nations las casas manuscript his apoloch chapter 213 215 Torquemada monarch end volume 2 377 to 8 no one but the Jewish high priest might enter the Holy of Holies a similar custom obtained in Peru both ate the flesh of the sacrifices of atonement both poured the blood of the sacrifice on the earth they sprinkled it they marked persons with it they smeared it upon the walls and stones the Mexican temple like the Jewish face the East quote as among the Jews the Ark was a sort of portable temple in which the deity was supposed to be continually present so among the Mexicans the Cherokees and the Indians of Michoacan and Honduras an Ark was held in the highest veneration and was considered an object too sacred to be touched by any but the priests end quote Kingsborough mechs antique volume 8 page 258 the Peruvians believed that the rainbow was a sign that the earth would not again be destroyed by a deluge Ibid page 25 the Jewish custom of laying the sins of the people upon the head of an animal and turning him out into the wilderness had its counterpart among the Mexicans who to cure a fever formed a dog of maize paste and left it by the roadside saying the first passerby would carry away the illness dormant preem super page 59 Jacobs ladder had its duplicate in the vine or tree of the Ojibu ways which led from the earth to heaven up and down which the spirits past Ibid page 67 both Jews and Mexicans offered water to a stranger that he might wash his feet both ate dust in token of humility both anointed with oil both sacrificed prisoners both periodically separated the women and both agreed in the strong and universal idea of uncleanness connected with that period both believed in the occult power of water and both practiced baptism quote then the Mexican midwife gave the child to taste of the water putting her moistened fingers in its mouth and said take this by this thou has to live on the earth to grow and to flourish through this we get all things that support existence on the earth receive it then with moistened fingers she touched the breast of the child and said behold the pure water that washes and cleanses thy heart and removes all filthiness receive it may the goddess see good to purify and cleanse thine heart then the midwife poured water upon the head of the child saying oh my grandson my son take this water of the Lord of the world which is thy life invigorating and refreshing washing and cleansing I pray that this celestial water blue and light blue may enter into thy body and their live I pray that it may destroy in thee and put away from thee all the things evil and adverse that were given thee before the beginning of the world where so ever thou art in this child or thou hurtful thing be gone leave it put thyself apart for now does it live anew and anew is it born now again is it purified and cleansed now again is it shaped and engendered by our mother the goddess of water end quote bankroft's native races volume 3 page 372 here we find many resemblances to the Christian ordinance of baptism the pouring of the water on the head the pudding of the fingers in the mouth the touching of the breast the new birth and the washing away of the original sin the Christian right we know was not a Christian invention but was borrowed from ancient times from the great storehouse of asiatic traditions and beliefs the Mexicans hung up the heads of their sacrificed enemies this was also a Jewish custom quote and the Lord said unto Moses take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the Sun and the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel and Moses said unto the judges of Israel slay ye every one his men that were joined unto ball pure end quote numbers 2545 the Scythians Herodotus tells us scalped their enemies and carried the scalp at the pommel of their saddles the Jews probably scalped their enemies quote but God shall womb the head of his enemies and the hairy scalp of such a one as goethon still in his trespasses end quote Psalm 68 21 the ancient Scandinavians practice scalping when Harold Harefoot seized his rival Alfred with 600 followers he quote had the maimed blinded hamstrung scalped and emboweled end quote tain's history of English literature page 35 Herodotus describes the Scythian mode of taking the scalp quote he makes a cut round the head near the ears and shakes the skull out end quote this is precisely the Indian custom quote the more scalps a man has says Herodotus quote the more highly he is esteemed among them end quote the Indian scalp lock is found on the Egyptian monuments as one of the characteristics of the Geophetic Libyans who shaved all the head except one lock in the middle the Manchus of Tartary where a scalp lock as do the modern Chinese Byron describes the heads of the dead Tartars under the walls of Corinth devoured by the wild dogs quote crimson and green were the shawls of their wear and each scalp had a single long tuft of hair all the rest were shaven and bare end quote these resemblances are so striking and so numerous that repeated attempts have been made to prove that the inhabitants of America are the descendants of the Jews some have claimed that they represented quote the lost tribes end quote of that people but as the Jews were never a maritime or emigrating people they formed no colonies and it is impossible to believe as has been asserted that they left their flocks and herds marched across the whole face of Asia took ships and sailed across the greatest of the oceans to a continent of the existence of which they had no knowledge if we seek the origin of these extraordinary coincidences in opinions and habits we must go far back of the time of a lost tribes we must seek it in the relationship of the Jews to the family of Noah and in the identity of the noacic race destroyed by the deluge with the people of the drowned Atlantis nor need it surprise us to find traditions perpetuated for thousands upon thousands of years especially among the people having a religious priesthood the essence of religion is conservatism little is invented nothing perishes change comes from without and even when one religion is supplanted by another its gods live on as the demons of the new faith or they pass into the folklore and fairy stories of the people we see voting a hero in America become the God Odin or Woden in Scandinavia and when his worship as a God dies out Odin survives as Dr. Dacend has proved in the wild huntsman of the hearts and in the Robin Hood Odin of popular legend the eliquine of France becomes the harlequin of our pantomimes William tell never existed he is a myth a survival of the Sun God Apollo Indra who was worshiped on the elders of Atlantis quote nothing here but it doth change into something rich and strange end quote the rite of circumcision dates back to the first days of Phoenicia Egypt and the Kushites it too was probably an Atlantean custom invented in the Stone Age tens of thousands of years of past since the Stone Age the ages of copper bronze and iron have intervened and yet to this day the Hebrew rabbi performs the ceremony of circumcision with a stone knife Frothingham says speaking of st. Peter's Cathedral in Rome into what depths of antiquity the ceremonies carried me back to the mysteries of Elyusis to the sacrificial rites of Phoenicia the boys swung the sensors as sensors had been swung in the adoration of Bacchus the girdle and cassock of the priests came from Persia the veil and tonsure were from Egypt the album chassable were prescribed by Numa Bompilius the stole was borrowed from the official who used it to throw it on the back of the victim that was to be sacrificed the white surplus was the same as described by juvenile and Ovid end quote although it is evident that many thousands of years must have passed since the men who wrote in Sanskrit in north western India could have dwelt in Europe yet to this day they preserve among their ancient books maps and descriptions of the western coast of Europe and even of England and Ireland and we find among them a fuller knowledge of the vexed question of the sources of the Nile than was possessed by any nation in the world twenty five years ago this perpetuation of forms and beliefs is illustrated in the fact that the formulas used in the middle ages in Europe to exercise evil spirits were a Syrian words imported probably thousands of years before from the magicians of Chaldea when the European conjurer cried out to the demon quote he'll go he'll go betcha betcha end quote he had no idea that he was repeating the very words of a people who had perished ages before and that they signified go away go away evil one evil one Leonard Montt ancient history of the East volume one page 448 our circle of 360 degrees the division of a court of the circle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts called degrees the division of these into 60 minutes of the minute into 60 seconds and the second into 60 thirds the division of the day into 24 hours each hour into 60 minutes each minute into 60 seconds the division of the week into seven days and the very order of the days all have come down to us from the Chaldea Assyrians and these things will probably be perpetuated among our prosperity quote to the last syllable of recorded time end quote we need not be surprised therefore to find the same legends and beliefs cropping out among the nations of Central America and the people of Israel nay it should teach us to regard the book of Genesis with increased veneration as a relic dating from the most ancient days of man's history on earth its roots cross the great ocean every line is valuable a word a letter an accent may throw light upon the gravest problems of the birth of civilization the vital conviction which during thousands of years at all times pressed home upon the Israelites was that they were a quote chosen people end quote selected out of all the multitude of the earth to perpetuate the great truth that there was but one God an illimitable omnipotent paternal spirit who rewarded the good and punished the wicked in contradistinction from the multifarious subordinate animal and bestial demigods of the other nations of the earth this sublime monotheism could only have been the outgrowth of a high civilization for man's first religion is necessarily a worship of quote stocks and stones end quote and history teaches us that the gods decrease in number as man increases in intelligence it was probably in Atlantis that monotheism was first preached the proverbs of the oldest book of the Egyptians show that this most ancient colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the motherland at the very dawn of history this book preached the doctrine of one God quote the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked end quote Reginald s pool contemporary review August 1881 page 38 quote in the early days the Egyptians worshipped one only God the maker of all things without beginning and without end to the last the priests preserved this doctrine and taught it privately to a select few end quote American encyclopedia volume 6 page 463 the Jews took up this great truth where the Egyptians dropped it and over the beads and over the ruins of Egypt Chaldea Phoenicia Greece Rome and India this handful of poor shepherds ignorant debased and despised have carried down to our own times a conception which could only have originated in the highest possible state of human society and even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the continued existence of this strange people waiting through the ages bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust and pressing forward under the force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse the speech that may be heard today in the synagogues of Chicago and Melbourne resounded 2,000 years ago in the streets of Rome and at a still earlier period it could be heard in the palaces of Babylon and in the shops of Thebes entire inside on in goddess in Palmyra in Nineveh how many nations have perished how many languages have ceased to exist how many splendid civilizations have crumbled into ruin how many temples and towers and towns have gone down to dust since the sublime frenzy of monotheism first sees this extraordinary people all their kindred nomadic tribes are gone their land of promise is in the hands of strangers but Judaism with its offspring Christianity is taking possession of the habitable world and the continuous life of one people one poor obscure and wretched people spans the tremendous gulf between Ptahotep and this 19th century if the spirit of which the universe is but an expression of whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules can be supposed ever to interfere with the laws of matter and reach down into the doings of men would it not be to save from the wreck and waste of time the most sublime fruit of the civilization of the drowned Atlantis a belief in the one only just God the father of all life the imposer of all moral obligations end of part 3 chapter 6 end of section 21 section 22 part 3 chapter 7 of Atlantis the anti-Diluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Atlantis the anti-Diluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly chapter 7 the origin of our alphabet one of the most marvelous inventions for the advancement of mankind is the phonetic alphabet or a system of science representing the sounds of human speech without it our present civilization could scarcely have been possible no solution of the origin of our European alphabet has yet been obtained we can trace it back from nation to nation and form to form until we reach the Egyptians and the archaic forms of the Phoenicians Hebrews and Kushites but beyond this the light fails us the Egyptians spoke of their hieroglyphic system of writing not as their own invention but as the language of the gods Lenormand and Chivalr ancient history of the east volume 2 page 208 the gods were doubtless their highly civilized ancestors the people of Atlantis who as we shall hear after see became the gods of many of the Mediterranean races according to the Phoenicians the art of writing was invented by Tautus or Taut whom the Egyptians called Thoth and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thoth or Thoth otherwise called the first Hermes in which we clearly see that both the Phoenicians and Egyptians referred the invention to a period older than their own separate political existence and to an older nation from which both peoples received it Baldwin's prehistoric nations page 91 the first Hermes here referred to afterward called Mercury by the Romans was a son of Zeus and Maya a daughter of Atlas this is the same Maya whom the abbey brasseur de Bourbourg identifies with the Maya of Central America sir William Drummond in his origins said there seems to be no way of accounting either for the early use of letters among so many different nations or for the resemblance which existed between some of the graphic systems employed by those nations then by supposing hieroglyphical writing if I may be allowed the term to have been in use among the sabayas in the first ages after the flood when sabayas and planet worship was the religion of almost every country that was yet inhabited sir Henry Rawlinson says so great is the analogy between the first principles of the science of writing as it appears to have been pursued in Kaldia and as we can actually trace its progress in Egypt that we can hardly hesitate to assign the original invention to a period before the hemitic race had broken up and divided it is not to be believed that such an extraordinary system of sound signs could have been the invention of any one man or even of any one age like all our other acquisitions it must have been the slow growth and accretion of ages it must have risen step by step from picture writing through an intermediate condition like that of the Chinese where each word or thing was represented by a separate sign the fact that so old and enlightened the people as the Chinese have never reached a phonetic alphabet gives us some indication of the greatness of the people among whom it was invented and the lapse of time before they attained to it Humboldt says according to the views which since Champollion's great discovery have been gradually adopted regarding the earlier condition of the development of alphabetical writing the Phoenician as well as the Semitic characters are to be regarded as a phonetic alphabet that has originated from pictorial writing as one in which the ideal signification of the symbols is wholly disregarded and the characters are regarded as mere signs for sounds Cosmos volume two page 129 Baldwin says prehistoric nations page 93 the nation that becomes mistress of the seas established communication with every shore and monopolize the commerce of the known world must have substituted a phonetic alphabet for the hieroglyphics as it gradually grew to this eminence while isolated Egypt less affected by the practical wants and tendencies of commercial enterprise retained the hieroglyphic system and carried it to a marvelous height of perfection it must be remembered that some of the letters of our alphabet are inventions of the later nations in the oldest alphabets there was no C the G taking its place the Romans converted the G into a C and then finding the necessity for a G sign made one by adding a tailpiece to the C the Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the Upsilon shaped like our V or Y the two forms being used at first and differently they added the X sign they converted the T of the Phoenicians into the or theta Z and S and signs for double consonants they turned the Phoenician Y Yod into I Iota the Greeks converted the Phoenician alphabet which was partly continental into one purely phonetic a perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language the W was also added to the Phoenician alphabet the Romans added the Y at first I and J were both indicated by the same sound a sign for J was afterward added we have also in common with other European languages added a W that is VV or W to represent the worst sound the letters then which we owe to the Phoenicians are A B C D E H I K L M N O P Q R S T Z if we are to trace out resemblances with the alphabet of any other country it must be with these signs is there any other country to which we can turn which possessed a phonetic alphabet in any respect kindred to this Phoenician alphabet it cannot be the Chinese alphabet which has more signs than words it cannot be the cuneiform alphabet of Assyria with its 700 arrow shaped characters none of which bear the slightest affinity to the Phoenician letters it is a surprising fact that we find in Central America a phonetic alphabet this is in the alphabet of the Maya's the ancient people of the peninsula of Yucatan who claim that their civilization came to them across the sea in ships from the east that is from the direction of Atlantis the Maya's succeeded to the Colhuas whose era terminated 1000 years before the time of Christ from them they received their alphabet it has come to us through Bishop lander one of the early missionary bishops who confesses to having burnt a great number of Maya books because they contained nothing but the works of the devil he fortunately however preserved for posterity the alphabet of this people we presented here with Diego de Landa was the first Bishop of Yucatan he wrote a history of the Maya's and their country which was preserved in manuscript at Madrid in the library of the Royal Academy of History it contains a description and explanation of the phonetic alphabet of the Maya's land as manuscript seems to have lain neglected in the library for little or nothing was heard of it until it was discovered by the French priest Bressure de Bourbourg who my means of it has deciphered some of the old American writings he says the alphabet and signs explained by lander have been to me a Rosetta stone Baldwin's ancient America page 191 when we observe in the table of alphabets of different European nations which I give here with how greatly the forms of the Phoenician letters have been modified it would surprise us to find any resemblance between the Maya alphabet of two or three centuries since and the ancient European forms it must however be remembered that the Maya's are one of the most conservative peoples in the world they still adhere with striking pertinacity to the language they spoke when Columbus landed on San Salvador and it is believed that that language is the same as the one inscribed on the most ancient monuments of their country Senor Pimentel says of them the Indians have preserved this idiom with such tenacity that they will speak no other it is necessary for the whites to address them in their own language to communicate with them it is therefore probable as their alphabet did not pass from nation to nation as did the Phoenician that it has not departed so widely from the original forms received from the Colouas but when we consider the vast extent of time which is elapsed and the fact that we are probably without the intermediate stages of the alphabet which preceded the Phoenician it will be astonishing if we find resemblances between any of the Maya letters and the European forms even though we concede that they are related if we find decided affinities between two or three letters we may reasonably presume that similar coincidences existed as to many others which have disappeared under the attrition of centuries the first thought that occurs to us on examining the land alphabet is the complex and ornate character of the letters instead of the two or three strokes with which we indicate a sign for a sound we have here rude pictures of objects and we find that these are themselves simplifications of older forms of a still more complex character take for instance the letter P P in land as alphabet symbol here are evidently the traces of a face the same appear but not so plainly in the sign for X which is symbol now if we turn to the ancient hieroglyphics upon the monuments of Central America we will find the human face appearing in a great many of them as in the following which we copy from the tablet of the cross at Palenque we take the hieroglyphs from the left hand side of the inscription here it will be seen that out of the seven hieroglyphical figures six contain human faces and we find that in the whole inscription of the tablet of the cross there are 33 figures out of 108 that are made up in part of the human countenance we can see therefore in the land of the alphabet a tendency to simplification and this is what we would naturally expect when the emblems which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated were placed in the hands of a busy active commercial people such as worthy Atlanteans and afterwards the Phoenicians men with whom time was valuable the natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them and when the original meaning of the picture was lost they would naturally slur it as we find in the letters P P and X of the Maya alphabet where the figure of the human face remains only in rude lines the same tendency is plainly shown in the two forms of the letter H as given in land as alphabet the original form is more elaborate than the variation of it the original form is symbol the variation is given as symbol now let us suppose this simplification to be carried a step farther we have seen the upper and lower parts of the first form shrink into a smaller and less elaborate shape let us imagine that the same tendency does away with them all together we would then have the letter H of the Maya alphabet represented by this figure symbol now as it takes less time to make a single stroke than a double one this would become in time symbol we turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew and we find the letter H indicated by the sign symbol precisely the Maya letter H simplified we turn to the archaic Hebrew and we find it symbol now it is known that the Phoenicians wrote from right to left and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right so did the Phoenician slope their letters to the left hence the Maya sign becomes in the archaic Phoenician this symbol in some of the Phoenician alphabets we even find the letter H made with the double strokes above and below as in the Maya H the Egyptian hieroglyph for H is symbol while CH is symbol in time the Greeks carried the work of simplification still farther and eliminated the top lines as we have supposed the Atlanteans to have eliminated the double strokes and they have left the letter as it has come down to us H now it may be said that all this is coincidence if it is it is certainly remarkable but let us go a step further we have seen in landa's alphabet that there are two forms of the letter M the first is symbol but we find also an M combined with the letter O A or E says landa in this form symbol the M here is certainly indicated by the central part of this combination the figure symbol where does that come from it is certainly taken from the heart of the original figure wherein it appears what does this prove that the Atlanteans or Mayas when they sought to simplify their letters and combine them with others took from the center of the ornate hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they represented the whole figure now let us apply this rule we have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language from our own day to the time of the Phoenicians O has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle now where did the Phoenicians get it clearly from the Mayas there are two figures for O in the Maya alphabet they are symbol and symbol now if we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya M to these figures the essential characteristic found in each is the circle in the first case the pendant from the hieroglyph in the other in the center of the lower part of it and that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyph and used alone as in the case of the M is proved by the very sign used at the foot of landa's alphabet which is symbol landa calls this ma may or mo it is probably the latter and in it we have the circle detached from the hieroglyph we find the precise Maya O a circle in a circle or a dot within a circle repeated in the Phoenician forms for O thus symbol and symbol and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics in the runic we have the circle in the circle in one form of the Greek O the dot was placed alongside of the circle instead of below it as in the Maya are these another set of coincidences take another letter the letter N of the Maya alphabet is represented by this sign itself probably a simplification of some more ornate form symbol this is something like our letter S but quite unlike our letter N but let us examine into the pedigree of our N we find in the archaic Ethiopian a language as old as the Egyptian and which represents the Kushite branch of the Atlantean stock the sign for N Na is symbol in archaic Phoenician it comes still closer to the S shape thus symbol or in this form symbol we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya N in Troy this form was found symbol the Samaritan makes it symbol the old Hebrew symbol the Moab inscription gives it symbol the later Phoenicians simplify the archaic form still further until it became symbol then it passed into symbol the archaic Greek form is symbol the later Greeks made N from which it passed into the present form N all these forms seem to be representations of a serpent we turn to the valley of the Nile and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for N was the serpent the Pulaski N was symbol the Arcadian symbol the Etruscan symbol can anything be more significant than to find the serpent the sign for N in Central America and in all these old world languages now turn to the letter K the Maya sign for K is symbol this does not look much like our letter K but let us examine it following the precedent established for us by the Mayans in the case of the letter M let us see what is the distinguishing feature here it is clearly the figure of a serpent standing erect with its tail doubled around its middle forming a circle it has already been remarked by Savalini that this erect serpent is very much like the Egyptian Eureus an erect serpent with an enlarged body a sacred emblem found in the hair of their deities we turn again to the valley of the Nile and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for K was a serpent with a convolution or protuberance in the middle precisely as in the Maya thus symbol this was transformed into the Egyptian letter symbol the serpent and the protuberance reappearing one of the Phoenician forms of K to wit symbol while in the Punic we have these forms symbol and symbol now suppose a busy people trying to give this sign instead of drawing the serpent in all its details they would abbreviate it into some form like this symbol now we turn to the ancient Ethiopian sign for K coup and we have symbol or the hemorrhidic Arabian symbol while in the Phoenician it becomes symbol in the archaic Greek symbol and in the later Greek when they changed the writing from left to right cabba so that the two lines projecting from the upright stroke of our English K are a reminiscence of the convolution of the serpent in the Maya original and the Egyptian copy turn now to the Maya sign for T it is symbol what is the distinctive mark about this figure it is the cross composed of two curved lines thus it is probable that in this Maya sign the cross is united at the bottom like a figure eight here again we turn to the Valley of the Nile and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyph for T is symbol and symbol and in the Syriac T it is symbol we even find the curved lines of the Maya T which give it something of the appearance of the numeral eight repeated accurately in the Mediterranean alphabets thus the Punic T repeats the Maya form almost exactly as symbol and symbol now suppose a busy people compelled to make this mark every day for a thousand years and generally in a hurry and the cross would soon be main without curving the lines it would become X but before it reached even that simplified form it had crossed the Atlantic and appeared in the archaic Ethiopian sign for Tsah thus symbol in the archaic Phoenician the sign for T is symbol and symbol the oldest Greek form is symbol or symbol and the later Greeks gave it to the Romans Tau and modified this into theta the old Hebrew gave it as symbol and symbol the Moab stone as symbol this became in time symbol and symbol take the letter A in the Maya there are three forms given for this letter the first is symbol the third is symbol the first looks very much like the foot of a lion or tiger the third is plainly a foot or a boot if one were required to give hurriedly a rude outline of either of these would he not represent it thus symbol and can we not conceive that this could have in time been modified into the Phoenician A which was symbol the Hierotic Egyptian A was symbol the ancient Hebrew which was symbol or symbol the ancient Greek was the foot reversed alpha the later Greek became our A turn next to the Mayan sign for Q it is symbol now what is the peculiarity of this hieroglyph the circle below is not significant for there are many circular figures in the Maya alphabet clearly if one was called upon to simplify this he would retain the two smaller circles joined side by side of the top and would indicate the lower circle with a line or dash and when we turn to the Egyptian Q we find it in this shape symbol we turn to the Ethiopian Q Qua and we find it symbol or as Qua symbol while the Phoenician comes still nearer the supposed Mayan form in symbol the Moab stone was symbol the hemorrhidic Arabian form became symbol the Greek form was symbol which graduated into the Roman Q but a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phoenician alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the Q the Mayan Q which is symbol now if we apply the Maya rule to this and discard the outer circle we have this left symbol in time the curved line would be made straight and the figure would assume this form symbol the next step would be to make the cross on the straight line thus symbol one of the ancient Phoenician forms is symbol can this be an accident the letter C or G for the two probably gave the same sound as in the Phoenician is given in the Maya alphabet as follows symbol this would in time be simplified into a figure representing the two sides of a triangle with the apex upward thus symbol this is precisely the form found by Dr. Shleeman in the ruins of Troy symbol what is the Phoenician form for G as found on the Moab stone it is symbol the Carthaginian Phoenicians gave it a more rounded form thus symbol the hieratic Egyptian form for G was symbol in the earlier Greek form the left limb of the figure was shortened thus symbol the later Greeks reversed it and wrote it gamma the Romans change this into symbol and it finally became C in the Maya we have one sign for P and another for PP the first contains a curious figure precisely like our R laid upon its back symbol there is apparently no R in the Maya alphabet and the Roman R grew out of the later Phoenician R formed thus symbol it would appear that the earliest Phoenician alphabet did not contain the letter R but if we now turn to the Phoenician alphabet we will find one of the curious forms of the P given thus symbol a very fair representation of an R lying upon its face is it not another remarkable coincidence that the P in both Maya and Phoenician should contain this singular sign the form of PP in the Maya alphabet is this symbol if we are asked on the principle already indicated to reduce this to its elements we would use a figure like this symbol in time the tendency would be to shorten one of these perpendicular lines thus symbol and this we find is very much like the Phoenician P symbol the Greek PH is Phi end of chapter seven section 23 part three the civilization of the old world and new compared chapter seven of Atlantis the antediluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org Atlantis the antediluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly chapter seven the origin of our alphabet one of the most marvelous inventions for the advancement of mankind is the phonetic alphabet or a system of signs representing the sounds of human speech without it our present civilization could scarcely have been possible no solution of the origin of our European alphabet has yet been obtained we can trace it back from nation to nation and form to form until we reach the Egyptians the archaic forms of Phoenicians Hebrews and Kushites by beyond this the light fails us Egyptians spoke of their own hieroglyphic system of writing not as their only mention but as the language of the gods the Normand and Cheval ancient history of the east volume two page 208 the gods were doubtless their highly civilized ancestors the people of Atlantis who as we shall hear after see became the gods of many of the Mediterranean races according to the Phoenicians the art of writing was invented by Tautus or Taut whom the Egyptians called Thoth and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thoth or Thoth otherwise called the first Hermes which we clearly see that both the Phoenicians and the Egyptians referred the invention to a period older than their own separate political existence and to an older nation from which both peoples received it bold ones prehistoric nations page 91 the first Hermes here referred to afterward called Mercury by the Romans was a son of Zeus Amaya a daughter of Atlas this is the same Maya whom Abi Abbasua de Aborberg identifies with the Maya of Central America Sir William Drummond in his origin he said there seems to be no way of accounting either for the early use of letters among so many different nations or for the resemblance which existed between some of the graphic systems employed by those nations then by supposing hieroglyphical writing if I may be allowed in the term to have been in use among the Zabaiists in the first ages after the flood when Zabaiists and planet worship was the religion of almost every country that was yet inhabited Sir Henry Rawlison says so great is the neology between the first principles of the science of writing is it appears to have been pursued in Kaldia and as we can actually trace its progress in Egypt that we can hardly hesitate to assign the original invention to a period before the hermetic race had broken up and divided it is not to believe that that such an extraordinary system of sound signs could have been the invention of any one man or even of any one age like all our other acquisitions it must have been the slow growth and accretion of ages it must have risen step by step from picture writing to an intermediate condition like that of the Chinese where each word or thing was represented by a separate sign the fact that so old and lightened the people as the Chinese have never reached the phonetic alphabet gives us some indication of the greatness of the people among whom it was invented and the lapse of time before they attain to it Humboldt says according to the views which since Champolian's great discovery have been gradually adopted regarding the earlier condition of the development of alphabetical writing the phonations as well as symmetric characters are to be regarded as the phonetic alphabet that has originated from pictorial writing as one in which the ideal signification of the symbol is wholly disregarded and the characters are regarded as mere signs for sounds cosmos volume 2 page 129 bold one says prehistoric nations page 93 the nation that became mistress of the seas established communication with every shore and monopolized the commerce of the known world must have substituted the phonetic alphabet for the hieroglyphics as it gradually grew to this eminence while so isolated Egypt less affected by the practical ones and tendencies of commercial enterprise retained the hieroglyphic system and carried it to a marvelous height of perfection it must be remembered that some of the letters of our alphabet are in mentions of the later nations and the oldest alphabets there are no c the g taking its place the Romans converted the g into c and then finally the necessity for a g sign made one by adding a tailpiece to the c the Greeks added the ancient alphabet and the epsilon shaped like our v or y the two forms being used at first and differently they added the x sign and they converted the t of the phonation into th or theta z and s into signs for double consonants they turned the phonation y yod into i iota the Greeks converted the phonation alphabet which was partly consonant into one purely phonetic perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language the w was also added to the phonation alphabet the Romans added the y at first i and j were both indicated by the same sound a sign for j was afterward added we have also in common with other European languages added a w that is v v or w to represent the w sound the letters then which we owe to the phonations are a b c d e h i k l m n o p q r s t z if we are to trace our resemblances with the alphabet of any other country it must be with these signs is there any other country to which we can turn which possessed a phonetic alphabet in any respect kindred to this phonetic in alphabet it cannot be the chinese alphabet which has more signs than words it cannot be the cuniform alphabet of asria with its 700 arrow shaped characters none of which bear the slightest affinity to the phonation letters it is a surprising fact that we find in central america a phonetic alphabet this is in the alphabet of the mayas the ancient people of the peninsula of yucatan who claim that their civilization came to them across the sea and ships from the east that is from the direction of the lantus the mayas succeeded to the colloas whose era terminated 1 000 years before the time of christ from them they received the alphabet it has come to us through bishop lander one of the early missionary bishops who confesses to have burned a great number of maya books because they contain nothing but the works of the devil he fortunately however preserved for posterity the alphabet of this people we presented here with lander's alphabet from north america of antiquity page 434 diago the lander was the first bishop of yucatan he wrote a history of the mayas and their country which was preserved in manuscript and majored in the library of royal academy of history it contains the description and explanation of the phonetic alphabet of the mayas lander's manuscript seems to have lain neglected in the library for little or nothing was heard of it until it was discovered by the french priest the prosciutto de bolberg who by means of it has deciphered some of the old american writings he says the alphabet and signs explained by lander have been to me a rosetta stone bold ones ancient america page 191 whom we observe in the table of alphabets of different european nations which i give here with how greatly the forms of the finician letters have been modified it would surprise us to find any resemblance between the maya alphabet or two or three centuries since and the ancient european forms it must however be remembered that the mayas are one of the most conservative peoples in the world they still adhere with striking pertenacity to the language they spoke when columbus landed on san salvador and it is believed that that their language is the same as the one inscribed on the most ancient monuments of their country senior pementels is of them the indians have preserved this idiom of such tenacity that they will speak no other it is necessary for the whites to address them in their own language to communicate with them it is therefore probable as the alphabet did not pass from nation to nation as the definition that it has not departed so widely from the original forms received from the colloas the alphabet but when we consider the vast extent of time which has lapsed and the fact that we are probably without the intermediate stages of the alphabet which preceded the archaic finician it will be astonishing we find resemblances between any of the maya letters and the european forms even though we concede that they are related if we find decided affinities between two or three letters we may reasonably presume that similar coincidences existed as to many others which have disappeared under the attrition of centuries the first thought that occurs to us on examining the lander alphabet is the complex and ornate character of the letters instead of the two or three strokes with which we indicate a sign for a sound we have here rude pictures of objects and we find that these are themselves simplifications of older forms of a still more complex character take for instance the letter pp and lander's alphabet hash hash here are evidently the traces of a face the same appear but not so plainly in the sign for x which is hash hash hash now if we turn to the ancient hieroglyphics upon the monuments of central america we will find the human face appearing in great many of them as in the following which we copy from the tablet of the crosshead plank we take the hieroglyphics from the left hand side of the inscription here it will be seen that out of the seven hieroglyphical figures six contain human faces and we find that in the whole inscription of the tablet of the cross there are 33 figures out of 108 that are made up in part of the human countenance we can see therefore in the lander alphabet a tendency to simplification and this is what we would naturally expect when the emblems which were probably first intended for a religious inscriptions where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated were placed in the hands of a busy act of commercial people such as were the atlantians and afterward the Phoenicians men with whom time was valuable and the natural tendency will be to simplify and condense them and when the original meaning of the picture was lost they would naturally slur it as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet where the figure of the human face reminds only in rude lines the same tendencies plainly shown the two forms of the letter h as given in lander's alphabet the original form is more elaborate than the variation of it the original form is hash hash hash and the variation is hash hash hash now let us suppose the simplification to be carried a step farther and we have seen the upper and lower parts the first form shrink into smaller and less elaborate shape let us imagine that the same tendency does weigh with them all together we would then have the letter h of the Maya alphabet represented by this figure hash hash hash now as it takes less time to make a single stroke than a double one this would become in time hash hash hash we turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew and we find that the letter h indicated by the sign hash hash hash precisely the Maya letter h simplified we turn to the archaic Hebrew and we find hash hash hash now it is known that the Phoenicians wrote from right to left and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right so did the Phoenician slope their letters to the left hence the Maya sign becomes in the archaic Phoenician this hash hash hash in some of the Phoenician alphabets we'd even find the letter h made with the double strokes above and below as the Maya h the Egyptian hieroglyphic for h is hash hash hash while ch is hash hash hash in time the Greeks carry the work of simplification still farther and eliminated the top lines as we have supposed the Atlanteans have eliminated the double strokes and they left the letter as it has come down to us h now it may be said that all this is coincidence if it is it is certainly remarkable but let us go our stepfather we have seen Lander's alphabet that there are two forms the letter m the first is hash hash hash but we find also an m combined with the letter o a or e says Lander in this form hash hash hash the m here is certainly indicated by the central part of this combination the figure hash hash where does that come from it is clearly taken from the heart of the original figure wherein it appears what does this prove that the Atlanteans or Mayas when they sort of simplify their letters and combine them with others took from the center of the ornate hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they represented the whole figure now let us apply this rule we have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language from our own dates the time of the Phoenicians o has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle now where do the Phoenicians get it clearly from the Mayas there are two figures for o in the Maya alphabet there are hash hash hash and hash hash hash now we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures the essential characteristic found in each is the circle in the first case pendant from the hieroglyphic in the other in the center of the lower part of it and that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyphic and used alone as in the case of the m is proved by the very sign used at the foot of the lander's alphabet which is hash hash hash lander calls this ma me omo it is probably the letter and in it we have the circle detached from the hieroglyph we find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle or a dot within a circle repeated in the Phoenician forms for o thus hash hash hash and hash hash hash and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics in the runic we have the circle in the circle in one form of the Greek o the dot we placed along side of the circle instead of below it as in the Maya are these another set of coincidences take another letter the letter n of the Maya alphabet is represented by this sign it's all probably a simplification of some more ornate form hash hash hash this is something like our letter s but quite unlike our n but let us examine into the pedigree of our n we find in the archaic Ethiopian a language as old as the Egyptian and which represents the kushan brunch of the Atlantean stock the sign for n na is hash hash hash in archaic Phoenician it comes still closer to the s shape thus hash hash hash all in this form hash hash hash we have about to curve these angles though approximated very closely to the Maya in in Troy this form was found hash hash hash the Samaritan makes a hash hash hash the old Hebrew hash hash hash the moab stone inscription gives it hash hash hash the later Phoenicians simplified the archaic form still further until it became hash hash hash then he passed into hash hash hash the archaic Greek form is hash hash hash the later Greeks made hash hash hash from which he passed into the present form in all these forms seem to be representations of a serpent we turn to the valley of the Nile and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for n was the serpent hash hash hash the palestrian of n was hash hash hash the Arcadian hash hash hash and the Etruscan hash hash hash can anything be more significant than to find the serpent the sign for n in the Central America and in all these old world languages now turns to the letter k the Maya sign for k is hash hash hash this does not look much like our letter k but let us examine it following the precedent established for us by the Mayas in the case for the letter m let us see what is the distinguishing feature here it is clearly the figure of a serpent standing erect with its tail doubled around its middle forming a circle it has already been remarked by a Savalani that this erect serpent is very much like the Egyptian Uras an erect serpent with an enlarged body a sacred emblem found in the hair of their deities we turn against the valley of the Nile and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for k was a serpent with a convolutional or protuberance in the middle precisely as in the Maya thus hash hash hash those who transformed into the Egyptian letter hash hash hash the serpent and the protuberance reappear in one of the Phoenician forms for k it to wit hash hash hash while in the Punic we have these forms hash hash hash and hash hash hash now suppose a busy people trying to give the sign instead of drawing the serpent in all its detail they would abbreviate it into something like this hash hash hash now we turn to the ancient Ethiopian sign for k and we have hash hash hash or the hemiotic Arabian hash hash while in the Phoenician it becomes hash hash hash in the archaic Greek hash hash hash and in the later Greek when they change the writing from left to right hash hash hash so that the two lines projecting from the upright stroke of our English k are a reminiscence of the convolution of the serpent in the Maya original and the Egyptian copy turn now to the Maya sign for t it is hash hash hash what is the distinctive mark about this figure it is the cross composed of two curved lines thus hash hash hash it is probable that in the Maya sign the cross is united at the bottom like a figure eight here again we turn to the value of the Nile and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyph for t is hash hash hash and hash hash hash and in the Syriac t is hash hash hash we even find the curved lines of the Maya t which gives it something of the appearance of the numeral eight repeated accurately in the Mediterranean alphabets thus the Punic t repeats the Maya form almost exactly as hash hash hash and hash hash hash now suppose the busy people compound to make this mark every day for a thousand years and generally in a hurry and the cross would soon be made without curving the lines it would become x but before it reached even that simplified form it had crossed the Atlantic and appeared in the archaic Ethiopian sign for tsah thus hash hash hash in the archaic Phoenician the sign for hash hash hash is hash hash hash and hash hash hash the oldest Greek form is hash hash hash or hash hash hash and the later Greeks gave it to the Romans hash hash hash and modified this into hash hash hash the old Hebrew gave it as hash hash hash and hash hash hash the mobstone as hash hash hash. This became in time hash hash hash and hash hash hash. Take the letter A. In the Maya there are three forms given for this letter. The first is hash hash hash. The third is hash hash hash. The first looks very much like the foot of a lion or tiger. The third is plainly a foot or boot. If one were required to give hurriedly a rude outline of either of these, would he not represented thus hash hash hash. And can we not conceive that this could have been in time modified into the Phoenician A which was hash hash hash. The hieratic Egyptian A was hash hash hash. The ancient Hebrew which was hash hash hash or hash hash hash. The ancient Greek was the foot reversed hash hash hash. The later Greek became our A. Turn next to the Maya sign for Q. It is hash hash hash. Now what is the peculiarity of this hieroglyph? The circle below is not significant for there are many circular figures in the Maya alphabet. Clearly if one was caught upon to simplify this he would retain the two small circles joined side by side at the top and would indicate the lower circle with a line or dash. And when we turn to the Egyptian Q we find it in this shape hash hash hash. We turn to the Ethiopian Q core and we find it hash hash hash as core hash hash hash. While the Phoenician comes still nearer the supposed Maya form in hash hash hash. The moab stone was hash hash hash. The hieratic Arabian form became hash hash hash. The Greek form was hash hash hash which graduated in the Roman Q. But as a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phoenician alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the Q. The Maya Q which is hash hash hash. Now if we apply the Maya rule to this and discard the outside circle we have this left hash hash hash. In time the curved line would be made straight and the figure would assume this form hash hash hash. The next step would be to make the cross on the straight line thus hash hash hash. One of the ancient Phoenician forms is hash hash hash. Can all this be accident? Let C or G for the two probably gave the same sound as Phoenician is giving in the Maya alphabet as follows hash hash hash. This would in time be simplified into a figure representing the two signs of a triangle with the apex upward. Thus hash hash hash. This is precisely the form found by Dr. Schleeman in the runes of Troy hash hash hash. What is the Phoenician form for G as found on the moab stone? It is hash hash hash. The Cathedonian Phoenicians gave it more of a rounded form thus hash hash hash. The hieratic Egyptian figure for G was hash hash hash in the earlier Greek form. The left limb of the figure was shortened thus hash hash hash. The later Greeks reversed it and wrote it hash hash hash. The Romans changed this into hash hash hash and finally it became C. In the Maya we have one sign for P and another for PP. The first contains a curious figure. Precisely like our La laid on its back hash hash hash. There is apparently no R in the Maya alphabet and the Roman R grew out of the later Phoenician R formed thus hash hash hash. It would appear that the earliest Phoenician alphabet did not contain the letter R. But if we now turn to the Phoenician alphabet we will find one of the curious forms of the P given thus hash hash hash are very fair representation of an R lying upon its face. Is it not another remarkable coincidence that the P in both Maya and Phoenician should contain the singular sign? The form of PP in the Maya alphabet is this hash hash hash. If we are asked on the principle already indicated to reduce this to its elements we would use a figure like this hash hash hash. In time the C would be too short on one of these perpendicular lines thus and this we find is very much like the Phoenician P hash hash hash. The Greek pH is hash hash hash. L in Maya is in two forms one of these is hash hash hash. The other is hash hash hash. Now if we again apply this rule which we observed to hold good with a letter M that is draw from the inside of the hieroglyph some symbol that will briefly indicate the whole letter. We will have one of two forms either a right-angled figure formed thus hash hash hash or an acute angle formed by joining the two lines which are unconnected thus hash hash hash and either of these forms brings us quite closely to the letter L of the Old World. We find L on the moab stone thus formed hash hash hash. The archaic Phoenician form of L was hash hash hash or hash hash. The archaic Hebrew was hash hash hash and hash hash hash. The Heretic Egyptian was hash hash hash. The Greek form was hash hash hash. The Roman L and letter B is shaped thus hash hash hash. Now if we turn to the Phoenician we find that B is represented by the same crescent like figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph but reversed in the direction of the writing thus hash hash hash. While in the archaic Hebrew we have the same crescent figure as Namaya turned in the same direction but accompanied and by a line drawn downward. And to the left thus hash hash hash a similar form is also found in the Phoenician hash hash hash and this in the earliest Greek changed into hash hash hash and in the later Greek into B. One of the Etruscan signs for B was hash hash hash while the Pallasgian B was represented thus hash hash hash. The Chaldeic B was hash hash hash. The Syriac sign for B was hash hash hash. The Illyrian B was hash hash hash. The Maya E is hash hash hash. This became in time hash hash and then hash hash hash. We see this form on the Maya monuments. The dots in time were indicated by strokes and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form hash hash hash. And we even find in some of the ancient Phoenician inscriptions in the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter E thus hash hash hash. Then we find the Old Greek form hash hash hash. The Old Hebrew hash hash hash and the later Phoenician hash hash hash. Where the direction of the writing was changed this became hash hash hash. Dr. Schleeman found a form like this on inscriptions deep in the ruins of Troy hash hash hash. This is exactly the form found on the American monuments. The I is hash hash hash. This became in time hash hash hash. This developed into a still simpler form hash hash hash. And this passed into the Phoenician form hash hash hash. This Maritan I was formed thus hash hash hash. The Egyptian letter I is hash hash hash. Gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped. And we come to the figure used on the stoner mob hash hash hash and hash hash hash. This in time became the Old Hebrew hash hash hash or hash hash hash. And this developed into the Greek hash hash hash. A complicated symbol for M reduced by the Mayans themselves into this figure hash hash hash. If we attempt to write this rapidly we find it very difficult to always keep the baselines horizontal. Naturally we form something like this hash hash hash. The distinctive figure within the sign for M in the Maya is hash hash hash or hash hash hash. We see this repeated in the Egyptian hieroglyphs for M hash hash hash and hash hash hash and hash hash hash. And in the Chaldeac M hash hash hash and the Theopic hash hash hash. We find one form of the Phoenician where the M is made thus hash hash hash. And the Punic it appears this hash hash hash. And this is not unlike the M on the stoner mob hash hash hash. Or the ancient Phoenician forms hash hash hash hash. And the Old Greek hash hash hash. Or the ancient Hebrew hash hash hash hash hash hash hash hash hash. X of the Maya alphabet is hand pointed downward hash hash hash. This reduced to its elements would be expressed something like this hash hash hash or hash hash hash. And this is very much like the X of the archaic Phoenician hash hash hash. Or the moabstone hash hash hash. Or the later Phoenician hash hash hash. Or the Hebrew hash hash hash hash hash. Or the Old Greek hash hash hash. The later Greek form was hash hash hash. Maya alphabet contains no sign of the letter s. There is however a symbol called ka, ca, immediately above the letter k. It is probable that the sign ka stands for the softer sound of c. As in our words citron, circle, civil, circus, etc. as it is written in the Maya alphabet ka. And not k. It evidently represents a different sound. The sign ka is this hash hash hash. A somewhat similar sign is found in the body of the symbol for k, thus hash hash hash. This would appear to be a simplification of ka. But turned downward. If now we turn to the Egyptian letters, we find that the sign k represented by this figure hash hash hash simplified again into hash hash hash. While the sign for k in the Phoenician inscription on the stono moab is hash hash hash. If now we turn to the s sound indicated by the Maya sign ka hash hash hash. We find the resemblance still most striking to kinder European letters. The Phoenician s is hash hash hash. In the Greek, this becomes hash hash hash hash hash. The Hebrew is hash hash hash hash hash. The Samaritan hash hash hash. The Egyptian hieroglyph for s is hash hash hash. The Egyptian letter s is hash hash hash. The Ethiopian hash hash hash. The Chaldeic hash hash hash. And the Illyrian s c is hash hash hash. We have thus traced back the forms of 18 of the ancient letters to the Maya alphabet. In some cases, the pedigree is so plain as to be indisputable. For instance, take the h, Maya hash hash, Old Greek hash hash hash, Old Hebrew hash hash hash, Phoenician hash hash hash. Or take the letter O, Maya hash hash hash, Old Greek hash hash hash, Old Hebrew hash hash hash, Phoenician hash hash hash, We find another singular proof of the truth of this theory, it will be seen that the Maya alphabet lacks the letter D and the letter R, the Mexican alphabet, possessed a D. The sounds D and T were probably indicated in the Maya tongue for the same sign. In the oldest known form of the Phoenician alphabet, that found on the moab stone, we find it in the same way but one sign to express the D and T. D does not occur on the Etruscan monuments, T being used in its place. It would therefore appear that after the Maya alphabet passed into the Phoenicians, they added two new signs for the letters D and R, and it is a singular fact that there. Poverty of invention seems to have been such that they used to express both D and R, the same sign with very little modification which they had already obtained from the Maya alphabet as the symbol for B. To illustrate this, we place the sign side by side, hash hash hash. Thus appears that the very signs D and R in the Phoenician early Greek and ancient Hebrew, which are lacking in Maya, were supplied by imitating the Maya sign for B. And it is a curious fact that while Phoenician legends claim that Taut invented the art of writing, yet they tell us that Taut made records and delivered them to his successors and to foreigners, to whom one was Iseris, Osiris the Egyptian god, the inventor of three letters. Did these three letters include in the D and R which they did not receive from the Alentean alphabet as represented to us by the Maya alphabet? In the alphabetical table, which we hear with a pen, we have represented the sign V, or Vow, or F by the Maya sign for U. In the present so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac and Sabaic, Pomeranac and some other kinder writings, the vowel takes the place of F and indicates the sounds of V and U. F occurs in the same place also on the Adelian table of Cyprus in Lycian, also in Tuareg, Berber, and some other writings, American psychopedia, Artif. Since writing the above, I find it in the proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for December 1880, page 154, an interesting article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian. I quote, it is astonishing to notice that while Landers first B is, according to Valentini, represented them by a footprint, and that path and footprint are pronounced B in the Maya dictionary. The Egyptian sign for B was the human leg. Still more surprising is that the H of Landers alphabet is a tie of cord, or while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord, but the most striking coincidence of all occurs in the cord or cord line representing Landers U, for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian cord U. The Maya word for to wind or bend is Uigh, but why should Egyptians confine as they were to the valley of the Nile and abhorring as they did the sea and sailors write their U precisely like Landers alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable coincidence between Landers and the Egyptian alphabets. Either way, the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it. Landers D, T, is a disc with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed Mexican symbol for a day or sun. So far as the sound is concerned, the English day represents it. So far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian cake ideograph for one country and second the sun's orbit is essentially the same. It would appear as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another. They followed one different characteristics in the same original hieroglyph, as for instance in the letter B, and yet I have shown that the closest resemblance exists between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs in the C, H, T, I, K, M, N, O, Q. And S, 11 letters in all. In some cases, as in the N and K, the signs are identical. The K in both alphabets is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle. If we add the above, the B and U referred to in the precedence of the American Philosophical Society, we have 13 letters out of 16 in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other. Can any theory of accidental coincidences account for all of this? And it must be remembered that these resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet in the world, opposed that two men agree that each shall construct apart from the other a phonetic alphabet of 16 letters. That they shall employ only simple forms, combinations of straight or curved lines. That their signs shall not in any wise resemble the letters now in use. They go to work apart, and they have a multitudinous array of forms to draw from the thousand possible combinations of lines, angles, circles, and curves. When they have finished, they bring their alphabets together for comparison. Under such circumstances, it is impossible that out of the 16 signs, one sign might appear in both alphabets. There is one chance in 100 that such might be the case, but there is not one chance in 500 that this sign should in both cases represent the same sound. It is barely possible that two men working thus apart should bet upon two or three identical forms. But altogether impossible that these forms should have the same significance, and by no stretch of the imagination can it be supposed that in these alphabets are created without correspondence. 13 out of 16 signs should be the same in form and the same in meaning. It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the European alphabets. And that further discoveries of inscriptions in Europe may approximate the alphabets of the new and old world, still more closely by supplying intermediate forms. Finding the American hieroglyphs, peculiar signs which take the place of pictures, and which probably like the hieratic symbols mingled with the hieroglyphics of Egypt represent alphabetical sounds. For instance, we find the sign on the walls of the palace of Pelang. This is not unlike the form of the Phoenician T used in writing. We find also upon these monuments the letter O, represented by a small circle, and entering into many of the hieroglyphs. We also find the tile sign that's h h h often repeated, also the sign which we have supposed to represent B h h h, also the sign h h h, which we think is the simplification of the letter K, also this sign which we supposed to represent E h h h, also this figure h h h, and this h h h h. There is an evident tendency to reduce the complex figures to simple signs whenever the writers proceed to form words. Though it has so far been found difficult, if not impossible, to translate the compound words formed from the Maya alphabet, yet we can go far enough to see that they use the system of simpler sounds for the whole hieroglyph to which we have referred. The letter gives us, in addition to the alphabet, the signs which represent the days and months, and which are evidently compounds of the Maya letters. For instance, we have this figure as the representative of the month Mo h h h h. Here we see very plainly the letter h h h h for M, the sign h h h h for O, and we will possibly find the sign for L in the right angle to the right of the M sign, in which is the right from the figure in the second sign for L in the Maya alphabet. Most ancient races of Central America is the Kea Panik, a branch of the Mayas. They claim to be the first settlers of the country. They came, their legends tell us from the east and from beyond the sea. And even after the lapse of so many thousand years, most remarkable resemblances have been found to exist between the Kea Panik, a language, and the Hebrew, the living representative of the Phoenician tongue. The Mexican scholar, Sr. Mauga, North Americans of Antiquity, page 475, gives the following list of words taken from the Kea Panik and the Hebrew. The following words shall be read in such a manner, English first, and Kea Panik second, Hebrew, third. English, son, Kea Panik, bean, Hebrew, bin, daughter, baths, baths, father, abag, aba, star and zodiac, cimax, cima, kin, molo, melok, name applied to Adam, abag, aba. Afflicted Chanim, Chanim, God, Ilab, Ilab, September, Tsukwin, Tisturi, Mo, Tsik, Chi, Rich, Chabin, Chabik, son of Seth, Inot, Inos, to give, Votan, Votan. As while we find such extraordinary resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Phoenician alphabet, we find equally surprising coincidences between the Kea Panik tongue, a branch of the Maya's, and the Hebrew a branch of the Phoenician's. Attempts have been repeatedly made by European scholars to trace the letters of the Phoenician alphabet back to the elaborate hieroglyphics from which all authorities agree, and they must have been developed, but all such attempts have been failures. In the Maya alphabet, we are not only able to extract from the heart of the hieroglyphic the typical sign for the sound, but we are able to go a step farther and by means of the inscriptions upon the monuments of Koopan. And Palink deduced the alphabetical hieroglyph itself from an older and more ornate figure, with us not only discover the relationship of the European alphabet into the American, but we trace its descent in the very mode in which reasoned houses it must have been developed. All this proves that the similarities in question do not come from Phoenicians having accidentally visited the shores of America, but that we have before us the origin, the source, the very matrix in which the Phoenician alphabet was formed. In the light of such discovery, the inscriptions upon the monuments of Central America assume incalculable importance. They take us back to the civilization far interior to the oldest known in Europe. They represent the language of antediluvian times. It may be said that it is improbable that the use of an alphabet could have ascended to antediluvian times, or to that prehistoric age when intercourse existed between ancient Europe and America. But it must be remembered that if the flood legends of Europe and Asia are worth anything, they prove that the art of writing existed the date of the deluge. And that records of antediluvian learning were preserved by those who escaped the flood, while Plato tells us that the people of Atlantis ingrate their laws upon columns of bronze and plates of gold. There was a general belief among the ancient nations that the art of writing was known to the antediluvians that Druids believed in books more ancient than the flood. They styled them the books of Fereld and the writings of Pridion and Hu. Cyroduon consults them before she prepares the mysterious calderon which shadows out the awful catastrophe of the deluge, Faber's pagan idolatry, Vol. 2, page 150 and 151. In the first avatar of Vishnu we are told that the divine ordinances were stolen by the demon Haya Griever. Vishnu became a fish and after the deluge when the waters had subsided he recovered the holy books from the bottom of the ocean. Barossus, speaking of the time before the deluge, says, owns road concerning the generations of mankind and their civil polity. The Hebrew commentators on Genesis say, Our rabbins asserted that Adam, our father of blessed memory, composed a book, a precepts, which were delivered to him by God in Paradise, Smith's secret annals, page 49. That is to say that Hebrews preserved the tradition that the Ad-Amy, the people of Ad, or Ad-Lantis, possessed the while yet dwelling in Paradise the art of writing. It has been suggested that without the use of letters it would have been impossible to preserve the many details as to dates, ages and measurements as of the Ark and handled down to us in Genesis. Josephus, quoting Jewish tradition, says, The births and deaths of illustrious men between Adam and Noah were noted down at the time with great accuracy. Antelib, one cap, third C3. Swedish, a Greek lexicographer of the 11th century, expresses tradition when he says, Adam was the author of arts and letters. The Egyptians said that their god Anubis was an antediluvian and he wrote annals before the flood. The Chinese have traditions that the earliest race of their nation prior to history taught all the arts of life and wrote books. God's always had the use of letters. Inla Gransk affirms that before or soon after the flood, there were found the acts of great men engraved in letters on large stones. Forsbrook's Encyclopedia of Antiquity, volume 1, page 355. Plenty says, letters were always in use. Strabo says, The inhabitants of Spain possessed records written before the Deluge. Jackson's Chronicles of Antiquity, volume 3, page 85. Medford, History of Greece, volume 1, page 121 says, Nothing appears to us so probable as that it, the alphabet, was derived from the antediluvian world. End of chapter 7, the Origin of the Alphabet of section 23 of Atlantis, the antediluvian world by Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, recording by Pan Nevelander.