The Writing

The ancient Egyptian system of writing, so far as we know, originated, developed and finally expired strictly within the limits of the Nile Valley. The germ of its existence may have come from without, but, as we know it, it is essentially Egyptian and intended for the expression of the Egyptian language. About the 1st century B.C., however, the semi-barbarous rulers of the Ethiopian kingdoms of Mcroe and Napata contrived the " Meroitic " alphabet, founded on Egyptian writing, and comprising both a hieroglyphic and a cursive form (see ETHIOPIA). As yet both of these kinds of Nubian writing are undeciphcred. Egyptian hieroglyphic was carried by conquest into Syria, certainly under the XVIIIth Dynasty, and again under the XXVIth for the engraving of Egyptian inscriptions; but in the earlier period the cuneiform syllabary, and in the later the " Phoenician alphabet, had obtained a firm hold there, and we may be sure that no attempt was made to substitute the Egyptian system for the latter. Cuneiform tablets in Syria, however, seem almost confined to the period of the XVIIIth Dynasty.

Although it cannot be proved it seems quite possible that the traders of Phoenicia and the Aegean adopted the papyrus and Egyptian hieratic writing together, before the end of the New Kingdom, and developed their Phoenician " alphabet from the latter about 1000 B.C. In very early times a number of systems of writing already