If the proposed derivation of Phoenician letters from Egyptian hieroglyphics were definitively proven, what larger implications would this have for our understanding of the global evolution of writing systems?

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Delta . The old Hebrew, the Aramæan, and the Greek letters seem to have come from the Phœnician, a Syro-Arabian tongue. The Phœnician letters, again, as Gesenius suggests, may have been derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphics. A as an initial is used: In chronology, for Anno (Lat.)=in the year, as A. D., Anno Domini =in the year of our Lord; A. U. C., Anno urbis conditæ =in the year of the city founded— i. e. , from the foundation of the city (Rome)=753 B. C. ( Varro ). In horology, for the Lat. prep. ante =before, as a. m. ( ante meridiem )=before noon. In designating university degrees, for…

For works with similar titles, see A . ← Collier's New Encyclopedia , Volume 1 A Aachen → Edition of 1921; disclaimer . 229678 Collier's New Encyclopedia , Volume 1 — A ​ A , a, the first letter in the English alphabet, as in those of all the modern Indo-European tongues. The Latin alphabet also commences with a , and the Greek with a similar letter, alpha . In Sanscrit the vowels are classified by grammarians separately from the consonants. The vowels are placed first, and two sounds of a , the first a very short one, intermediate between ă and ŭ , as in the word Veda , and the other long,…

r ancestors were restricted—the plow, roller, hoe, sickle—are found pictured in the Egyptian inscriptions and paintings. It is also known that the Egyptians were familiar with the advantages of rotation in crops, and that they were exceedingly intelligent and systematic in the administration of estates and the regulation of all rural concerns. ​ © Ewing Galloway PLOWING AN ALFALFA FIELD BY TRACTOR ​ Within the last hundred years, however, the foundations of an entirely new agriculture have been securely laid. The two active agencies in this change have been chemical science and invention.…

e indolence of the Turk and his neglect of the soil. The first mention of agriculture is found in the writings of Moses. From them we learn that Cain was a “tiller of the ground”; that Abel sacrificed the “firstlings of his flock”; and that Noah “began to be a husbandman and planted a vineyard.” The Chinese, Japanese, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Phœnicians appear to have held husbandry in high estimation. The Egyptians were so sensible of its blessings that they ascribed its invention to superhuman agency, and even carried their gratitude to such an excess as to worship the ox, for his services…

ss in agriculture. The relationship of agriculture to population expansion is one of the vital questions for economists. It appears that, in times so remote that their antiquity is only conjecturable, an excellent system of agriculture supported, in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, populations at least as dense as any existing to-day. The same agricultural perfection, attended by much the same exceptional conditions of the population which ​ distinguished the oldest civilizations of the world, is still conspicuously characteristic of such Oriental countries as retain any national…