Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/106

86 HISTORY 01 ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS I)FI>F.NDENCIFS. FlG. 31. Egyptian riting-c.ise. I low were the Phoenicians themselves led to embark on the path which ended in their alphabet ? They borrowed her arts and industries from Egypt, why did they not borrow her writing' also ? It was no doubt because they found it too inconvenient, too complex, too diffi- cult to master. The Egyptian writing included ideographic symbols, some of which were taken in their natural, others in a metaphorical, sense. These were combined with phonetic signs represent- ing sometimes syllables, sometimes iso- lated consonants. The same word or idea might be rendered here by a single ideogram, there by a combination of various figures. This led to confusion, and finally to the embarrassment of the reader and to the possibility on his part of continual mistakes. The people who invented such a system, and persevered in its use for thousands of years, did not suspect its defects. There is no instru- ment of which long hereditary custom will not make man a complete master. Scribes of the Ptolemaic and Roman times sometimes arranged their symbols as if they were amusing themselves by making the inscriptions with which they covered the temple walls as obscure as they could. Was this because, as some have declared, they did not want to be understood ? Not at all ; they were merely showing their skill by playing with a difficulty, just as a modern virtuoso plays with a difficult passage on the pianoforte. Drilled by constant practice from in- fancy upwards into the use of this delicate machine, the lettered Egyptian might