Railroad (Map: Michigan. K 3). It exports large quantities of lumber in various products, and has fisheries, quarries, tanneries, and manu- factures of cement, excelsior, machinery, etc. Alpena has a public library, parks, and a well- equipped high school. It was settled in 1835, and incorporated in 1871; its charter, as revised in 1897, limits the mayor's term to two years, and provides for a city council of twelve mem- l)eis, who elect the police commissioners and the board of health, the mavor iiaving no power of appointment. Pop., 1890, 11,283; 1900, 11,802.
AL'PENHOBN, or ALP'HORN. A simple
conical, somewhat curved wind-instrument, aliout
three feet long, and made of wooden strips.
It has a hard-wood cupped mouthpiece and a
bell. The notes are the open harmonics of the
tube, the quality of tone being modified by the
material, and by the smallness of the bore in re-
lation to the le"ngth of the tube. It is used by
the Swiss to convey signals. The melody usually
played on this instrument is called the Kanz des
Vaches (q.v.). The alpenhorn is usually repre-
sented in the orchestra by the oboe, English horn,
or bassoon. For illustration, see Musical
Instrumekts.
ALPES, Basse.?. See Basses-Alpes.
ALPES MARITIMES, alp ma're'tem'. A
department of France (q.v.), in the extreme
southeast, on the shores of the Jlediterranean
and confines of Italy. It is formed mainly of the
territory of Nice, ceded by Italy to France in
1800. The capital is Nice.
AL'PETRA'GIUS. See Nub-ed-Din El-
Betbuji.
AL'PHA AND OME'GA {a [u?4a] and u [ufitya] the first and last letters of the Greek al- ])habet). A term employed to convey the idea of completeness. The phrase occurs in the New Testament (Revelation i : 8. xxi : 6, xxii : 13) to denote the immeasurable fullness of God and of Jesus Christ; in Revelation i : 8 it is applied to God; in the other passages, to Christ. The He- brews similarly employed the phrase Aleph and Tau, the first "and the'last letter of their alpha- bet, to denote a thing in its entirety. See e.g., Jalkut Rubcni xvii : 4, xlviii : 4. cxxviii: 3. A somewhat similar phrase is found in Isaiah xliv : 6, "I am the first and I am the last," which, applied to God, is intended to express both eternity and universal sway.
AL'PHABET (Late Gk. a^^d/3i?Tof, alphalefos.
from M<pa, alpha + ih]ra, hcfa, the names of the
first two letters of the Greek alphabet; compare
the Late Lat. ahecedarium, the English A B C.
,tik1 Russ. a-biila, from azii + biiki. the names
of the first two letters). An alphabet may be
defined as the series of characters, usually having
a fixed order, employed to represent the single
sounds of a language. The word is sometimes
loosely but improperly ein;>loyed to denote a se-
ries of characters denoting syllables or combina-
tions of elementary sounds. For the various
modes employed 'o represent language, see WniT-
ixG; Hieroglyphics; Cixeiform Ikscbiptioxs.
For the variations in the style of writing at
difTerent periods, see Paleography.
The alphabets of modern Europe are derived
from the Greek, either directly, as in the case of
the Russian, or through the medium of the
Latin. The Greek alphabet, in turn, is derived
from the Phoenician. This was the view of the
Greeks themselves, as appears from tiie state-
ments of Herodotus and other ancient writers,
and from the word, <poiviK7/ta, phoinilcria, yhich
denotes the letters of the alphabet, and occurs
in an inscription of Teos iu Asia Minor belonging
to the first half of the fifth century B.C. It is
true that other tr.idilions were also current,
which attributed the invention of the alphabet
to such uiythical characters as Prometheus,
Musa>us and Palamedes, while the addition of
certain letters was assigned to Epicharmus
and Simonides. We are not, however, depend-
ent on the very doubtful authority of tradition
for the Phflenician origin <. ! the Greek alpha-
bet. As may easily be seen from the accom-
panying table, the forms of the earliest Greek
letters bear a close resemblance to those of
Phc^nicia, and the Cireek names are for the most
part obviously derived from the Semitic. More-
over, the order of the letters in the North Sem-
itic alphabets, as shown ' y their numerical val-
ues and their use in acrostic compositions, is the
same as that proved for the Greek by similar
evidence, and by the so-called ahecedaria. or
alphabets found on early vases.
The North Semitic alphabets, Phoenician, He- brew, Aramaic, and their branches, while differ- ing somewhat in the forms of the letters, are obviously of u common origin, and even in the earliest inscriptions show a complete adaptation to the needs of the language. The Him.yaritic inscriptions of southern Arabia, and, therefore, the later alphabets of the southern Semites, show a clearly cognate system ; but until the age of these early inscriptions is determined, the exact relation of the North and South Semitic alpha- bets cannot be definitely settled. If Glaser's view, that the Himyaritic monuments belong in part to the second pre-Christian millennium, should prove correct, it might be necessary to regard this as the earliest form of the Semitic alphabet. Even in the present state of our knowledge, it is doubtful whether the southern Semites derived their alphabet from their north- ern brethren, as there is much that seems to indicate that both branches are indebted to a common source. Whatever be the relation of the Semitic alphabets to one another, the present evidence points to the conclusion that the con- sistent employment of a small number of signs to denote, not words nor syllables, but the ele- mentary sounds of a language, originated among the Semites, and that through the trading branch of this family, the Phoenicians, this system of writing was carried to the Greeks and the west. Though the attempts to assign meanings to all the Semitic names of the letters has not proved successful, there can be no doubt that at least twelve are significant: e.g., Aleph means ox; Beth, house; Ualeth, door: Koph, hollow of the hand: Mem, water; Ayin, eye: Resh, head. This leads naturally to the conclusion that the characters were originally representations of these objects, or at least showed some resem- blance to them. Inquiry in this direction leads, however, to no satisfactory result as to the origin of the letters, though it may throw light on that part of the Semitic world where the names arose. As both Phitnicians and Hebrews had intimate connections with Egypt, and as the hieroglyphic and hieratic systems had been in use there for centuries before the earliest known Phoenician inscriptions, it was natural to look to the valley of the Nile for the symbols from
