The invention of the alphabet, which, in a small number of elementary
characters, is capable of six hundred and twenty sextillions of
combinations, and of exhibiting to the sight the countless conceptions of
the mind which have no corporeal forms, is so wonderful that great men of
all ages have shrunk from accounting for it otherwise than as a boon of
divine origin. This feeling is strengthened by the singular circumstance
that so many alphabets bear a strong similarity to each other, however
widely separated the countries in which they arose.

In Egypt the invention of the alphabet is by some ascribed to Syphoas,
nearly two thousand years before the Christian era, but more commonly
to Athotes, Thoth, or Toth, a deity always figured with the head of the
ibis, and very familiar in Egyptian antiquities. Cadmus is accredited
with having introduced it from Egypt into Greece about five centuries
later.

From the alphabet the gradation is natural to compounds of letters and
written language, and, though speech is one of the greatest gifts to man,
it is writing which distinguishes him from the uncivilized savage. The
practice of writing is of such remote antiquity that neither sacred nor
profane authors can satisfactorily trace its origin. The philosopher may
exclaim with the poet:

"Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise. Of painting speech and
speaking to the eyes? That we, by tracing magic lines, are taught How
both to color and embody thought?"

The earliest writing would probably have been with chalk, charcoal,
slate, or perhaps sand, as children from time immemorial have been taught