period, the exceedingly complex syllabary of the Babylonians was
the official means of communication throughout western Asia and
between Asia and Egypt, as we know from the chance discovery of a
collection of letters belonging to the Egyptian king Khun-aten,
preserved at Tel-el-Amarna. In the time of Ramses the Great the
Babylonian writing was in all probability considered by a
majority of the most highly civilized people in the world to be
the most perfect script practicable. Doubtless the average scribe
of the time did not in the least realize the waste of energy
involved in his labors, or ever suspect that there could be any
better way of writing.

Yet the analysis of any one of these hundreds of syllables into
its component phonetic elements--had any one been genius enough
to make such analysis-- ould have given the key to simpler and
better things. But such an analysis was very hard to make, as the
sequel shows. Nor is the utility of such an analysis
self-evident, as the experience of the Egyptians proved. The
vowel sound is so intimately linked with the consonant--the
con-sonant, implying this intimate relation in its very
name--that it seemed extremely difficult to give it individual
recognition. To set off the mere labial beginning of the sound by
itself, and to recognize it as an all-essential element of
phonation, was the feat at which human intelligence so long
balked. The germ of great things lay in that analysis. It was a
process of simplification, and all art development is from the
complex to the simple. Unfortunately, however, it did not seem a
simplification, but rather quite the reverse. We may well suppose
that the idea of wresting from the syllabary its secret of
consonants and vowels, and giving to each consonantal sound a