"Abbreviations for references": pages vii-viii.

Building upon his earlier works in which he proved a racial link between the Indo-Europeans in Europe and ancient Sumeria, in this work the author shows that the modern alphabet used in Europe (and thus most of the world) originated with a Proto-Indo-Hittite script which developed into Sumerian. This was then in turn transmitted to surrounding civilizations and ultimately became the written language of Western civilization. "The origin of our Alphabet and Alphabetic Writing-one of the greatest and most useful of human inventions-has long been the subject of countless conjectures, but has hitherto remained wholly unsolved. The new evidence now discloses by concrete proofs that unknown origin, the meaning of the letters or signs, the objects that they represent with their original names and meanings, and their racial authorship, which is found to be not Semite, as hitherto supposed, but Aryan. "The inventor of the alphabet is traced to the leading mercantile and seafaring branch of the ruling Aryans or Sumerians, namely, the Hitto-Phoeniciansand his personality appears to found in King Cadmus, the Phoenician sea-emperor of about 1200 BC, after whom the Greeks named their early alphabetic letters. "The effect, therefore, of these constructive discoveries is destructive of the current established theories of modern historians and philologists on the racial origin of the Higher Civilization and of civilized writing, both hieroglyphic and alphabetic. It thus necessitates a new re-orientation of the facts of Ancient History and of the History of our Modern Civilization."-From the conclusion. Contents: I: Ancestry of the Alphabets re the Phoenicians II: Alphabetic Letters in Pre-Dynastic and Early-Dynastic Egypt and Theories Thereon III: How the Sumerian Origin of the Alphabet Was Discovered IV: The Alphabetic Vowel and Consonantal Signs in Sumerian Writing V: The So-Called "Aphonic Owner's Mark" Signs Of Pre-Dynastic and Early-Dynastic Egypt Are Sumerian Linear Pictograms VI: Comparative Alphabetic Tables Showing Sumerian Origin & Evolution of the Alphabetic Letters VII: Individual Letters and Their Evolution from Sumerian Parents VIII: Names of the Letters and Objects Pictured IX: Order of the Alphabet or "Abc" and Numeral Value of Letters X: Authorship of the Alphabetic System and Date XI: Some Historical Effects of the Discoveries Completely reset. Contains all original plates and figures.

The author shows that the modern alphabet used in Europe (and thus most of the world) originated with a Proto-Indo-Hittite script which developed into Sumerian. This was then in turn transmitted to surrounding civilizations and ultimately became the written language of Western civilization.

The origin of the English alphabet as we know it. With parentage of our letters, ancient and modern.

This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

A new series of the Scottish antiquary established 1886.

Lieut.-Col. Laurence Austine Waddell (1854 1938) was a British Army officer with an established reputation mainly due to a work on the 'Buddhism' of Tibet, his explorations of the Himalayas, and a biography which included records of the 1903-4 military expedition to Lhasa (Lhasa and its Mysteries). Waddell was also in the limelight due to his acquisition of Tibetan manuscripts which he donated to the British Museum. His overriding interest was in 'Aryan origins'. After learning Sanskrit and Tibetan, and in between military expeditions and gathering intelligence from the borders of Tibet in the Great Game, Waddell researched Lamaïsm. He extended his activities to Archaeology, Philology and Ethnology, and was credited with discoveries in relation to Buddha. His personal ambition was to locate records of ancient civilisation in Tibetan lamaseries. Waddell is little known as an archaeologist and scholar, in contrast with his fame in the Oriental field, due to the controversial nature of his published works dealing with 'Aryan themes'. Waddell studied Sumerian and presented evidence that an Aryan migration fleeing Sargon II carried Sumerian records to India. He interrupted his comparative studies of Sumerian and Indian king-lists to publish a work on Phoenician origins and decipherment of Indus Valley seals, the inscriptions of which he claimed were similar to Sumerian pictogram signs cited from G. A. Barton's plates, which are reproduced in this volume. Waddell's life is reconstructed from primary sources, such as letters from Marc Aurel Stein at the British Museum and Theophilus G Pinches, held in the Special Collections at the University of Glasgow Library. Special attention is paid to the contemporary reception of his theories, with the objective of re-evaluating his contribution; they are contrasted to past and present academic views, in addition to an overview of relevant discoveries in Archaeology.