[ANCIENT ALPHABETS]. Grammaire comparée des langues bibliques. Application des découvertes de Champollion à l'étude des langues dans lesquelles ont été écrites les livres saints

Paris: Jacques Lecoffre & Cie / E. Lefranc, Imprimeur-libraire, 1858. First Edition. Very good. Together 2 vols., folio. Paper stock untrimmed. Bound in contemporary French blue quarter basane over blue marbled endpapers (headcaps of both vols. chipped, that of vol. 1 partially defective, some wear to covers and binding extremities). In vol. 1 the first two binder's blanks excised. Original front wrapper of vol. 2 bound in. Ad 1: an annotated interleaved copy of the 1852 edition of "Histoire et analyse des alphabets sémitiques et européens." 3 ff., 56 pp. with annotations + 25 plates (some folding) with descriptive text on facing tissue guard. Ad 2: an interleaved, unannotated copy of the 1858 edition of "Grammaire comparée de l'hébreu, du chaldéen, du syriaque, de l'arabe et de l'égyptien." viii, 208 pp. THE AUTHOR'S OWN INTERLEAVED COPY WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS IN VOL. 1, INTENDED TO BE INCORPORATED INTO THE SECOND EDITION.

Here Eugène Van Drival, a well respected and extremely prolific orientalist and philologist, argues that the art of writing, and the many forms of alphabets, may have originated from one "Ur-alphabet" which went through centuries of alterations through time and necessity. Several scholars had been already been working on such a theory (notably Lamb, Joshua Prinsep, and M. Forster) but Van Drival attributes not only Hebrew, but all Semitic tongues generally (including Greek and Latin), to what he describes as the original hieroglyphic alphabet of Egypt.

To illustrated his "discovery," our author arranges, in separate pages in a perpendicular column, each body of hieroglyphic signs which represent one alphabetic letter. In side columns he presents the Egyptian Prototype, its derivative, or imitative letter, the property of many Eastern Alphabets. Van Drival suggests commonalities, a resemblance to the (assumed) Parent Model. His theory of a subsequent derivation from this one root merits cautious examination.

Through a completely novel approach, our author "proves" his theory by translating the Lord's Prayer into the Phoenician (i.e. Samaritan tongue), and printing it on transparent paper. The letters are to examined from right to left (according to Eastern usage); by turning over the page and reading the letters transparently from left to right (according to Western usage) the text becomes an antiquated Latin version of the Pater Noster. Juxtaposing the Lord's Prayer is the Phoenician alphabet according to Montfaucon and others, asserting that Phoenician and Latin letters belong to the same form. Van Drival then provides a lithograph of alphabets that read from left to right (Greek, Coptic, ancient Greek) with a "secret alphabet" in Latin of various periods.

The annotations in this, the author's own copy, include numerous notes, additional references; long quotations in Greek; and (inside the front cover of vol. 1), testimonies of Monseigneur Parisis, Bishop of Arras, on the value of this work from the point of view of the study of oriental languages.

CONTENTS:

Part I: "History and analysis of the Semitic and European alphabets" (dated 1852 but published 1853), with numerous annotations in the margins and on the interleaved pages. A revised second edition, incorporating some -- but apparently not all -- the notes herein would be published under the title "De l'origine de l'écriture" (1873), for which a third edition would appear in 1879.
Part II: "Comparative grammar of Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic and Egyptian" (1858), interleaved but not annotated.

The author, Eugène Van Drival (1815-1887), was an erudite philologist, a Catholic priest, and an antiquarian in the best sense of the word. He served as director of the great seminary of Arras, secretary general of the Arras Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, and was full member of the Society of Antiquaries of Morinie. Van Drival became passionate about Champollion's work following the discovery of the sarcophagus in the Musée de Boulogne. It was there that he met a young scholar to whom he taught the first rudiments of Hebrew, a certain Auguste Mariette (1821-1881) who went on to become one of foremost Egyptologist of his day.

The incomplete (!) bibliography of Van Drival's writings published well before his death, already lists 80 articles on an usually broad range of antiquarian interests (SOURCE: "Liste des ouvrages publiés par M. le chanoine Van Drival," Arras, 1882).