. . . But the most
striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line
representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian
curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should
Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and
abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely like
Landa's alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable
coincidence between Landa's and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way,
the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it.
Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed
Mexican symbol for a day or sun. So far as sound is concerned, the
English day represents it; so far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian
'cake,' ideograph for (1) country and (2) the sun's orbit is essentially
the same."
It would appear as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their
alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did
not borrow from one another. They followed out different characteristics
in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b.
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