Letters from Heaven

Ever since Plato, scholars have been baffled by a seemingly closed mystery: Where did the alphabet come from? The Greeks thought that the Phoenicians had learned it in Egypt and that "because they navigated the sea, brought it to Greece." Nineteenth-century scholars, in pensive afterthought, decided that the Semites developed the alphabet from certain cursive characters that the Egyptians had evolved from their own hieroglyphs. Later, other scholars began to discover certain signs that predated hieroglyphs --a series of trademarks, potters' signs, pawnbrokers' labels, and masons' marks that may have spread from trader to trader all over the ancient world. These, they reasoned, may have provided the beginnings of the alphabet.

None of these theories satisfies Dr. Hugh A. Moran, retired Presbyterian minister, and Rhodes scholar with a Ph.D. from Columbia University. While studying Chinese 45 years ago, he became fascinated by the discovery that some basic Chinese characters have their origin in the signs of the solar zodiac. In spite of the press of more urgent business--he was an official of the Y.M.C.A. in China, director of prisoner relief in Siberia during World War I, pastor at Cornell University until 1942--Dr. Moran found time to dig deeper into the historical ABCs. eventually evolved a basic theory. The alphabet, says he* could have had its origin only in some great "organizing principle" common to the ancient world as 'far back as 1400 B.C. The only principle possible: religion.

Alam & Alad. In Egypt, Babylon and China, the whole culture was built on the ideas of the stargazers. Each nation was ruled by the incarnation or representative of some sort of Sun God or Son of Heaven, and each regarded the bull as the sacred animal, the chief constellation of the zodiac (or circle of life). "These correspondences," says Moran, "were not accidental. They were part of a vast cosmological system . . . The slaughter of a bull at the spring equinox on altars so far separated as Ur of the Chaldees and the Valley of the Han shows common roots in a common culture . . .

"It would seem, therefore, to be of some significance . . . that the first letter of the alphabet is Alpha, the Hebrew Aleph, 'a Bull' . . . Scanning down through the other letters of the Hebrew alphabet which have names with recognized meanings in the Hebrew, we find that they also deal with ideas current in astrology--a house, a hand, an eye, a fish, a serpent . . . while, strangely enough, the last of all in the Hebrew is Taw, a 'mark,' a 'sacred symbol,' the Aramaic Tor, 'oryx' or 'ox,' the Arabic Thaw, the Greek Tauros, the Latin Taurus, the Germanic Thor, 'the Thunderer.' Two bulls? The first and last letter of the alphabet a bull? One is reminded of Alam and Alad, the two bulls of the Sumerians, one on the right hand-- and the other on the left of the gate of the temple, of Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End ... in the book of Revelation. " Only Survivor. The astrological trail, says Moran, leads to Chaldea, "the home of astrology par excellence." But at that point, the scholar runs into trouble: much of the evidence there might have been of the astrological origin of the alphabet has long since perished. Where to turn next? "Chinese culture alone . . . has survived with an unbroken history down to our own times and has come to us complete, as a living entity, a going concern. In the Chinese, if anywhere, we will find the key to our problem.

" From an ancient Chinese astrological table and the P'u Pan. the necromancer's divining board. Moran did find what he believes to be the key. It was not from the signs of the solar zodiac that he got it; it was from the 28 signs of the Luna (i.e., moon) zodiac, which were invented long before "to fix the calendar and to determine the times of planting and seasons of harvest and the religious ceremonies which accompanied them." From these primitive astrological signs, the Chinese built up many of their own characters. Other civilizations apparently evolved a sort of shorthand which grew, in spite of cuneiform and hieroglyphics, into an alphabet. The very meanings of the symbols seem to bear this out. In Hebrew, for instance, the second letter of the alphabet. Beth, means "a house," or "a daughter." The second lunar symbol in Chinese means "a woman.""a daughter." The shape of the constellation on the ancient table and the letter Beth are similar, as is the Chinese primitive sign, fang, a derivative of which can also mean "wife." Among the other resemblances, Moran has noted:

P:In Greece, the first letter of the alphabet was originally written Q, a bull's head resting on its side. In Hebrew, it was written Q. The astronomical sign for the constellation Taurus is Q which resembles the later Greek letter Q. The Chinese Luna zodiac sign for the same constellation was six stars Q, in the shape of a bull's head, while the sign of the Chinese Luna zodiac was Niu, the "ox" which in primitive form, resembled the head of an ox.

P:In Hebrew, the fourth letter, Daleth is written Q. The Assyrian Daltu meant "door," or "jaws," the Greek Delta meant "mouth" of a river; the Hebrew Dal meant "door," "bucket," or "to draw water," the Assyrian Dalu meant "to draw water," and Dilutu meant "a bucket." The Luna constellation consisted of three stars arranged in a triangle, which could easily have taken the shape of both Daleth and Delta.

P:The letter M apparently goes back to the Chinese Luna constellation Qwhich in old forms of Hebrew turned into Q The Chinese Luna station is San, which is in the solar period Virgo. The astronomical symbol for Virgo: Q. To Scholar Moran, all this does more than shed light on the alphabet. Says he: "We are able to trace as never before the golden thread which runs through human history from the barbarity of human sacrifice and the earliest glimmerings of a vengeful God to the highest revelation that we have of ourselves as the children of God."

*In The Alphabet and the Ancient Calendar Signs (Pacific Books; $3.50).

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