�������t¶��

When the Greeks, instead of writing like the Phœnicians from right to left, began to write from left to right, they turned each letter, and as became K, our k, so , vau, became F, the Greek so-called Digamma, the Latin F. The first letter in Chu-fu, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in the transverse line of our H we must recognize the last remnant of the lines which divide the sieve.

In the vocabulary the most striking difference is that many words appear from the metre to have contained a sound which they afterwards lost, viz. that which is written in some Greek alphabets by the “digamma” ϝ Thus the words ἄναξ, ἄστυ, ἔργον, ἔπος, and many others must have been written at one time ϝάναξ, ϝάστυ, ϝέργον, ϝέπος.

So too the digamma is called “Aeolic” by grammarians, and is found on Aeolic and Doric inscriptions.

The apparent exception κόρη is explained by the fact that in this word a digamma ϝ has been lost after ρ, in Doric κόρϝα.

Behind the latter stands a winged, draped, tall female figure, whom at one time I took to be the glorified soul of Patroclus; but, having seen a similar figure on other Etruscan designs depicting human sacrifice or death, and finding over the head of this one the word fanth, vanth, or fano—according to the value which we assign to the digamma or F and O—which is, I think, equivalent to the Latin Fatum, fate, &c., we must regard the figure as resembling Azrael—"the angel of death."