end, leads to the conclusion that the arrangement of the Arabic alphabet is older than that of the Hebrew, although the contrary is generally believed to be the case.

The alphabet was anciently believed to symbolize the whole universe. The vowels which were the original letters of the Tetragrammaton The sacred four-letter name of God in Hebrew, often transliterated as YHWH or Yahweh., were placed at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the alphabet, to signify that original: יהוה (Yahweh) the Lord is the God of the whole universe, that He is the beginning, the middle, and the end.

14) Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet, London 1883, Vol. I, p. 125.

According to their sounds, we may count, in the Hebrew alphabet, thirty-two letters, divided into five vowels (Ayin ע = a, Aleph א = e, Aleph א = o, Vav ו = u, Yod י = i) and twenty-seven consonants This count likely includes the twenty-two standard letters plus the five "final" forms of specific letters used at the end of words.. Each vowel, according to the Sefer Yetzirah The "Book of Formation," one of the earliest surviving books of Jewish mysticism, which describes the world being created through the Hebrew letters and the Sefirot. (see text, § 12), stands by itself, but the consonants are dependent on the vowels. The vowels and consonants were made in the form of a "state and arranged like an army in battle array." Isaac Taylor ¹⁴) says: "Like soldiers on parade the characters in the alphabetic line have been dressed."

CHAP. III.

SEFIROT.

The origin of the alphabet was, and still is, a burning question to scholars. Did it spring from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, or from the cuneiform systems of the Assyrians, or from the hieroglyphics of the Hittites, or from the Syllabary A system of writing where each symbol represents a whole syllable rather than a single sound.

¹⁴) Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet, London 1883, Vol. I, p. 125.