But the surpassing interest which the Moabite Stone possesses for the antiquarian is not its corroboration of remote Israelitish history or the substantial identity of its letters with the Hebrew forms, but, rather, its contribution to all alphabetic literature of all the past. This will appear in a quotation from the late Wm. Frost Bishop, D.D.: "The essential features in the outline of each of our own letters may be detected easily in the characters of the Moabite Stone, written 2,900 years ago.... The primitive Semitic inscription of this stone contains the alphabet from which all existing alphabets have been derived. It exhibits the embryo forms of all the letters--2,000 or 3,000 in number--in every one of the alphabets which are now in use throughout the world. It might thus be termed the great mother alphabet of the world."[53] The Moabite Stone in itself would seem to indicate a more or less general as well as an understanding use of the alphabet in which it is inscribed throughout that region at an early date--perhaps at a much earlier date than that of the inscription--as the Code of Hammurabi, set up at Susa in Persia, indicates a more or less general acquaintance with the cuneiform characters in which the laws of that ancient monarch were promulgated. Supporting this conclusion, Mr. E. C. Richardson holds that there is "growing evidence of the prevailing use of handwriting all over Palestine, by not later than the ninth century."[54] Professor Sayce, referring to the criticism that would deny the pre-exilic origin of the larger part of the Old Testament literature on the ground that the early Israelites could not read or write, says: "This supposed late use of writing for literary purposes was merely an assumption, with nothing more solid to rest upon than the critic's own theories and prepossessions. And as soon as it could be tested by solid fact it crumbled into dust."[55]
Closely identified with the Moabite Stone, both in the time of its supposed production and in its alphabetic characteristics, is the Siloam Inscription at Jerusalem, laid bare to the world's gaze in 1881. The discovery of this valuable treasure of Palestinian records was due to fortuitous circumstances, as has been many another important "find." [A boy wading in the channel cut in the rock leading to the Pool first discovered the writing, partly concealed by water, on the southern wall of the channel.[56]] The Siloam Inscription, though brief--containing only six lines, with the writing partly destroyed--has great philological and historical value. According to the judgment of scholars this inscription was executed in the reign of King Hezekiah and may have been designed to celebrate and memorialize his distinguished achievement, recorded in scripture (II Chronicles 32:30). Its complete translation has been accomplished. The letters of this writing are held by some archæologists and philologists to exhibit, possibly, even older forms than those contained in the inscription of the Moabite Stone. The inscriptions are closely related. Of the Moabite Stone a Jewish writer holds that "the language, with slight deviation, is Hebrew, and reads almost like a chapter from the Book of Kings"; and, of the Siloam Inscription, that "it is pure Hebrew."[57]
