The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

DATE OF NEWTON INSCRIPTIONS 35

the subsequent ages. Moreover, there was wholesale exterminating destruction of the pre-Christian monuments and documents by the early Christian Church, as we shall see later.

The Language of this Aryan Phoenician inscription is essentially Aryan in its roots, structure and syntax, with Sumerian and Gothic affinities.

The Ogam version is clearly contemporary with, and by the same author as, the central Phcenician inscription, as it is now disclosed to be a contracted version of the latter. This discovery thus puts back the date of Ogam script far beyond the period hitherto supposed by modern writers.

Ogam, or “ Tree-twig ” script, which is found on ancient monuments throughout the British Isles, though most frequently in Ireland, has hitherto been conjectured by Celto-Irish philologists to date no earlier than about the fourth or fifth century A.D., and to have been coined by Gaelic scribes in Ireland or Britain,? and to be non-Aryan.® This late date is assumed merely because some of the Ogam inscriptions occur on Early Christian tombstones, which sometimes contain bi-lingual versions in Roman letters in Latin or Celtic, which presumably date to about that period. But I observed that several of the letter-forms of this cumbrous Ogam script are more or less substantially identical with several of the primitive linear Sumerian letter-signs, which

’ The Ka affix to “ Kazzi” seems to be the Sumerian genitive suffix ia ** of,” and the Sumerian source of the modern Ka “ of” in the IndoPersian and Hindi, and thus defines him as being ‘‘ ofthe Kassiclan.” This Sumerian Ka is also sottened into ve (L.S.G. 131 ete.) which may possibly represent the S in Gothic. The final yin Sssilokoyy or “* Cilician ’’ seems to be the Gothic inflexive, indicating the nominative case. J, the concluding letter, is clearly cognate or identical with the final 2 in Gothic Runic votive and dedicatory inscriptions, and is sometimes written in full as Histhi “ raised,” or Risft “‘ carved” (cp. P.S.A.S., 1879, 152 and V.D. 500). It is now seen, along with our English word ‘* Raise” to be derived jrom the Sumerian Ra “ to set up, stand, stick up.”

* Rhys surmised that Ogam script was “‘ invented during the Roman occupation of Britain by a Goidelic grammarian who had seen the Brythons of the Roman province making use of Latin letters’ (Chambers’ Encycl. 7, 583). This, too, is the opinion of a later writer, J. MacNeill (Notes on Lrish Ogham, 1999, 335); whilst the latest writer, G. Calder, cites a text saying that Ogam was invented in‘ Hibernia of the Scots ” (C.A.N., p. 273).

* Rhys, in P.S.A.S., 1891-2, 282.