CHAPTER ONE

A 2

For my part, when I look more closely at the matter and ascend to the earliest origins of the Phoenicians and Greeks, it was easy to conjecture from the start how much benefit a prior knowledge of the Hebrew letters—which they call "Samaritan"—will bring to those who desire to deal seriously with Hispano-Phoenician and Hispano-Greek coins, and to penetrate the inner secrets of this study. Since not only the dialect but the alphabets of both these peoples descend from the ancient Hebrew letters and language—which will eventually be made clear in its proper place—these studies can hardly be separated, if at all.

Regarding the Hebrew origin of the Greek letters found in Spain, since they have come down to us in a strange and unusual appearance, there will perhaps be those who doubt it. However, if anyone compares the letters of the Spanish Phoenicians—visible everywhere on the coins of Gades Ancient Gades is modern-day Cádiz, Spain., Canaca, and Abdera—individually with those of the Phoenicians properly so-called (which the coins of Tyre and Sidon display), and even with the ancient Hebrew or Samaritan letters (1), he will find them not just similar, but clearly the same. He will recognize that the character of both scripts is entirely one and the same; precisely as the comic poet The author refers to the Roman playwright Terence in his play Andria. once said in a different context:

"Whoever knows one of them well, knows both."

original Latin: "Qui utramvis recte nôrit, ambas noverit."

(1) May I be permitted for a while to join the ranks of those who maintain the primacy original Greek: προστασίαν (prostasian); meaning advocacy or the state of being first of the Samaritan letters and believe them to have been the original Hebrew letters. I take it upon myself to support and prove this opinion—which has always seemed more probable to me, and is certainly the most common—based on the unquestionable reliability of Hebrew-Samaritan coins and from other "internal" evidence The author refers to evidence found within the text or the artifacts themselves, rather than outside historical testimony.. For it does not escape me that Johann Buxtorf the Younger, Johann Franz Buddeus, Lightfoot, Wasmuth, Étienne Morin, Calovius, and other men of great reputation in the Republic of Letters The "Republic of Letters" was the long-distance intellectual community of scholars in the late 17th and 18th centuries. have taken entirely different views.