56 The Loom of Language

consonant would demand between forty and fifty symbols to accom-
modate the range found in all the dialects taken together

ANCIENT PICTURE WRITING OF THE HITTITES FROM AN
INSCRIPTION AT HAMA IN SYRIA

PICTURE WRITING AND SYLLABUB WRITING
In so far as the difficulties of modern spelling arise from the fact
that we have too few symbols^ the djdfEcultics of the earliest peoples
were opposite to ours. The earliest scripts consisted of separate
symbols for individual vocables, and were therefore excessively
cumbersome. These word symbols^ of which tie earliest Egyptian
and Chinese writing is made up^ were of two kinds: pictograms and