Page 187 - Foundations

Having read Frances Rolleston’s own accounts of her struggles to arrive at the meaning of names, and
having reservations in my own mind about her belief that Hebrew was the pre-Babel language of all
mankind, I am very much open to questioning the names and meanings that Frances Rolleston has
supplied for individual stars and the constellations.

Miss Rolleston held an unorthodox view on languages. It is apparent from the biographical work
produced by Caroline Dent that Miss Rolleston had an exceptional grasp of a large number of ancient
languages, but this fact does not automatically suggest that her views on the origin and transmission
of languages was correct. Miss Rolleston’s views are set forth in her book.

The names are here explained on the supposition that the first language was given by the Creator to
the first man, conveying ideas to the mind by sounds, as impressions of form and colour are conveyed
by sight. In all languages these sounds are traceable, conveying the same ideas. In the dialects of the
most ancient and earliest civilized nations they are the most recognizable: in those the most
barbarous the most obscured. This primitive language appears to have been spoken by Noah, from
the names given by him to his sons. In the confusion of the lip at Babel, pronunciation, and not
words or roots, were altered. This may be inferred from the presence of the Hebrew roots in the
dialects of all nations.
[Source: Mazzaroth, Frances Rolleston]

It is possible that the first language of man linked specific thoughts to corresponding sounds. In this
sense, there would be an alphabet of sounds, each of which could be combined with other sounds to
express the thoughts within a person’s mind. Some years ago I came across the teaching of Jeff A.
Benner on the origins of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Mr Benner, quite correctly I believe, suggested
that each letter of the most ancient Hebrew alphabet, referred to as Paleo-Hebrew, was in fact a
pictogram. That is, each letter was drawn as an image of something commonly recognizable to those
who used this language. For example, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, corresponding to the
English letter “A” is the Aleph. It is depicted as the head of an ox.

Aleph

The graphic above indicates how this letter’s representation has changed over the centuries. There is
a noticeable similarity between the “Early” Paleo-Hebrew character and the “Middle” period
character. However, when Israel went into Babylonian captivity they adopted the Babylonian
alphabetic characters which are closer to the square script used in the Hebrew language today.

Jeff Benner has shown that each of the characters of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph-Bet) were originally
pictograms. You can see the entire list at the following link.

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html