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56. Alpha- betic signs or letters	Nevertheless, the Egyptian went still farther, for he finally possessed a series of signs, each representing only a letter; that is, alphabetic signs, or, as we say, real letters. There were twenty-four letters in this alphabet, which was known in Egypt long before 3000 B.c. It was thus the earliest alphabet known.  The Egyptian might then have written his langnage with twenty- four alphabetic letters (Fig. 29) if the sign-group habit had not been too strong for the scribe, just as the letter-group habit is [NEXT]
	FIG. 29. THE EGYPTIAN ALPHABET Each of these letters represents a consonant. The Egyptians of course ptrnounced their words with vowels as we do, but they did not write the vowels. This will be clear by a study of Fig. 30. Just as the consonants ro andy are sometimes used as vowels in English, so three of the Egyptian consonants came to be employed as vowels in Greek times. The first letter (smooth breathing) was thus used as a ore; the second letter (y) as i; and the fourth (w) as u or o (cf. Fig. 76)

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