The Right Hand by Daniel Wilson — Read

It is manifestly important to determine whether the term used by the Ninevite, the Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and other ancient nations for the right hand was exclusively limited to the member of the body on what is now universally recognised as the right side; or was applicable to either hand, implying no more than the one habitually and preferentially employed. But the true right and left of the Hebrew and other ancient Semitic nations has a special significance, in view of the fact that, whilst the great class of Aryan languages, as well as the Etruscan and others of indeterminate classification, appear, from a remote date, to have been written from left to right; all the Semitic languages, except the Ethiopic, as well as those of other races that have derived their written characters from the Arabian, -- such as the Turks, Malays, and Persians, -- are written from right to left. Habit has so largely modified our current handwriting, and adapted its characters to forms best suited for continuous and rapid execution in the one direction, that the reversal of this at once suggests the idea of a left-handed people. But the assumption is suggested by a misinterpretation of the evidence. So long as each character was separately drawn, and when, moreover, they were pictorial or ideographic, it was, in reality, more natural to begin at the right, or nearer side, of the papyrus or tablet, than to pass over to the left.

The forms of all written characters are largely affected by their mode of use, as is abundantly illustrated in the transformation of the Egyptian ideographs in the later demotic writing. The forms of the old Semitic alphabet, like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, are specially adapted to cutting on stone. The square Hebrew characters are of much later date; but they also, like the uncials of early Christian manuscripts, were executed singly, and therefore could be written as easily from right to left as in a reverse order. The oldest alphabets indicate a special adaptation for monumental inscription. The Runic characters of northern Europe owe their peculiar form apparently to their being primarily cut on wood. When papyrus leaves were substituted for stone, a change was inevitable; but the direction of the writing only becomes significant in reference to a current hand. The Greek fashion of _boustrophedon_, or alternating like the course of oxen in ploughing, illustrates the natural process of beginning at the side nearest to the hand; nor did either this, or the still earlier mode of writing in columns, as with the ancient Egyptians, or the Chinese, present any impediment, so long as it was executed in detached characters. But so soon as the reed or quill, with the coloured pigment, began to supersede the chisel, the hieratic writing assumed a modified form; and when it passed into the later demotic handwriting, with its seemingly arbitrary script, the same influences were brought into play which control the modern penman in the slope, direction, and force of his stroke. One important exception, however, still remained.