two poles, by the reciprocal action of which the feeling of a national existence is developed. One of these poles is language, the other, religion. By means of the former individual objects are connected with the images they excite in the human mind, and a continuous, conscious perception of them becomes possible. By the latter the intercourse between the human mind and the centre of all being and all thought is regulated and sustained. Without language there can be no religion, and without the intuitive consciousness of a God there can be no connexion between the essence and the modes of Being-consequently, no proposition or affirmation, no word, and no language. Without the two, religion and language, no science, no art, no sense of human community can exist, therefore no development of civil polity, no history.

In this ancient epoch there can be no chronology, for chronology implies the consciousness of a past and a future, which can only form a sequel to the primeval period, the first step in advance from it. The primitive time can only be computed by epochs-strata, as it were, of previous formations, from whence the fertile soil of authentic history is produced.

Its records are language and mythology-its poetical monuments, which are also its grave-stones, are popular ballads and legends, containing traditions of the reigns of the Gods, years of the Gods, and narratives of the miracles and exploits performed by Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors.

Let us here be clearly understood. In this primeval epoch of Egyptian history we do not attempt to discover the mysterious import of tales and legends, nor offer interpretations- whether ingenious or the reverse -of astronomical subtleties, and astrological chimeras: neither do we contemplate any addition to the existing stores of etymological artifice, in order to impart plausibility to this or that theory, as to the origin of

the nation. The objects of our inquiry are language and mythology themselves - records more valuable than all others that exist of the history of the old world - primeval facts, upon which all later facts are based. Our method of treating them will, however, be the same as that pursued in examining the sources of chronological history. The records and facts themselves will be exhibited in a distinct, and, in all essential respects, an integral form, and in one intelligible to every class of readers.

Our inquiry, therefore, will be threefold. The first of the three following sections will treat of the language, in the state of development in which we find it soon after the beginning of the reign of Menes; the second of their written characters; the former the earliest, the latter the most recent fact of the primeval time, bordering on the commencement of the historical period. The mythology of the primeval period, which forms the third branch of our inquiry, intervenes between the two. Chronology, both on external and internal grounds, requires the existence of written characters. With writing, the nation, already Egyptian in language and religious feelings, advanced to that complete consciousness of their connexion with universal history, which constitutes the essence of chronology. In this respect, likewise, the Egyptians stand forth pre-eminently as the monumental people of the world. In the first stage we find a system of language capable of being completely restored, and combining more important data for investigating the development of human speech than that of any other nation. In the second we meet with a system of divine cosmogony, which likewise owes its origin to the primeval times of history. From the third we obtain a system of writing no less remarkable in its bearings on universal history, and with which the empire of Menes becomes historical. Our plan of analysis in respect to all these records will be based on a

rigid critical distinction between their epoch of primeval aboriginal existence, and their later more complete historical development.

The full verification of the results of this analysis must be sought in that portion of our inquiry which is necessarily reserved for the fifth book. What we

are here about to offer must-like our previous observation-be considered rather as a mere practical exposition of the system, than as an attempt to establish it on any firm philosophical basis.

A.

HISTORY

OF RESEARCH
FUNDAMENTAL

INTO THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE PRINCIPLES - ITS AND METHOD ANALYSIS.

OF

THERE is palpable proof that the Old Egyptian language, in so far as yet known or investigated, was in its essential element a legacy, inherited by Menes and his empire, from their forefathers. We possess monuments from the 3rd down to the 12th Dynasty (the last but one of the Old Empire), and in particular of the 4th, 6th, and 12th. In all these we find the same language and writing, differing in but a few slight details of grammar and construction, from those of the New Empire, especially during its two first and most celebrated Dynasties, the 18th and 19th. To elucidate these remains of the primeval times is the object of our present section.

The identity of the more ancient and more recent Egyptian language was unanimously admitted by the Fathers of the Church. But Josephus had also previously remarked the difference between the "Sacred Dialect ” and the ordinary language. All sacred language is, however, essentially nothing but an earlier stage of the popular dialect, preserved by means of the sacred books. Such are the Hebrew as contrasted

with the so-called Chaldee- the old Hellenic in the Greek Church, with modern Greek-the Latin with the Romanic, and the ancient with the modern Sclavonic languages. It does not indeed follow that the more modern idiom is everywhere the immediate offspring of the sacred language: the true connexion between the two is most conspicuously exemplified in the Romanic and Sclavonic. The "common dialect" of the Egyptians therefore is not necessarily the imme diate descendant of the sacred language of this nation: yet the distinction between them may be merely dialectical, for we meet with no trace of any further subdivision of national interests than that between Upper and Lower Egypt. The conclusion, therefore, is, that the dialect of the Christian Egyptians, or Copts, is but the younger branch of the Egyptian language, the latest form of the popular dialect, although, from the age of the Ptolemies downwards, mixed with Greek words and forms, and, since the third or fourth century, written with an alphabet, containing only five old Egyptian, in addition to the twenty-four principal Greek letters. This was the view entertained by the more distinguished men of letters who at the period of the revival of learning devoted any attention to Egyptian antiquity. The German Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, was, however, the first who by the publication of his Prodromus Egyptiacus at Rome, in the year 1636, and of the Lingua Ægyptiaca restituta in 1643, gained the credit of compiling a vocabulary, however defective and inaccurate, of the Coptic language.175 In this compilation he availed himself of the Coptic and Arabic dictionaries of Semnudi, and of an Arabo-Coptic grammar and a few Coptic texts, which Pietro della Valle had brought to Rome, together with the collections of

175 Upon this and what follows, see the admirable disquisition of Etienne Quatremère, Recherches critiques et historiques sur la langue et la litérature de l'Egypte, Paris, 1808, p. 48.

Peiresc. But his fallacious interpretation of the inscriptions on the Obelisks led him, not only to assign erroneous meanings to Coptic words, but also to introduce words, which no one knew so well as himself to be purely fictitious. Salmasius turned these labours to ingenious account in explaining several Egyptian words, which had been transmitted by the ancients. Although there were in Europe, especially at Rome and Paris, MSS. of the old and valuable Coptic version of the New Testament, and though there were always Coptic priests resident at Rome, yet no school of Coptic philology was instituted till the beginning of the 18th century. This merit belongs to Prussian theologians. The founder was David Wilkins, who published the New Testament at Oxford (1716), and the Pentateuch (1730). He instructed Jablonski, and furnished La Croze, a Protestant clergyman, with his copies of Coptic books. The latter compiled a Coptic dictionary, but never succeeded in publishing it. The MS. was sent to Leyden. Here Scholtz, a preacher of Berlin, had it copied by Woide, a Pole by birth, and the minister of the German Chapel Royal at St. James's. Woide subsequently applied himself with great success to farther researches under the patronage of George III., and in 1775 published La Croze's dictionary in a much improved shape. His edition of the fragments of the Theban translation of the New Testament (Oxford, 1799) gave us the first authentic acquaintance with that dialect.

Among the professors of this school Jablonski was the most successful in applying the Coptic language to the interpretation of Egyptian names.176 His explanation of all the existing names of Egyptian Gods and Kings, and of other words in the ancient language, accomplished all that was then possible. But although the Coptic in its national elements adheres even more closely to the Old Egyptian than the modern Greek to

176 Pauli Ern. Jablonskii Opuscula, ed. Te Water. Lugd. Batav. 1804. 3 vols. 8vo.