ART. IV. THE ORIGIN OF EGYPTIAN CULTURE.*

THERE is an ever-growing interest in Egypt. The land it self becomes yearly more accessible to tourists from Europe and America, whose interest in its history is stimulated and satisfied, not only by a sight of its monuments, but also by the books of modern scholars. Every year the number increases of those who go to the Nile, not for one visit only, but to spend successive winters amid "such weather as cannot be found anywhere else in the world." Those who go annually-happy opportunity become, perforce, scholars in greater or less degree, and by letters or addresses, or even by papers of scientific importance, awake new interest in the old cultureland of antiquity. Scholars (in the strictest sense of that word) multiply whose lives are given to the study of Egyptian texts and to all that history, religion, and art which are found in those texts or buried with them. Other scholars also, whose days and nights. are devoted to the Greeks, to the Hebrews, to the Phoenicians, and to yet other peoples of antiquity, find necessary for their special work more or less knowledge of Egyptian language or literature or history or art. All these classes have been contributors to a knowledge of Egypt, either by their own work or by the work of those whose interest they excited. Egyptian studies have also been fortunate in the aid received from successful fiction; and Ebers and his imitators and successors have given many their first impressions concerning the "black" land. From travelers and scholars and novelists the presses are ever teeming with new books concerning Egypt.

This widespread interest has had great influence for good, not only in the culture disseminated, but also in that it has induced gifts of money for archæological research and for the establishment of museums. It has at times perhaps worked ill; for untrained men have been led by it into the production of books and papers written to satisfy the popular demand, but

* Der babylonische Ursprung der ägyptischen Kultur nachgewiesen, von Dr. Fritz Hommel. München, 1892. Príce, 5 marks (circ. $1.25).

Das Verhältniss des ägyptischen zu den semitischen Sprachen, von Adolph Erman. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xlvi, pp. 93, ff., 1892.

Ueber den Grad der Verwandtschaft des Altägyptischen mit dem Semitischen, von F. Hommel. Beiträge zur Assyriologie, fi, p. 342, ff., 1892.

+ Professor Sayce, in personal letter to the author.

serving only to perpetuate errors or to popularize impossible theories. To day the curiosity awakened and maintained by these various means is in every land where books are read and lectures heard. There is, indeed, in some quarters a feeling so strong and an interest so deep that other races of the ancient world are counted of little moment. These students find in Egypt the home of every great discovery and of every great idea of antiquity. The alphabet was there invented; God was there cognized as one; sculpture had there its birth; writing was there first practiced; and so on through an imposing, though for the most part erroneous, list.

Within the last few years there has been growing a new department of archæological study-Assyriology. Its progress has been rapid beyond precedent. It numbers to-day more active scholars in the great universities of the world than does Egyptology. It has devoted its energy to the study of the monuments found in the great Mesopotamian valley—monuments left by the Assyro-Babylonian people and containing their vast and important literature. The new science has fought its way to recognition with many difficulties and with but little assistance; were it not for the fact that Assyrian scholars have produced from the newly found treasures some valuable illustrations of the Old Testament their department would have received less public favor. Assyriology can to-day report that it has successfully deciphered the Assyrian and Babylonian languages; that it has constructed a grammar more accurate and detailed than is possible to-day for Egyptian; that it has made a number of special vocabularies to portions of the literature, and has well advanced larger lexicons to the entire published body of inscriptions; and, finally, that it has contributed part of the material for, and much of the inspiration toward, the construction of a comparative grammar of the Semitic languages.*

For some time there have been indications that Assyriologists would soon claim more for their science and for the fields toʻ which it is devoted. The claim is now definitely made, and if granted it will revolutionize the study of comparative language,

* By this latter statement the writer does not intend to imply that Assyrian holds the place among the Semitic languages that is rightly held by Sanskrit among the Indo-European. He does not consider that analogy a true one, for the reason that Assyrian does not hold the same relative position of age to the sister tongues that Sanskrit does in the other family.

literature, art, and religion in the ancient world. It is briefly this: that the culture of Egypt was not a native product—that it was, indeed, derived from Babylonia. It would be difficult to imagine a more revolutionary hypothesis than this. The popular writer has long pointed to the high antiquity of Egyptian civilization and the fact that a noble culture there held sway when all Europe was in barbarisın. The statement now made is that the hoary dates in Egyptian history are much later than the early dates in the history of Babylonia, and that all the glory of Egypt's superb civilization finds its roots in the land between the rivers.

*

This claim has had precursors in various attempts to find some connection between the Egyptian language and the Semitic family of human speech. One of the earliest advocates of this relationship was Benfey, who endeavored by arguments chiefly philological and lexicographical to show that the Semites are but one branch of a greater family which includes Egyptian and all the other languages of northern Africa. Benfey went much too far in this theory, the logical outcome of which would be to deprive us of the classification of the Semitic group altogether and leave us with a group as absurd as the Turanian. Benfey's theories were adopted by Bunsen, who made them thoroughly absurd by adding a new hypothesis, that Egyptian was the link which connected the Indo-European with the Semitic family, forming a transition between them. Ernst Meiers and Paul Bötticher also attached themselves to the original theory, and partly also De Rongé. But though these were great names in support of Benfey, yet greater names were arrayed wholly or partly in opposition, especially Pott,** Ewald,++ and Renan. These men made short work of

* Ueber das Verhältniss der ägyptischen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamm. Leipzig, 1844.

Comp. Wright, Lectures on the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, p. 33. Cambridge, 1890.

#Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, 1, pp. xi, xiii, 338, f. (Hamburg, 1845), and v, second part, p. 69, fƒ. (Gotha, 1856).

Hebraisches Wurzelwörterbuch.

Anhang über das Verhältniss des ägyptischen

Sprachstammes zum Semitischen. Mannheim, 1845.

1 Wurzelforschungen. Halle, 1872.

¶ Memoire sur l'Inscription du Tombeau d'Ahmès, p. 195.

Paris, 1851. On De Rouge's

attachment to this theory comp. Renan, Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques, p. 82 (Paris, 1878), with W. Wright, Lectures, etc., p. 33.

**Hallische Jahrbücher, 1838, p. 461.

+ Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1845, p. 1964. So Renan

#Ibid., p. 85, ƒfƒ.

Benfey's extravagant theory; but the really central truth was still a truth, and that would not down.

There was a close relation of some sort between the Egyptian and the Semitic languages, and that fact found increasing recognition among scholars in both departments. Plain evidence of this relation is, for example, seen in a comparison of the personal pronouns in Coptic and in Hebrew, Arabic, and Assyrian, a comparison whose effectiveness is somewhat lessened by the proof that the Coptic use of those forms as real pronouns is of relatively recent date. But this proof is supplanted by a better one. The pronominal suffix in the pyramid texts, used to indicate the possessive relation in the noun and the subject (not the object) in the verb, is exactly the same as in the Semitic languages, save only in the third masculine singular. Here is proof enough of some relation. It is better proof than a list of words, the same in both Egyptian and Semitic, would be, for the simple reason that words may often be borrowed by one language from another; but the borrowing of a set of forms is highly improbable. Such a list requires careful sifting to eliminate the words which are surely or even probably loan words.

Here now is some relation made ont between the language of the Nile valley and its northern neighbors. Whether that relation is close enough to warrant our placing Egyptian among the Semitic languages is quite another and much larger question. But even if answered in the affirmative we have not made a very important assertion to any but the philologist. The ethnologist is not greatly moved by it; for it is now admitted on all sides that language is no proof of race. When the barbarous Teutons from the depths of primeval forests in northern Europe poured into Italy and overturned the Roman empire they soon abandoned their Teutonic language and adopted Latin, from which, in their speaking of it, Italian was ultimately developed. In their case surely the use of a Romance language was no proof of Romance race. In like manner the Goths in the Iberian peninsula adopted a Romance tongue; while the Kelts in Cornwall abandoned their own speech for English. The religion of Mohammed has driven out the ancient Coptic speech of Egypt and supplanted it with Arabic.

* So Sethe, Acgyptische Zeitschrift, xxix, 121. Comp. Erman, Z. D. M. G., xlvi, p. 96.

And everywhere in the world the Jew has abandoned his own language for the language of the nation or people with whom he lives. Speech proves nothing concerning origin, but gives proof only of social contact. In every instance above cited social contact explains the change in language, and the same explanation will suffice for many other instances not here cited.*

Now, there can be no doubt that there is a strongly marked resemblance between ancient Egyptian, on the one hand, and the Semitic languages, on the other. This resemblance is found to be marked in the lexica of these two groups, and long lists of words have been collected which are identical in Egyptian and in the Semitic languages. If these words were few in number or contined to one class of ideas they might be called loan words, and it might be said that the Egyptians had borrowed them from some Semitic people with whom they had been in contact. But they are so numerous and so varied that this explanation is impossible, and it must be admitted that there is a closer relation to be found than this of mere borrowers and lenders. When to these lists of words there is added the great resemblance in pronouns and the marked resemblance in some of the verb forms we see at once why Hommel regards it as certain that Egyptian is to be placed in the circle of the Semitic languages. He notices that the resemblances between Egyptian and Semitic are found most clearly when Egyptian is compared with Assyro-Babylonian, and not quite so markedly when the comparison is made with Syriac, Arabic, or Hebrew. He therefore makes the genealogical tree in the following manner, connecting Egyptian closely with the languages of Nineveh and Babylon:

We have, therefore, swung round the entire circuit of views concerning the relation of Egyptian speech to the Semitic languages. We have seen how Benfey put not only Egyptian but

* For a thoroughly admirable statement of this truth, see Professor A. H. Sayce's valuable little book, The Races of the Old Testament, chap. ii (London, 1891), and the same author's Principles of Comparative Philology, pp. 175, ff. London and New York, 1893.