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ANSTO U ER Y
‘THE ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING;
WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED
AN ESSAY ON THE EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS.
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AN EXAMINATION
OF THE
ANCIENT
ORTHOGRAPHY OF THE JEWS,
AND OF
THE ORIGINAL STATE
OF
THE TEXT OF THE HEBREW BIBLE.
PART THE FIRST,
CONTAINING
AN INQUIRY
INTO
THE ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING; WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED
AN ESSAY ON THE EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS.
By CHARLES WILLIAM WALL, Deb.
SENIOR FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF HEBREW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN.
, A ” Vy Iarafov piv, axovoov Oé.
LONDON :
WHITTAKER AND CO. ; DUBLIN: MILLIKEN AND SON, BOOKSELLERS TO THE UNIVERSITY; AND HODGES AND SMITH.
M.DCCC.XXXV.
F
Dublin Printed at the University Press, by R. Gnaiepenny,
’
E if : : _
TO HIS GRACE LORD JOHN GEORGE BERESFORD, D. D.,
PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, AND
VICE CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED,
WITH STRONG FEELINGS OF BOTH RESPECT AND REGARD, BY HIS GRACE’S
FAITHFUL SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.
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ADVERTISEMENT.
Havina, in the course of writing this preliminary treatise, lit upon what I believe to be the true key to the deciphering of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, I have been induced to hope that the publication of so much of my work might excite some interest. The remainder shall come out as soon as weak sight and various occupations will permit me to have it ready for the press; and in it, I trust I shall be able to satisfy the learned, that most of the dis- crepancies between the Hebrew text of the Bible and the Greek version of it are only apparent; to account for such appearances
having arisen; and to show how they can be removed.
Trin. Cott. DUBLIN, October 1, 1835.
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CONTENTS OF PART J.
CHAPTER I. Page. Origin and progress of the graphic art.—Alphabetic writing not invented by man—this proved a priori by arguments grounded on the gene- ral nature of the subject.—The opposite arguments considered and
answered : : : : : ; é 3 CHAPTER II. Of the different kinds of ancient Egyptian writing . : ; 42
CHAPTER III.
General argument against the discovery of alphabetic writing by man, corroborated by particular instances—especially by the Chinese case—by the Egyptian case.—Graphic system of the Egyptians to be more minutely examined, in order to repel the attack indirectly made through it on the historic truth of the Bible : : 88
CHAPTER IV.
Hieroglyphic discovery of the late Dr. Thomas Young.—True nature of the phonetic powers with which the hieroglyphs were employed by the Egyptians —Limitations to the antiquity of their phonetic system, derived from comparing—1. the cartouches phonetically written— 2. the catalogues of the ancient sovereigns of Egypt. : 130
CHAPTER V.
No impossibility in the expression of names by means of ideagraphic signs.—M. Champollion’s attempt to decipher the older cartouches affords no proof of an extreme antiquity of phonetic writing in Egypt.—The evidence of Manetho’s canon is not at all corroborated by the Table of Abydos—conjecture as to the nature of that Table 192
x CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI. Page. Rosetta inscription—comparison of the French and English methods of attempting to decipher it—faults of each method.—Investigation of hieroglyphic forms of expression equivalent to those in language— called verbs, nouns, verbal nouns—or which change the active into the passive voice, or a verb into a participle. 2 : 250
CHAPTER VII.
Third limitation of the antiquity of the Egyptian phonetic system derived from the ideagraphic parts of the later nom-cartouches, particularly from those in the Rosetta inscription.—Fourth limitation, and deter- mination of the reign in which this system commenced, deduced from the Table of Abydos.—Direct internal evidence of its Grecian origin ; : : ‘ ; : 297
CHAPTER VIII.
Direct Scriptural proof of the origin of alphabetic writing—objections to this proof stated and answered—corroboration of this proof through the internal evidence supplied by the orthography and style of expression employed in the Hebrew text.—The book of Job proved to have been originally written in hieroglyphs.—Brief consideration of some philological questions arising out of this subject : 332
PART THE FIRST.
PART T. "
CONTAINING
AN INQUIRY THE ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING;
WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED
AN ESSAY ON THE EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE GRAPHIC ART—ALPHABETIC WRITING NOT INVENTED BY MAN—THIS PROVED A PRIORI BY ARGUMENTS GROUNDED ON THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT—THE OPPO- SITE ARGUMENTS CONSIDERED AND ANSWERED,
Berore entering upon this subject, I think it right to define some words recently introduced into the English language, and to explain the sense in which I shall employ them in the course of the following pages. Of written signs, then, those are called ideagraphic,* which immediately express ideas; and those phonetic, which solely express articulate sounds, or the elements
ee gs ge ee
* This Greek derivative is by the French written “ ideographique,” great latitude in modifying the terminations of foreign words being allowed in their language. But in English “ idea” has been adopted without any corruption of the original term, and is too well established in general use to warrant its being now altered; I have in consequence ventured to remodel the compound in the form in which it appears in the text,
B 2
a PRELIMINARY [Part I.
of such sounds. Characters of the former class may, through the intervention of the ideas to which they have an immediate reference, be employed ultimately to express the terms which, in the language of the reader, are associated with those ideas ; and then, if the words thus arrived at should be for a time di- vested of their meaning, and used merely as syllables in the com- position of other words, their signs would be, during that use of them, phonetic. In this transition from an ideagraphic to a phonetic use of a character, it may be made to denote either exactly the same word, considered as a mere sound, which it before ideagraphically expressed, or only an element, or modi- fied element of that word; in the former of which cases I would say that it had a mixed, and in the latter, a pure phonetic power.
An example or two may perhaps make this distinction more easily understood. Suppose that in the ideagraphic system of the ancient Egyptian a circle denoted the idea of the sun, and that this idea was expressed in his language by the word Re ; he would then read this character by pronouncing fe ; while a Greek, acquainted with the system, would read the same cha- racter by the word Helios, and though understanding it in the same sense as the former reader, would thus attach to it quite a different ideagraphic power. Suppose again that a figure, somewhat resembling an open mouth, denoted an idea called by the Egyptian Ro, then he would read this second character con- stantly by the word Ro. If afterwards, by some means or other, he came to a knowledge of the use of phonetic signs, in con- sequence of which he was led to employ those two signs, among others, to express immediately certain ingredients in the compo- sition of words; and if, while he made the former denote solely the very same articulate sound which it before ideagraphically expressed, he used the latter as an equivalent not only to the syllable Ao, but also to any simple syllable including FR, or even to the letter & alone; there would evidently be a very marked difference between the two powers. Such, then, as are of the first description I call mixed phonetic powers, as retamimg the exact sounds of their ideagraphic origin; while those of the se-
Cuap. I.] EXPLANATIONS. 5
cond description are improvements on the first, and may, in comparison, be termed pure phonetic powers.
“ Phonetic,” as appears from the definition, includes “al- phabetic ;” but still these words are very far from being synony- mous. All collections of phonetic characters are not alphabets, but only such as consist of a limited number of terms; for the essential principle of alphabetic writing, and that which gives it a decided superiority over every other kind of graphic system, is its bemg confined to a comparatively small number of signs. Hence, when M. Champollion speaks, as he often does in the Précis, of his alphabet of Ikgyptian phonetic characters, he ap- pears to use an old and well established term in a sense, which is very incorrect, and calculated to mislead, either as to the essen- tial property of an alphabet, or as to the true nature of the phonetic writing of the ancient Egyptians. For he holds the amount of those characters to be very indefinite, so that several necessarily have the same powers, which he, on that account, calls homophones; and for one power he reckons as many as twenty-five of those homophones, which number should be still further increased, if the French were right as to the Egyptian writing being for the most part phonetic. The calling then the collection of signs phonetically employed by the Egyptians an alphabet, is evidently a gross misapplication of the term; and although it does not, as I hope to be able to show in the course of this work, contain near as many characters as is at present supposed, yet there are quite enough really included in it to make the Egyptian phonetic delineations fall far below the rank of alphabetic writing.
Diaphones, or characters having each of them different powers, necessarily brig with them homophones, and, in addi- tion, their own peculiar mischief, that of confusion. But to the perfection of a phonetic system it is requisite that its elements should be distinct in signification, as well as limited in number. A considerable amount therefore of faulty characters of either class.is incompatible with the nature of an alphabet ; and even the smallest number of them interferes with its perfection.
6 FIRST KIND OF [Parr I.
Unfortunately, however, they are to be found to some extent in most alphabets, and there is perhaps no one at present entirely free from all of both kinds. In the Roman alphabet, for in- stance, C is a diaphone, and has in consequence led to a wrong pronunciation of ancient names in England, as well as in France and in other countries. Thus every Greek scholar knows that Cyrus and Cesar should be read, not, as they now are, with the S, but with the K, power of C. Among the Germans, in reference to the second name, which has been adopted into their language as the imperial title, this fault has been avoided by substituting K for C in the beginning of the word. And it 1s very questionable whether this German example might not ad- vantageously be followed on a more extended scale, by ex- punging either K or C from our alphabet, and confining the retained letter to a single power.
I now proceed to my subject, and shall commence with idea- graphic writing, as being that which was first in use among men.
The characters employed in this writing are of two kinds : 1. Images, or resemblances of external visible objects; 2. Arbi- trary marks. Each of these again may be subdivided into two kinds, according as the application of them is direct or meta- phorical. However the subdivision of arbitrary marks is less noticed, because both applications of them are arbitrary, and the metaphor does not strike our imagination as strongly in the use of these, as it does when the signs of the first kind are em- ployed. Hence the most usual distribution at present made of the characters used in the ideagraphic branch of the art, is into three kmds: 1. Images employed as signs of those things of which they are imitations; 2. Images metaphorically trans- ferred to being signs of other things; 3. Arbitrary marks. And, pari passu, the writing admitted to have been invented by man may be distinguished into three sorts, according to the predominance in it of one or other of these three kinds of cha- racters.
The origin of the invention, in its most general aspect, may, it is obvious, be traced to the natural desire of man to give a
Cuap, I] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 7
permanence to the expression of his thoughts, so as to render them communicable to those separated from him by distance of time or place. But perhaps it may be worth while to deal with the subject more in detail, and to enter into a separate conside- ration of the different grades of this most curious and interesting contrivance.
As writing commenced with the representation of our ideas of things by their likenesses, or by mimetic characters, so the drawing of these constituted the most obvious and natural, as well as the first, step in the progress of the art. One of the earliest intellectual efforts of an ingenious child will be found to be an attempt to delineate the visible objects that have most forcibly arrested his attention. He does not indeed sketch the outlines of these with any ulterior end in view, but is merely led to the occupation by the pleasure he immediately derives from it. However this very pleasure shows the aptitude of the human faculties to such occupation, and the tendency of the mind to exert its energies in this way. Accordingly the use of mimetic writing spread widely over the earth; and specimens of it have been found in various parts of the new world, as well as of the old: in countries so situated that their inhabitants could not possibly have had any mutual intercourse, but must each se- parately and independently have arrived at the invention. Traces of this kind of writing have also been met with, where the circumstances were least favourable to making the acqui- sition, even among nations the most uncivilized, and in regions the most desolate; they were observed by Charlevoix among
* The old Spanish historian, Joseph Acosta, informs us, that, when the Spaniards first appeared off the shores of the Mexican empire, the manner in which the inhabitants of the coast communicated information of this to Montezuma, was by sending to him pictures of what they saw; and that at the time such was the general method employed by the Mexicans for convey- ing intelligence. The passage in the original is as follows:—“ Quando era caso de importancia, llevavan a los seiores de Mexico pintado el negocio de que les querian informar ; como lo hizieron, quando aparecieron los primeros navios de Espatioles.”—Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, lib. vi. cap. 10.
8 FIRST KIND OF [Part I.
the savages of North America,* and by Stahlenberg in the wilds of Siberia.”
In these rude efforts to transmit intelligence or commemo- rate events, most of the characters are intended for representa- tions of particular individual objects. However imperfect in the execution, still in the design they are portraits; and their groups constitute pictures drawn from the life. Hence it will contribute to a clearer conception of the subject, to distinguish mimetic characters into two kinds, according as they have a par- ticular or general signification, and to give the former kind a distinct name; accordingly I shall denominate them pictural. It is a predominance of such characters which marks writing of the first grade; while the employment of the other kind in any proportion is compatible with a more improved state of the art. The distinction between the two kinds of characters, though ne- glected by modern writers, was not overlooked by old Clemens of Alexandria, for he referred them to quite different classes. Whether he was right or not in separating them so far asunder, it is evident from his doing so, that he considered the two kinds to be very distinct from each other; and it will be interesting to examine the precise view he took of their difference. He ranked then the first kind under characters directly, and the second under those metaphorically or tropically, applied. The pictural character, or particular mimetic, he looked upon as one directly and appropriately applied to denoting the object of which it is the immediate imitation, [7 ev KuproAoyeirae Kara
* “ Quant aux caracteres, ils n’en avoient point: et ils y suppleoient par des especes d’hiéroglyphes.”—Cuartevorx, Journal d’un Voyage dans Amerique Septentrionale, 4to ed. vol. iii. p. 198.
> Bishop Warburton, in his Treatise on Hieroglyphs, states that mimetic characters were found by Stahlenberg, graven upon rocks, “in the province of Permia, and near the river Jenesei,” that is, on the confines of Siberia, and also in the heart of the country: and he has given a drawing of the characters from that writer.—London ed. of 1811, vol. iv. p. 119. As I have not had access to the original work, I insert the fact in my text on the authority of the
bishop.
Cuap. I.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 9
pipnow |. The general mimetic, on the other hand, he re- garded as belonging to that species of tropic which is formed by transferring a character from its primary appropriate significa- tion of the object of which it is the immediate resemblance, to denoting any other object of the same family or class, [kar’ oikevornta perayovres Kal petariOévres]. But as the meaning which I attach to this remarkable passage of Clemens is quite different from any as yet given to it, it will be necessary to state the grounds on which my interpretation rests. This, however, will require a particular discussion, which I shall re- serve for the next chapter.
The ideagraphic system of the Chinese has been now, and that of the Egyptians was formerly, such a length of time in use, that it can be hardly expected that any specimens of the primitive writing of either nation should be still extant; though, from the extreme durability of the materials employed in Egypt, it is possible that some of her earlier records may have survived the ravages of time.* In America, however, at the
4 Among the Egyptian legends of which the originals or copies have been brought to Europe, there may be observed groups of images, whether mimetic or metaphoric, with writing of a different kind placed in vertical lines over their heads. Even some of the specimens given by M. Champollion in his Précis, appear to be of this nature, and it is likely that many such could be pointed out by any one who had access to the Description de l Egypte. The apparent difference of the writing in these renders it probable, that the time of making the insculptures was also different; and the probability would approach almost to a certainty, if the records were even near so old as M. Champollion supposed. If that were really the case, the mimetic cha- racters of the groups must have been originally pictural; and in process of time, when the art had improved, the other writing was superadded to supply the deficiencies of expression in the older style. What corroborates this view of the nature of the legends in question, is, that Clemens of Alexandria, in his very remarkable account of the hieroglyphic system of the Egyptians, men- tions a direct mimetic kind of writing [1 piv xvpiodoyetrar Kara pinnow], i. e. a pictural kind. Now it is to be observed that it is not of pictural cha- racters he there speaks, but of pictural wrztinmg, in which of course those characters must have predominated; and if specimens of such writing ex- isted in his day, the most probable way of accounting for their disappearance would seem to be that above suggested.
10 FIRST KIND OF [Parr I.
time of its discovery by the Spaniards, all the writing was of the first grade, so that no species of it could have been of very ancient origin. That of the Mexicans was decidedly the best, though the Peruvians had made a greater progress in arbitrary signs. ‘To register events they employed Quipos, or branches of trees with strings tied to them, which were variously coloured and knotted ; and Acosta maintained, that by the different com- binations of colours and knots they could express their thoughts as fully and accurately as we can by means of letters.* But there is strong reason to think, as Robertson, in his History of America, has justly remarked, that the Spanish jesuit was mis- taken in the estimate he had formed of the utility and perfection of those Quipos, and that they were little better than numerical scores, the knots indicating numbers; and the colours, the sub- jects to which the reckoning was applied.’ Besides the signs
* “Son Quipos unos memoriales, o registros hechos de ramales, en que diversos iudos, y diversas colores significan diversas cosas. Es increyble lo que en este modo alcangaron; porque quanto los libros pueden dezir de historias, y leyes, y ceremonias, y cuentas de negocios, todo esso suplen los Quipos tan puntualmente que admira.—Porque para diversos generos, como de guerra, de govierno, de tributos, de ceremonias, de tierras, avia diversos Quipos o ramales ; y en cada manojo destos, tantos iiudos, y nudicos, y hi- lillos atados: unos colorados: otros verdes: otros azules: otros blancos: y finalmente tantas diferentias, que assi como nosotros de veynte quatro letras, guisando las in diferentes maneras, sacamus tanta infinidad de voca- blos, assi estos de sus fudos y colores sacavan innumerabiles significaciones de cosas.”—Acosta, lib. vi. cap. 8.
b ‘The Quipos, or knots on cords of different colours, which are cele- brated by authors fond of the marvellous, as if they had been regular annals of the empire, imperfectly supplied the place of writing. According to the obscure description of them by Acosta, which Garcilasso de la Vega has adopted with little variation and no improvement, the Quipos seem to have been a device for rendering calculation more expeditious and accurate. By the various colours different objects were denoted, and by each knot a dis- tinct number. Thus an account was taken, and a kind of register kept of the inhabitants in each province, or of the several productions collected there for public use. But as by these knots, however varied or combined, no moral or abstract idea, no operation or quality of the mind, could be repre- sented, they contributed little towards preserving the memory of ancient
Cuap. I.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. il
under consideration not being drawn or insculpted upon any surface, the registers formed of them could not, except in a very loose sense of the word, be called writing. The pictural characters of the Peruvians were better entitled to that denomi- nation, but they were very gross and imperfect.* In such characters the Mexicans had greatly the superiority, and inter- spersed among these they employed other graphic figures of an arbitrary kind to represent objects of thought not perceptible to the sight.” Still their writing could only be considered as an improved species of the first grade, for the prominent feature of it was picture-representation of events.°
Where men have not advanced beyond this first stage of the art, they readily exchange it for alphabetic writing, when they
events and institutions.”—Rosertson’s History of America, vol. ii. book 7. The general purport of this extract is judicious ; but in the last sentence there is a mistake, into which it is astonishing that so clear-headed a man as Robertson should have fallen. For undoubtedly it is quite possible that a moral or abstract idea, an operation or quality of the mind, may be expressed, through convention, by any arbitrary mark whatever ; and in fact it is only by arbitrary marks that such ideas can be expressed ; for even when they are represented by images, the metaphorical application of these is arbitrary.
* Suplian [los Indios del Piru] la falta de escritura y letras, parte con pinturas como los de Mexico (aunque las del Piru eran muy grosseras y tos- cas); parte, y lo mas, con Quipos.—Acosta, lib. vi. cap. 8.
> Tenian [los Mexicanos] sus figuras, y Hieroglyficas, con que pintavan las cosas en esta forma, que las cosas que tenian figuras, las ponian con sus proprias ymagines ; y para las cosas que no avian ymagen propria, tenian otros caracteres significativos de aquello; y con este modo figuravan quanto querian.—Acosta, lib. vi. cap. 7.
In difetto di lettere usarono gl’ingegnosi Mexicani figure, e Gerogliphici, per significar le cose corporee, che han figura; e per lo rimanente, altri ca- ratterl propri: e in tal modo segnavano, a pro della posterita, tutte le cose accadute.—GuMELLI, Giro del Mondo, parte sesta, lib. i. cap. 5.
© A splendid collection of the Mexican Hieroglyphs has been published in London, 1830, in seven folio volumes. The name of Augustine Aglio is that selected for the title page ; which appears rather strange, if it be true that the materials were collected and the engravings executed under the direction and at the expense of Lord Viscount Kingsborough. It is said that the publication cost his Lordship near thirty thousand pounds; and the
12 FIRST KIND OF [Parr I.
come within reach of that very superior method of communica- tion; what they have had no great difficulty in acquiring, they do not particularly prize, and it is at once given up for a better system. But the case is very different with respect to those nations which had proceeded through the different grades of ideagraphy to its final state, before they got an opportunity of making the exchange in question: the more cumbrous and diffi- cult of acquirement their several systems have proved to be, with so much the greater obstinacy will they be found to have clung to them. In fact, it isa very general principle of our nature to value things, not so much by their intrinsic worth, as by the difficulty of acquirement, even when that difficulty is in itself a proof of imperfection. National pride and prejudice also en- list themselves in favour of an old established practice associated with the earliest recollections of a people, and render the mind averse to instituting a fair inquiry into the merits of a foreign system. But besides the common causes of undue bias which must have equally affected the Egyptians and Chinese, separate ones may also be assigned. That which peculiarly operated on the former people was superstition; and how powerful an influ- ence it exerted in the continuation of their unwieldy method, is evident from this consideration,—that they could not have been entirely ignorant of the great superiority of alphabetic writing : as a conquered people they must have become acquainted with much of its nature, and of the advantage of adopting it, at all events from the commencement of the Ptolemean Dynasty ; and yet five hundred years after this knowledge had been forced upon them, Clemens Alexandrinus speaks of the different spe- cies of Egyptian ideagraphy, intermixed indeed with a phonetic use of signs, as still practised in his day. The characters of their principal kind of writing they connected in some way with
credit of the undertaking is very generally given to him, not only here, but also on the continent. In Paris M. Klaproth, I perceive, dedicated his Examen Critique (of the hieroglyphic labours of the late M. Champollion) to this munificent patron of the arts.
Cuap. I.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 13
religion, and called them sacred ; in consequence of which they never gave up the use of them, or adopted a mode of writing purely alphabetical, till they changed their creed.* It was on account of these characters having been originally confined to religious uses, and insculped in stone, that the Greeks distin- guished them by a name implying both particulars, and called them hieroglyphs ;° but the word is now taken in a more gene- ral sense, and applied to ideagraphs of every kind, without refe- rence to either the use made of them, the surface on which they are drawn, or the country they are found in.
Of the natural tendency of the mind to the first species of writing, some proofs have been already given ; and an additional one is, I conceive, supplied by man’s frequent recurrence to it after all necessity for the expedient had ceased :
Naturam expellas furc4, tamen usque recurret.
Thus, at the present day, there are primers filled with prints or imperfect delineations of the transactions described in their texts; the imagination being thereby called in to the assistance of the judgment, to help the young and illiterate to understand writing of a more artificial construction. And in former times, when reading was a far more difficult operation than it now is, there was a still more general application of pictural characters to this pur- pose. In order, therefore, to judge of the antiquity of an Egyptian record by the appearance in it of such characters, there is a cau- tion to be observed. Should they be found, in a large propor- tion, in the body of an insculpture, the hieroglyphs would be
@ Although Clemens includes the employment of hieroglyphs as letters in his account of the different kinds of Egyptian writing, yet he does not make mention of any kind purely alphabetic. The Egyptians, therefore, had no such writing till after his age, and the oldest they could have had was the Greco-Coptic. But all the remains of this writing which have come down to our times, were evidently the productions of Christians.
6 T have ventured to adopt the French mode of writing this Greek deri- vative in preference to the English one, as approaching nearer to the original term. The Spanish and Italian corruptions of the Greek word may be seen in one of the preceding notes.
14 SECOND KIND OF [Part I,
of the very oldest kind; but when they occur, not in the text, but m accompanying tablets, that is, when they are introduced, not from necessity, but merely for illustration, they are then compatible with writing of a much more recent date. Accord- ingly, they appear in this way in great numbers of rolls of papyrus, which, though probably the very oldest MSS. now extant, were yet written at a time when Egyptian ideagraphy had arrived at the most advanced stage of its improvement.
It was by means of these pictural characters that proper names were first expressed by the Egyptians ; that is, they en- deavoured to suggest a name by a likeness of the individual to whom it belonged; and if he was the principal agent in the record, his figure was made larger than the other characters of the text. For instance, this superstitious people believed that a deity, whom they called Osiris, had the head of a hawk, and in consequence, a human figure with a hawk’s head served with them to denote Osiris. In process of time, however, this god was so universally worshipped in Egypt, that a whole class of bemgs were supposed to have the like shape, and the character was thus changed from a pictural one to a general mimetic. It was then reduced to the same size with the others in the text, and a new method contrived for expressing the proper name. In fact there were three ideagraphic methods employed for this purpose by the Egyptians before the commencement of their phonetic system: 1. by a pictural character, some peculiarity being introduced which confined the likeness to the single being to whom the name belonged; 2. by some emblem of the per- sonal character of the individual; 3. by a collection of such emblems. But the consideration of the two latter methods must be reserved for another part of this treatise. I shall] only here observe, that the three methods were continued in use, through the force of habit and of national predilections, even after the Egyptians had learned from their observation of a foreign prac- tice the very superior mode of immediate designation by means of phonetic signs. They still applied the first two methods to the denomination of their gods, and the third to that of men;
Cuap. I.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 15
but this last way, before it finally went out of use, ceased to be connected with the proper name of the individual, and gave only a kind of supplemental name or surname, which M. Cham- pollion called a prenom. After its nature and use had been thus changed, it ought to have been referred to the head of the Latin cognomen or agnomen, rather than to that of the pre- nomen ; but in another point of view the choice of the French word is very appropriate, if it be taken to mean the name according to the previous or older method of expressing it ; and in this sense, though quite at variance with the theory of M. Champollion, I shall venture to adopt the term.
The second kind of writing commenced when the images of visible things were transferred from representing them, to denoting other objects of thought, on account of some analogies, real or imaginary, between their original archetypes, and the new significations attached to them. It was chiefly by the Egyptians that this species of ideagraphy was cultivated, and certainly their hieroglyphs afford by far the most remarkable as well as the most interesting specimen of characters thus em- ployed. ‘The metaphoric or figurative use of graphic images arose, I apprehend, partly from the impossibility of representing every idea by an immediate likeness, and partly from the natural inclination of the human mind to compare different things for the purpose of finding out poits of similitude, and its conse- quent tendency to supply mdirect resemblances where direct ones were not to be had. But the comparing faculty is so in- terwoven in our nature, that it shows itself in the metaphoric representation of our ideas not only by images, but also by arbi- trary signs, and by these latter again not only when they are of a graphic, but also when of a verbal nature.* The choice of figurative imagery is now indeed more noticed in the expression of whole trains of thought, but it was first applied to separate
* The last of these indications of the faculty in question is alluded to by Locke, in his remark, that words are borrowed from sensation to express the ideas of reflection.
ry
16 i SECOND KIND OF [Parr I. |
thoughts ; and, were I asked that question of the English poet, where was fancy bred? I should say, she was cradled in the very faculty now under consideration, and that her infantine exertions were displayed in framing metaphoric signs of single ideas, although she subsequently rose on the wings of genius to far higher occupation.
In hieroglyphs the capriciousness of the writing would be entirely removed as to the combinations it displays, and con- fined to the original selection of the separate characters, if the opinion were right which has been adopted by the French, and is now very generally received, that those characters were nearly all of them phonetically used. But although it was discovered by the late Dr. Thomas Young, that such an application of them was actually made to the expression of foreign names, and the dis- covery was afterwards completely verified by M. Champollion, as far as respects the Greek sovereigns of Egypt and the earlier Roman emperors ; yet it is certain that this was not the original use of the characters,” and it is extremely improbable that it ever, even to the last, became the general one. Surely if most of the hieroglyphic writing, or even any considerable portion of it, were phonetic, the circumstance would be quite unaccount- able, that among the various groups of which explanations have been transmitted to us by ancient authors, there actually is not a single one of this description. But indeed the direct argument which may be drawn from an examiation of the writing itself,
@ Not only may their first use be obviously inferred from the very nature of the case itself, as already explained, but it is also certified to us by the express testimony of ancient authors. Thus Tacitus writes: ‘‘ Primi per figuras animalium A%gyptii sensus mentis effingebant, ea antiquissima monu- menta memorize humane impressa saxis cernuntur.”—dnnaliwm, lib. xi. cap. 14. I do not know by what words he could have more expressly asserted that the early writing of the Egyptians was ideagraphic ; and it is to be observed, that he here speaks, not simply of their oldest hieroglyphic records, but of such very old ones as were still to be seen in his time; and, no doubt, some of these are among the very specimens now extant, the writ- ing of which is, according to the prevailing theory of the day, assumed to be phonetic.
Cuap. I] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. — 17
bears, if possible, still more strongly upon the point : however, it would be digressing from my subject now to enter into the discussion, and I shall here only observe, that where the aggre- gate meaning of a group of images is known, its ideagraphic development will be often found to exhibit a style of expression strikingly accordant with those used for conveying the same thought in language. Thus, on the Rosetta Stone,* the com- pound hieroglyph (see Plate I. fig. 1.) frequently fellows the name of Ptolemy, and it then always corresponds in place with
SS a Ee AE rt i ed rs 1 a
* This highly interesting remnant of Egyptian calligraphy was, by mere accident, discovered a little before the close of the last century by some French soldiers, in digging for the foundation of a fort, which they were going to erect near Rosetta: and when victory transferred it from French to English hands, it was brought to London, and is now deposited in the British Mu- seum. ‘The subject of the record is a decree, made in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, in the ninth year of his reign, that is, in the year B.C. 196; and this is exhibited in three distinct kinds of writing. The uppermost part of the inscription consists of hieroglyphs ; the intermediate one, of characters never before observed; and the lowest is Greek; the last line of which states that the pillar contained one and the same decree, in Sacred, in Enchorial, (or such as were in common use in the country,) and in Greek characters: roze re lepoic, kal éyxwptloie, kal EAAnrviKotc ypdupacty. What gives this document its great value is, that it contains an authentic specimen of hieroglyphs, expressly accompanied by an alphabetic text exhibiting their meaning; and it is hence very justly called by M. Klaproth, the true touchstone of Egyp- tian investigations: “la véritable pierre de touche pour cet objet.” The hopes, however, at first excited, that it would lead to the complete decipher- ing of the Sacred characters, have not yet been realized. The stone is in a very mutilated state, particularly the part containing the hieroglyphs, of which several lines are lost, the lower ones alone remaining, and none of these complete. Besides there is a want of exact correspondence between them and the Greek; as is evident on bare inspection, from repetitions in the former writing which have none answering to them in the latter. But the great obstruction to the success of the investigation will, as I apprehend, be found in the wrong hypothesis upon which it has been conducted. Hence, although the French have pursued the inquiry with great ardour and inge- nuity, ever since the very remarkable paper of Dr. Young was published in the Supplement of the Encyclopedia Britannica that came out in the year 1819, yet they scarcely appear to have advanced beyond the point which he had then reached.
Cc
18 SECOND KIND OF [Part I,
the title of Errpuanes in the Greek part of the inscription ; consequently, its signification upon the whole must be very nearly that of “ Glorious.” The uppermost figure then must denote something appertaining to glory, though, as we are ig- norant of the nature and use of the instrument of which it is the immediate image, the propriety of the metaphor by which it is transferred to this signification cannot now be ascer- tained. The middle figure is an image of the mouth; which presents the natural means for the diffusion of fame, and ac- cordingly there is frequent allusion to this employment of it in language.
Ille quidem ad superos—
Succedet fama, vivusque per ora feretur.
The lowest figure (a pair of legs placed upright) affords a representation of “standing under,” and, consequently, of “being covered,” by an object. ‘The grouping of the charac- ters here certainly presents a very grotesque appearance ; but on consideration it must, I think, be admitted, that the lower combination is still more whimsically made in English, where under and standing are brought together to denote a mental operation, by some allusion that must be very far-fetched indeed. In German the same combination occurs, with a meaning closely corresponding with the Egyptian one; for wnterstehen, with the accent on the first part of the compound, denotes the being « sheltered.” Now, if the force of the entire group be con- sidered, it will be found that the words most usually employed in the same signification are just as figurative. Thus, the Hebrew term khorim* means burning, thence shining, thence glorious ; the Greek, epiphanes, that which is above the sur-
@ omin has the form ofa plural noun, but it is made applicable to one person by prefixing to it }2, and is thus used in Eccl. x. 17. where it is ren- dered in our version ‘‘son of nobles.” In the Shemitic languages there is scarcely any composition; therefore, in reference to them the correspondence described in the text applies only to the use of metaphor, but in the other languages it extends to that of composition also.
Cuap. I.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 19
rounding objects, so that it can be seen on every side; the Latin, ¢lustris, that on which the light shines ; and the cor- responding English epithets of splendid, conspicuous, «llus- trious, involve in their original formation fully as much of metaphor. ‘The expression “ glory-covered,” is itself to be met in language, and, as it is expanded by the Royal Psalmist in that passage, “ Thou deckest thyself with light, as it were with a garment,” every one must be struck with its beauty and its force.
The metaphorical use of images must have very soon fol- lowed the direct one, for we find traces of the same employment of an older class of signs among nations before their acquaintance with even the first kind of writing. Of this a remarkable in- stance is recorded by Herodotus, in the significant intimation of the Scythian Prince to Darius invading his territories, which was conveyed under the symbols of a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. ‘The present, though unaccompanied by any ex- planation, was rightly understood by the Persians, and inter- preted by them to signify that, “unless they could ascend into the air like birds; or conceal themselves in the earth like mice; or plunge into the fens like frogs; they should inevitably perish by the arrows of the Scythians.’”*
acer \o»” i] , bd ~ Q > Q > St 3 , Hv pn opvec yevouevoe avartnols é¢ Tov ovpavoy, w Ilgocar,
}) mvEC YEvomEVOL KaTa THE ync KaTaddyTE, 7) PaTpaxor YEvouevor é¢ TAC Niuvac zornodnonte, dvK aTovooticere OTicw, UTO TOVOE TOY TOEEULATWY BadrXAouevor.” Tlépoat piv on butw ra O@pa eKxaGov.—Hueron. lib. iv. cap. 132.
The threatening message which was thus interpreted, was not sent to Darius, till after he had been induced, by the Scythians appearing to fly before him, to penetrate so far into their country and to stay there so long, that all his resources were completely exhausted ; for the Scythians in their retreat destroyed every thing that could be made use of, and even went so far as to fill up all the wells and springs in their way. Thus, in the late eventful war, the crafty veteran Koutousoff, by holding out fallacious hopes of his sovereign’s accepting the proffered terms of peace, inveigled Bonaparte into remaining at Moscow, entirely beyond the time that prudence would have warranted. Indeed the campaign of Darius, as described by Herodotus,
c 2
20 SECOND KIND OF [Part I.
Now, from the one party sending, and the other under- standing, a message so expressed, it is probable that both were acquainted with this mode of communication; or if the Persians were not, their yet making out its meaning shows, that it was suited to the natural apprehension of man. Accordingly, we are informed by Clemens of Alexandria, that this method of conveying information was practised by several ancient nations ; and he considered it so closely connected with the figurative species of writing, as to rank both under the same denomination.* In identifying this sort of symbolization with writing he was not perhaps quite accurate: however, the de- viation from correctness was not very material ; for though the signs here employed were things, instead of graphic images of things, this made no alteration in the metaphorical nature of their application; and out of such application of the one set of signs a like use of the others would obviously arise very soon after their introduction.
As men must have always done in the former of these two modes of communication, so they commenced in the latter one with expressing only their leading thoughts, leaving it to the
tallies surprisingly in a number of particulars with that of the French in Russia. The ancient Cossacks adopted the same general mode of defence as the modern ones; they also outwitted their southern invaders, notwith- standing their superior military skill, very nearly in the same manner, and nearly with the same result.
* "AdAa yap ov povoy ’Avyuttiwy 6t AoyiKwrarol, mpd 62, Kal TOV ddwy PapBapwv, Sco. procopiag wpéyOnoav, 75 cupupoArKdv ELdo¢ éGhAwoav.—Crum. ALEX. Strom. lib. v. p. 414. ed. Heinsii. By the way this passage shows that the authority of Clemens may be added to that of Tacitus in proof of the symbolic nature of the Egyptian writing. The sup- porters of the theory now in vogue endeavour to account for the ancients not having transmitted to us a single phonetic legend, by the remark, that alphabetic writers would be more struck with ideagraphic ones, and, there- fore, more likely to record such. This explanation very imperfectly accounts for their ¢otal omission of phonetic examples, and it does not at all account for their giving the writing the general character of being symbolic or idea-
graphic, if the greater part of it really was, as is now supposed, of quite a different nature.
Cuap. 1.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 21
judgment and ingenuity of the reader to make out the con- nexion and modification of those thoughts. But the imper- fection of such writing would be obvious, though its improve- ment probably would be slow, and the result of experience would be gradually and at intervals to suggest the necessity of introducing additional subsidiary signs. When, therefore, there is found a considerable difference between records in this res- pect, a long series of years may be inferred to have intervened between their dates. This criterion serves to point out the great antiquity of some of the inscriptions appropriated by the Egyp- tians to the designation of names, but it can hardly be so applied to any of their other legends now extant, unless perhaps to a few which seem distinguishable into groups of the primitive kind, and supplemental writing subsequently placed over the heads of the figures. However, it certainly leads to such result in its appli- cation to descriptions of legends transmitted to us by ancient authors. In the next chapter I shall have occasion to refer to one given by Clemens, which he selected as a specimen of the enigmatic species of symbolic writing ; but he classed it under that head only on account of an obscurity in the meaning of some of the separate characters of the group, and not at all for its want of subsidiary signs: the latter circumstance appears to have escaped his observation, for he makes no remark on it. This legend must have been of great antiquity, for, like the Scythian message, it is quite bare, and does not contain even a single connecting or modifying symbol.
But length of practice would suggest, not only an increase in the number of signs, but also a simplification of their shapes; which would be attended with the double convenience of saving the time of the writer, and reducing the space which his writing would occupy.* When graphic images were transferred
* Besides these two advantages, the characters of the third kind have this further one, that our ideas of reflection can be expressed by them directly as well as indirectly ; while they can be denoted only indirectly by the second class of signs, and not at all by those of the first class.
22 THIRD KIND OF [Parr I.
from being signs of what they immediately resembled to denot- ing other things, the change of their application was in some measure arbitrary; and fancy, as has been already observed, took a share in the process. As analogies may be perceived or imagined between any one object of thought and a vast variety of others; so the inventor of a sign could choose on which of them he would found the metaphor that was to lead to the ex- pression of his thought. But when, not only the application, but also the shape, of the symbols came to be changed, this improvement led to the introduction of characters that were entirely arbitrary. For when once the process of simplification began, the only limitation to it was, that the shape should not be made so simple as to preclude the variety necessary for sup- plying a sufficient number of distinct signs ;* besides after cha- racters that originally resembled visible objects, had been thus changed in their shape, others would be formed on their model that would from the very outset be unrestricted in their outlines by reference to the figure of any object in existence. Arbitrary characters of both descriptions constitute the prominent mate- rials of the third grade of writing, to which, in the progress of improvement, man has been able, by the exercise of his natural powers, to advance ; though some of them, in a lesser proportion, may also be found in each of the other two grades.
Very few arbitrary signs of the first description, and pro- bably none of the second, are to be seen in the hieroglyphic legends of the Egyptians. The superstition which induced them to retain the Sacred characters so long in use, may have likewise exerted its influence in preventing any considerable alteration of their shape. ‘Their unchangeableness in this res- pect may also in part be accounted for by the pompous nature
@ This simplification holds only with respect to the separate single signs, because if the practice should arise of blending these again into compound ones, the process would take an opposite direction in reference to the latter class; and the combinations might become continually more complex by the increasing number of their simplified ingredients.
Cuap. I.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 23
of one of the uses to which they were applied, which was to celebrate the praises of their kings; and certainly for records intended for display and parade no characters could be more suited, or admit of a higher degree of ornament than these hieroglyphs in their original form. Thus, among ourselves, the old English letters are still retained for ornamental writing, though for every other use so inferior to the Roman characters. The Egyptians, however, as we are informed by Clemens Alexandrimus,—and his information is both explained and ‘con- firmed by recent discoveries,—employed two other kinds of ideagraphic writing, in which the characters were of a more arbitrary nature, the Mieratic or sacerdotal, which was a run- ning hand imitation on papyrus of the hieroglyphs,* and the Enchorial or common writing of the country, which was a still more loose imitation of the Hieratic. Indeed these last cha- racters are so very arbitrary that they look more like letters than figures that had been originally, though not immediately, de- rived from graphic images of objects in real existence ; and the Egyptians in their formation proceeded in the arbitrary simpli- fication of shape beyond the bounds that were compatible with distinctness. Jor as they frequently in this writing denoted, by a single dash or line, ideas that were in the hieroglyphs represented by distinct images; the consequence was, that the same line corresponded to different hieroglyphic characters, and it thence became necessary to add to the Enchorial marks some supplementary ones, to prevent their meaning being mis- understood.
But the most remarkable writing of the third grade is that of the Chinese, among whom the ideagraphic system has been longer in operation than in any other part of the world ; and in
4 The characters of this class may be seen in MSS. with different degrees of resemblance to their originals; some so very nearly the same that they have been denominated by M. Champollion lineal hieroglyphs. Both Hieratic and Enchorial MSS. have been found in great numbers, since the discovery of the Rosetta stone drew attention to the subject.
24 THIRD KIND OF [Parr I.
consequence the characters now employed by them are all com- pletely arbitrary, and belong to the second class of signs of that description. There are, however, abundant traces remaining of the Chinese having formerly employed both of the older kinds of ideagraphic writing. Kircher, in his China Iilustrata, gives several specimens of images metaphorically used by them; as also, an outline of the rules by which they were directed in their conformation ; from which it appears, that, in their choice of metaphors, they gave far less scope to the imagination than the Egyptians did.* But if Kircher meant, as his words seem to imply, that they began their writing with characters of the figurative or metaphoric class, he was evidently mistaken in this; as indeed might be shown even from the very nature of the case itself: for if images of external objects were at all adopted as graphic signs, they must have been first used to signify immediately what they resembled, before they could be transferred to denoting other things. Accordingly, that the Chinese commenced with graphic images so applied, as indeed all nations must have done who made use of writing of their own invention, is attested to us by several authors, of whom I particularly refer to Du Halde, because he gives the fullest account of China, and one founded on information collected by a large number of missionaries who were the latest in the country, up to the time when all foreigners were excluded from its interior.”
* Diximus in precedentibus, Sinas primcvos characteres suos ex omni- bus rebus, quze visui objiciuntur, assumpsisse ; atque ex vario tantim harum rerum congestarum ordine et dispositione mentis suze conceptus manifestasse. Hinc igne nature argumentum tractaturi, serpentibus, aspidibus, et draco- nibus utebantur, qui tali aut tali ordine et dispositione digesti, tale et tale quid significabant. In aéreis rebus describendis, volucrum vari disposi- tione ; in aqueo argumento, piscibus ; in vegetabili natura describenda, flo- ribus, foliis, ramis; in sideribus, punctis seu circulis, quorum singuli singulas stellas exprimebant, utebantur; in reliquis indifferentibus argu- mentis, ligna, globos, fila certé lege disposita adhibebant.— Kircneri China Illustrata, pars vi. cap. 2.
> Des le commencement de leur Monarchie ils communiquoient leurs
Cuar. I] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 25
The Chinese differ greatly from the ancient Egyptians in the composite nature of their characters ; for they unite several ingredients in the formation of a complex sign; and they, in some instances, go so far in this complication, as to make one symbol denote a train of thoughts, and correspond in meaning with an entire sentence.* The Egyptians, on the contrary, kept their signs of the more simple ideas quite distinct, even when they combined them in the expression of a complex thought ; for they did so merely by placing them in juxta-position, with- out altering their shape or in any way blending them together ; so that they employed several images to denote one compound thought, instead of one arbitrary mark to signify a number of thoughts. Their writing consequently took up more space than that of the Chinese, but it was far less burdensome to the me- mory of the learner, as the aggregate of requisite signs must have been considerably smaller on their plan. The distinct
idées, en formant sur la papier les images naturelles des choses qu ils vou- loient exprimer ; ils peignoient, par example, un oiseau, des montagnes, des arbres, des lignes ondoyantes, pour exprimer des oiseaux, des montagnes, un forét, et des rivieres. Cette maniere d’expliquer sa pensée étoit fort impar- faite, et demandoit plusieurs volumes pour exprimer assez peu des choses. D’ailleurs il y avait une infinité d’objets, qui ne pouvoient étre representez par la peinture, tels que sont l’ame, les sentimens, les passions, la beauté, les vertus, les vices, les actions des hommes et des animeaux, et tant d’autres, qui n’ont ni corps ni figures. C’est pourquoi insensiblement ils changerent leur ancienne maniere d’ecrire: ils composerent des figures plus simples, et en inventerent plusieurs autres, pour exprimer les objets qui ne tombent point sous les sens.—Dvu Hang, tom. il. p. 227.
As Kircher had overlooked the first kind of writing employed by the Chinese, so Du Halde, in this extract, appears strangely to have lost sight of the second. For he here represents them as proceeding immediately from pictural characters to the change of their shape, without first interposing the change of their application.
4 Il yad’ailleurs des caracteres qui signifient deux ou trois paroles, et quelquefois des périodes entieres; par exemple, pour ecrire ces paroles : bon jour Monsieur ; au lieu de joindre le caractere qui signifie, bon, et celui qui sifinifie jou, avec celui qui signifie Monsieur: on doit se servir dun caractere different, qui seul exprime ces trois paroles: et.c’est ce qui multiplie si fort les caracteres Chinois.—Du Haxpz, tom. il. p. 226.
26 THIRD KIND OF [Parr I,
singleness of the Egyptian signs gives to a metaphysician the better chance of analyzing their separate significations, suppos- ing him to know the collective meaning of an entire group : at the same time it deprives him of the means of determining by their number, whether they are ideagraphically or phonetically used ; since in this system there may be as many signs wanted on the former supposition as on the latter. Hence in the hieroglyphic records which, from the names they contain, are known to exhibit the latest specimens of the art, where probably the characters were promiscuously employed in both ways, it is extremely difficult to distinguish one use of them from the other. But if any group should be identical with one occurring in the older legends, its ideagraphic nature may be thence fairly in- ferred.
Though the Chinese are less imaginative than the Egyp- tians were, yet their characters are not devoid of metaphoric signification, even since the time that they became entirely arbitrary. In these, as was before observed with respect to the ancient hieroglyphs, the choice of metaphor has a striking cor- respondence with that displayed in the formation of words: so that the same general taste for figurative representations is found under every variety of circumstance, in ages and countries the most widely separated; and marks by its universality that it is deep-rooted in the nature of man. Thus, the word calamity, which, with a little variety of termination, pervades so many European languages, denotes, in the structure of its Latin origin, the failure of a crop of corn. But the graphic mark which, in Du Halde’s time, was employed by the Chinese to express the same thought, signifies, in the composition of its parts, a house on fire. The metaphor, by which the mind is made to pass from a particular species of misfortune to the general idea, is, in both instances, precisely the same, only the application of it is more forcible in the Chinese selection of a case, than in the European one. The correspondence here cannot be in part accounted for by supposing, that the Chinese, like the European, first made the combination in words, and
Cuap. L.] IDEAGRAPHIC WRITING. 27
thence transferred it to his writing; for, in fact, he did not make it in words at all; his name for misfortune being ¢saz, which cannot by any mode of composition be formed out of mzen and ho, the terms by which he expresses house and fire. This ex- ample by the way shows that men do not always think to them- selves in words, and that Locke’s remark on the subject ought to be restricted within certain limits. For it is evident that the Chinese can think in his characters apart from words; and we also sometimes do this in our use of marks of a like nature. Thus, for instance, I can form no clear idea of the number of this present year without reference to some signs or other; but I can conceive it just as well by turning my thoughts to the ideagraphic group 1835, as by thinking of the words eighteen hundred and thirty-five. The same Chinese example also shows that the modern division of ideagraphic signs is not a complete one; for here is a character that does not exclusively belong to any of its three classes, but is both arbitrary and metaphoric at the same time. In the next chapter it will be seen, that the ancient division of Clemens, according to my interpretation of his words, is far more accurate; which indeed is no proof that I have rightly hit off his meaning, but it renders the mind more ready to acquiesce in one derived from other con- siderations.
T shall here conclude, with one remark, what I have to state on the progress of writing, as far as it is by all admitted to have been advanced by the mere natural powers of man. It has been shown that every where this writing set out from the same com- mencement ; from the representation of objects and events by pictures. Even the Peruvians, in common with other nations, began with such signs, although they were more remarkable for their Quipos, as already described: they appear to have proceeded very early from their first efforts in the art to a me- thod of denotation, which cannot in strictness be called writing of the third kind, but which was analogous to such writing, and would naturally have led to it, if they had persevered in the use of their own graphic system. Now, however the process may
28 ALPHABETIC WRITING [Part I.
have been in other respects varied, by difference of tastes and habits among different nations, there is one circumstance which has constantly and uniformly characterized it; namely, that in every instance it has ¢ended to the class of arbitrary signs ; so that wherever sufficient time has been given for the due opera- tion of causes affecting our common nature, and accidental or local impediments have not been interposed, it has actually reached that class. Hence, although the principal kinds of writing invented by man, the Mexican, the Egyptian, and the Chinese, are distinguished from each other by the predominance in them respectively, of pictural, of metaphorical, and of arbi- trary characters; yet, in all of them, some portion of the arbi- trary class may be observed ; and in the Chinese writing, which has been longer in use than any of the rest, these characters have so increased as to have excluded both the other classes. Bishop Warburton, in the fourth book of his work on the Divine Legation of Moses, asserted that these arbitrary charac- ters naturally conducted the mind to letters, the invention of which constituted the final step in the gradual improvement of writing ; and that from the ideagraphic species of it, the alpha- betic one was thus derived. In a section (the 4th of book iv.) in which he has dwelt very fully on other points connected with the general subject, he appears to have thought this one so ob- vious as scarcely to require proof; at all events he brought forward very little that deserved the name. Yet the reputation of his great learning and powerful talents has given such sup- port to the assertion, that it appears ever since to have received a very general assent, and to pass current among most people without examination. Probably the subject matter of this section has not been as closely sifted as the rest of his writings, from an opinion, that the determination of the point therein argued was not of much consequence. However, the connexion which it will be found to have with the nature of the primitive writing of the Jews, gives it an importance which induces me to enter into a stricter investigation of the question. This is now become the more necessary, because the recent discovery of the phonetic
Cuap.J.] NOT DERIVED FROM HIEROGLYPHIC. 29
use of hieroglyphic characters by the Egyptians, as well as by the Chinese, appears at first view to give countenance to the Bishop’s position ; so that even the ingenious Doctor Young suffered himself to be deceived by it, and took it for granted that it was correct. In his observations on the name of Ptolemy, phonetically expressed in the Rosetta inscription, (it was im the instance of this name that he made his remarkable discovery of such employment of hieroglyphs,) he thus expresses himself : “In this and a few other proper names, it is extremely in- teresting to trace some of the steps, by which alphabetical writ- ing seems to have arisen out of hieroglyphical ; a process which may indeed be in some measure illustrated by the manner in which the modern Chinese express a foreign combination of sounds, the characters being rendered simply ‘phonetic’ by an appropriate mark, instead of retaining their natural signification ; and this mark, in some modern printed books, approaching very near to the ring surrounding the hieroglyphic names.” — Enc. Brit. Supp. Article Egypt, p. 62.
I shall commence with discussing the principle, on grounds of general reasoning. Now, that the formation of one set of arbitrary characters might lead to that of another set; or that the shape of letters might be formed on the model of arbitrary hieroglyphic marks, after the use of letters had been learned from some other source ; and still further, that from associating the hieroglyph with the idea it was employed to represent, the mind might be led to associate it with the articulate sound which was the name of that idea in the language of the reader ; all this is very possible. But that the wse of a character, as the sign of an idea, should lead the way to its wse, as the sign of some- thing totally unconnected with that idea, viz. of an element of articulate sound, having by itself neither meaning nor sound,’ is a
a The grammarians have divided consonants into semivowels and mutes, thereby making a distinction where there is no real difference; for all of them are mute, in the sense of being incapable of being sounded without the accompaniment of a perfect or imperfect vowel. There are two of them in-
30 ALPHABETIC WRITING [Part I.
supposition which cannot be rationally sustained. Let us, how- ever, take the case most favourable to the hypothesis of the transi- tion from an ideagraphic to an alphabetic use of characters being effected by an intrinsic cause, through a natural tendency in the one use to conduct to the other; and let us suppose the name of an idea to be itself an elementary articulate sound; also a rude alphabet to be constructed of letters with syllabic powers, each of which denoted such a sound; yet even so the assumed ten- dency cannot be made out; or rather, it can be disproved by showing that the assumption involves a contradiction. The mind of the reader will now indeed advance one step in the process, and pass from the idea to the elementary sound which is to become the power of one of the letters just described ; but the very same principle of association which has occasioned this step to be taken, will put a stop to the still further one which the Bishop’s theory requires, and prevent the reader from di- vesting that sound of its customary meaning. Thus, to give a familiar example, 2 is an ideagraphic character denoting im- mediately a particular number, and through that suggesting to an Englishman the word two. But it is possible that men might agree in using it immediately as the sign of the same sound, without any meaning attached to it; in which case it would become a letter of syllabic power, and might be sub- stituted for the syllable to in writing any word of which that syllable was an ingredient. Both uses of the character are pos- sible, but the former one never could lead to the latter; for in the numeric employment of it, the mind is conducted to the sound only through the sense, and therefore could not be thus brought to use it without sense. Indeed the ideagraphic use of signs, instead of leading towards the phonetic one, has ac-
a ee ee
deed, and y, which have the nature of vowels as well as of consonants, though they have not been included in the list of those on whose account the distinction was made; but even they, when employed as consonants, are, in common with all the rest, mutes, and cannot then be sounded without the assistance of some vowel.
Cuar.I.] NOTIN ANY WAY DUE TO INVENTION. 31
v
tually the very opposite tendency, and draws off the mind from the practice adopted in alphabetic reading of using the elemen- tary sounds without any signification, and combining these to form significant words. Wherever then is found a phonetic employment of ideagraphic characters, the phenomenon must have arisen from some source totally independent of, and foreign to, the intrinsic nature of hieroglyphic writing.
So far, I apprehend, the case has been sufficiently argued to disprove the invention of any alphabet through the medium of hieroglyphs; for here we are stopped in the very first step of the process, namely, in that which should be made from idea- graphic to phonetic signs. Now, as it is never attempted to _ Show that letters were invented except through this medium, the argument might perhaps be considered decisive against their ever having been in any way discovered by man. How- ever to meet the general question more directly, and point out the extreme improbability of their having been at all derived from human invention through any medium whatever, it may be still further urged, that even supposing man had by his own efforts arrived in some unaccountable manner at a phonetic use of signs, he would yet be immeasurably distant from an alpha- betic one. The possibility of the two steps which he would yet have to take in order to get to letters is almost as inconceivable as of that first one, to which, it has been already proved, he never could have been conducted by the nature of the case. In the first place let us inquire what motive he could have for decom- pounding all the words, or at least, all the ordinary words of his language, without doing which he never could discover the alphabetic principle: and in order to view the operation, as performed, in the easiest manner, I shall only consider him as proceeding in it till his arrival at simple articulate sounds, and put out of sight the still more difficult step by which those sounds would have again to be resolved into their sonant and consonant elements. Now if he knew beforehand that by making this decomposition, he could reduce all the elementary sounds of his language to a limited number, requiring, conse-
So
32 ALPHABETIC WRITING [Part I.
&
quently, for their expression only a limited number of signs; he would have a very strong inducement to the process, because he would thereby, in the recomposition of his words, be able to represent them all in a manner that would save him an infinity of trouble. But if he was not previously aware of this, his de- compounding words, merely to compound them again, would only be a waste of his time and labour. Here then lies an im- pediment in the way of his having ever set about constructing an alphabet of even the rudest and most imperfect nature: he never could discover the alphabetic principle till he had first made the above-mentioned decomposition, and he could have no possible motive for making this, till he had first known the alphabetic principle.
If it be said, that it has been already supposed that he has got signs of some of those articulate sounds, and that he might pos- sibly be induced, from analogy, to search for the rest in order to give them also signs; im this way of stating the case, there is a tacit assumption of his being aware that the rest constitutes a limited number; that is, it is tacitly assumed that he already knows the alphabetic principle, though his first approach to the discovery of this principle is the very thing which it is wanted to account for. However, putting the impediment for a mo- ment out of view, and supposing our investigator has gone through the very laborious process of decomposition, let us, in the next place, consider what yet remains behind to be effected by him. Before he can discover the limitation in question, and determine the sounds whose signs are to constitute his alphabet, he must classify and arrange all the decompositions made by him. And to effect this, he can derive no help from the pho- netic signs already conceded to him; because, be it recollected, he is not yet supposed to know the alphabetic principle, and consequently he will have affixed those signs without any me- thod, giving the same sign to different sounds, and different signs to the same sound. He must therefore go through the process of classification entirely in his own mind, without any aid from external marks, and thus at length discover that the
Cuar.I.] NOTIN ANY WAY DUE TOINVENTION. — 33
number of classes is limited. Now that the human mind, with the strongest powers in the highest state of cultivation, should take m so extensive a subject at one view, is hardly conceivable ; but that any man should have been equal to this in the very early times to which the use of alphabetic writing can be traced back, is quite beyond the reach of credibility.
In another place I shall take an opportunity of showing that this abstract reasoning is confirmed by actual observation, and that a variety of corroborating circumstances can be adduced from the different systems of ideagraphy which have to any ex- tent prevailed in the world, particularly from those into which a phonetic use of characters appears to have been introduced. I now proceed to consider the arguments brought forward on the opposite side of the question.
The only authority produced by Dr. Warburton in support of his theory is contained in the passage of Tacitus (to the commencement of which I have already referred) wherein he describes the ideagraphic nature of the writing used by the Egyptians, and then proceeds to mention the discovery of let- ters by that people.* But while he vouches for the first point, he virtually refuses to do so for the second, by altering his style of expressing himself, and giving, not his own testimony for it, but that of the Egyptians themselves; from which it may be fairly inferred, that although he records their claim to the dis- covery, yet he considered it only as a vain boast. The autho- rity, therefore, of Tacitus is so far from being in favour of the bishop’s view of the question at issue, that it is rather against it.°
* Primi per figuras animalium A®gyptii sensus mentis effingebant (ea antiquissima monumenta memorize humane impressa saxis cernuntur) ; et li- terarum semet inventores perhibent.—Tacitt 4m. lib. xi. cap. 14.
® This branch of the argument has been since taken up, in support of Dr. Warburton’s opinion, by Zoéga, who collected out of the classic authors several passages relating to the subject. But these might be disposed of, some of them, like the extract from Tacitus, by showing that they had: not at all the bearing attributed to them; and the rest, by adducing passages of an
D
34 ALPHABETIC WRITING [Part I.
The ground on which he rests his reasoning is the facility of the transition from arbitrary signs of ideas to arbitrary signs of sounds. The weakness of this ground has, I hope, been sufficiently shown: it certainly is very conceivable, that the shape of one set of characters may have easily led to the shape of the other set; but the supposition that the one wse of charac- ters could have been derived from the other wse, even in the case most favourable to its possibility, involves a downright con- tradiction. However Dr. Warburton considered the facility of such derivation to be not only real, but also self-evident, so as not to require proof; at least he assumed it without giving any, in the general course of his argument, or till very near its close. Thus, immediately after accounting for men having arrived at the use of arbitrary graphic signs of their thoughts, he writes as follows: “ Thus we have brought down the general history of writing, by a gradual and easy descent, from a picture to a let- ter; for the Chinese marks ———— are on the very border of letters; an alphabet invented to express sounds instead of things, being only a compendium of that large volume of arbitrary marks,”* p. 131." And again, “ now we are come to one of those links of the chain which served to connect hiero- glyphic marks and alphabetic letters. For those hieroglyphic marks, which were signs of things by arbitrary institution, par- took of the proper hieroglyphics, in being signs for things, and of alphabetic letters, in bemg signs by institution. And the
opposite bearing from the very same authors. However it is not worth while to detain the reader with the discussion, as the authority, on this point, of the ancients referred to is of very little weight: for even in their time the origin of alphabetic writing was wrapped in such obscurity, that they were just as liable to be mistaken about it as the moderns,
2 What a pity it is that the Bishop had not heard of the phonetic use of their characters made by the Chinese; as this use would have conducted him so much more plausibly, though not more truly, to ‘‘ the very border of letters.” Unfortunately the practice had scarcely commenced in China till after his time.
> In specifying the pages of my quotations from Dr. Warburton’s treatise, I refer to the London 8vo. edition of 1811, vol. iv.
Cuar.I.] NOTIN ANY WAY DUE TOINVENTION. = 35
contrivance of employing these arbitrary marks to design all the primitive sounds of the human voice, was inventing an alphabet. This was what the Egyptians called their epistolic writing ; and this, let me observe, the ancients agree, was invented by the se- cretary of an Egyptian king,” p. 153. Here an authority is put forward, but in so vague a manner by the words, “the an- cients agree,” as not to deserve any attention; and the whole force, such as it is, of the reasoning in both passages depends upon the assumed facility of the contrivance.
At length he endeavours to account for and substantiate this facility by the following semblance of a proof. “ While the picture, or image of the thing represented, continued to be ob- jected to the sight of the reader, it could raise no idea but of the thing itself. But when the picture lost its form, by being contracted into a mark or note, the view of this mark or note would, in course of time, as naturally raise in the mind the sound expressing the idea of the thing, as the idea itself. How this extension from the idea to the sound, in the use of the real character, first arose, will be easily conceived by those who reflect on the numerous tribe of words in all languages, which is formed on the sound emitted by the thing or animal. Yet the use to which this new connexion might be applied, would never be thought of till the nature of human sounds had been well studied. But when men had once observed, (and this they could not but observe early and easily, by the brute and inar- ticulate sounds which they were perpetually hearing emitted,) how small the number is of primitive sounds, and how infinite the words are which may be formed by varied combinations of those simple sounds ; it would naturally and easily occur to them, that a very few of those marks, which had before casually excited the sensation of those simple sounds, might be selected and formed into what has been since called an alphabet, to ex- press them all; and then their old accustomed way of com- bining primitive sounds mto words, would as naturally and easily direct them to a like combination of what were now become the
D2
36 ALPHABETIC WRITING [Part I.
simple marks of sound; from whence would arise Lirrrary Writine,” pp. 155, 156.
Now I have to observe on this extract, in the first place, that there is, at the very commencement of it, a misrepresenta- tion of the point to be proved; for if the transition from an arbitrary ideagraphic, or (as he calls it) real, mark to a letter, was only a transition from the mark, through the idea, to the sound expressing that idea; the facility of the process might be at once conceded to him; it is one which necessarily takes place in the mind of every person who reads out an ideagraphic le- gend. But what he really had to prove, in making out the transition from the idea to the letter, was not at all a passing from the idea to the sound expressing it, but from the idea to something with which it is totally unconnected; to something that has by itself no meaning, and what is more, that has by it- self (as alphabets are now constructed) no sound. ‘The transi- tion, therefore, which he had to establish, is infinitely more diffi- cult to account for than it would seem to be from his represen- tation.
But, in the second place, and as respects matter of fact, there will be found involved in his statement an accumulation of at least live errors, some of which might be refuted by quotations from his own treatise. For instance, it is here asserted, Ist, that while a hieroglyph was the image of a thing, it could excite in the mind of the reader no idea but of the thing itself: it could not then, in consequence of any imagined analogy between that thing and something else, be transferred to denoting that other thing, and suggesting the idea of it to the mind; 2nd, that in all languages there is a numerous tribe—a vast number—of words naturally connected with the ideas they are employed to express; and of course that men of all nations can, to a certain extent, and that not a very limited one, converse with each other; for these nu- merous words that have a natural meaning must convey the same meaning to every one who hears them; 3rd, that in the formation of alphabets the powers of the letters were suggested by, and derived frem, such of the above words as are elementary
Cuar. 1.] NOTIN ANY WAY DUE TOINVENTION. — 87
or simple sounds: they were not deduced from sounds ab- stracted from sense, but only from significant sounds; and again, not from these indiscriminately, but only from such of them as had their signification, not by arbitrary association, but by a natural and necessary connexion; 4th, that men were led to the notice of articulate simple sounds by hearing ¢narticulate ones; 5th, that when once they had arrived at the observation of such sounds, they were necessarily aware of their number being very small, and of the possibility of all the words of their several languages being formed out-of the varied combinations of this small number ; so that all that is requisite to discovering the principle of alphabetical construction, is to be able to form or to notice simple articulate sounds; the rest follows as matter of course; but care is to be taken that these sounds are signifi- cant, and are so by a natural resemblance to the things which they signify, because it appears that it is only from the combi- nation of such sounds that the words of any language are formed. So much for his view of the facts of the case.
I shall now, in the third place, proceed to consider his rea- soning ; and if the passage be stripped of its verbiage, I appre- hend we shall find the main argument reduced to what the lo- gicians call a begging of the question ; that is, we shall find him assuming, and taking for granted, a proposition which includes the very question he wanted to prove. Undoubtedly 7f men had early and easily discovered the alphabetic principle, they would have naturally and easily formed alphabets on that prin- ciple, and as naturally and easily applied them to their proper use. But it is mot certain that they discovered the principle either early or easily; and what is more, though not necessary to be added in answer to the Bishop, it is not certain, or even probable, that they ever reached it at all by discovery.
Thus then the argument fails m the statement of the ques- tion to be proved, in the statement of facts, and in the reasoning; so that the opinion maintained by Dr. Warburton has really no- thing to rest on but his bare authority. Some, perhaps, may think that Plato and Cicero were as capable of forming a sound
38 ALPHABETIC WRITING [Parr I.
judgment on the subject. They, both of them, saw into the real difficulty of the case,* from which they concluded that alpha- betic writing was not an invention of man, but a gift from the immortal gods. But instead of balancing authorities against each other, I shall confine myself to considermg that of the Bishop alone; and I conceive that a mere statement of two other opinions maintained by him in the same treatise, will show how very little weight should be attached to his judgment on this particular subject. Beyond it I do not wish to be understood as extending the remark, since there is no occasion here for en- terig into any estimate of his general merits or demerits as a writer.
The first of those opinions which I shall mention is, that, while in the progress of human invention, the Chinese pro- ceeded from pictures or graphic images to arbitrary marks, this order was reversed with respect to the Egyptians, and they, on the contrary, proceeded from arbitrary marks to images. Thus he writes: “‘ How then came it to pass that Egypt, which had the same imperial fortune [as China] in a long flourishing do- minion, should be so far from changing their analogic figures into arbitrary marks, that their arbitrary marks were almost lost and absorbed in analogic figures? This opposite progress in the issue of hieroglyphic writing in Egypt and China may, I think, be easily accounted for by the different genius of the two people. The Egyptians were extremely inventive; while the Chinese are known to be the least inventive people upon earth.” Now the Egyptians, who were of a lively imagination, and studious of natural knowledge, though at first, like the Chinese, they expressed mental ideas by arbitrary marks, yet as
* This difficulty is forcibly expressed in a few words by Cicero in his question: ‘‘ Qui sonos vocis, qui infiniti videbantur, paucis litterarum notis terminavit ?”—Tus. Ques. lib. 1. cap. 25.
> Where did Dr. Warburton find this out? assuredly not from the ac- counts of the Missionaries. They describe stupendous works of art erected by the Chinese, which show any thing but want of invention; at least as far as mechanics are concerned.
Cuap. I.] NOTIN ANY WAY DUE TOINYVENTION. — 39
they improved their inventive faculties by use, they fell natu- rally into this method of expressing them by analogic or sym- bolic figures,” pp. 127, 128. Again, a little further on: « But the course of the Mexican empire was too short to im- prove picture into an hieroglyphic; and the Chinese, which, in its long duration, hath brought this picture down, through hieroglyphics, to a simple mark or character, hath not yet (from the poverty of its inventive genius, and its aversion to foreign commerce’) been able to find out an abridgment of those marks by letters: it was the old and well established monarchy of Evypt, so propitious to arts and civil policy, which carried the picture, through all the stages of its improvement, quite down to letters, the invention of this ingenious people.” —p. 132. Now I do not here dwell on its being (to say the least of it) very unphilosophic to suppose that a principle of so powerful a nature, as to extend its influence to nations the most remote from each other, and most opposite in tastes and habits, should yet have its operation—not varied by peculiar circumstances, for that would be a very legitimate hypothesis, but—reversed with respect to a particular people. Nor do I urge against Dr. Warburton’s judgment, that this supposed reversing of the order of nature, in the case of the Egyptians, is disproved by recent discoveries to which he had not access, which show that in their ordinary writing, wherein they were not restrained by superstitious feelings, they got into characters as arbitrary as those employed by the Chinese. But, looking solely to what he has himself written on the subject, I would ask, how the above extracts can be reconciled with a leading theory of his in the very same treatise, viz. that it was through the channel of arbitrary marks that men arrived at the discovery of letters ? As well as I can judge, he, in those quotations, directly and
* Of this parenthesis, by which he endeavours to extricate himself from an inconsistency, the first part is a gratuitous assumption; and the second is a virtual admission that his theory is wrong, and that letters are ot de- rivable from arbitrary marks, but from some external source.
40) ALPHABETIC WRITING [Parr I.
doubly contradicts his own theory; for he makes the Chinese, who were, according to him, on the right road to letters, and for ages on that road, yet fail to arrive at them; and, on the contrary, he holds that the Egyptians were not going right, but exactly in the opposite direction, moving off from the only channel that could conduct them to the desired goal, and yet, notwithstanding, they are the very people to whom he gives the credit of having made out their way to that goal. When a writer thus contradicts himself upon any particular question, let his general talents and learnmg be what they may, his judgment is surely entitled to no attention on that subject.
The other opinion of his, to which I allude, is that alphabetic writing was invented (by the secretary of an Egyptian king) for the purpose of concealing secrets ; namely, in order to write to leaders of armies and distant governors letters of state, which would be illegible to the people at large, and might be con- veyed with the security of modern ciphers; and he sums up his account of the matter in the following words. “Thus the reader finds that the very contrary to the common opinion is true; that it was the first literary writing, not the first hiero- glyphical, which was invented for secrecy, p. 155. Like other men of great genius, Dr. Warburton was fond of origi- nality, and he certainly here struck out a very original thought. He was also, from his genius, fond of antithesis; and having in another part of this same treatise maintained (contrary to the express testimony of Clemens Alexandrinus, as shall be shown in the next chapter) that all hieroglyphs were at first designed for the purpose of plain open communication, he here laid it down, per contra, that letters were originally intended for pri- vacy and concealment.
So, it seems, letter writing was at first quite obscure and difficult in comparison with the plain and legible hieroglyphs, and particularly so in comparison with the early hieroglyphs, which were not encumbered with a single mark to show the connexion of the characters. At the same time, however, it
Cuap. J.] NOTIN ANY WAY DUE TOINVENTION. 41
was so very easy and obvious an invention; it lay so much in the way for the first person who wanted it to put his hand upon it, that as soon as ever our secretary had occasion for a secret mode of conveying orders, he at once made this discovery. He did not arrive at it by a long and laborious process of invention; he had not (unless very differently circumstanced from other secretaries of state) leisure for such occupation. Nor did he hit upon it accidentally by a happy turn of thought breaking in upon his mind when he was engaged with other subjects; for he first felt the want of the accommodation, and then in conse- quence found it out. All this is very probable, it is so like the manner in which other great discoveries have been made; and what heightens the probability is, that men were considerably advanced in arts at the time; for we are informed by Kircher, that the prince who had this same very clever secretary, was one of the grandsons of Noah !
I hope the reader will excuse my not hunting out for the place where I came across such valuable information in the pages of Kircher; and also that he will dispense with my entering into any formal or serious discussion as to the soundness of the above opinion of Dr. Warburton.
42 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
CHAPTER IL.
OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING.
WHEN we enter upon a particular consideration of Egyptian writing, our attention is naturally turned to the remarkable passage of Clemens, the Alexandrian Presbyter, in which he treats of this subject. Notwithstanding the great obscurity in which parts of it are involved, it is particularly interesting to the scholar ; as being the only one, entitled to credit, that has brought down to our times any thing like a detailed and con- sistent account of the different kinds of writing in use among the ancient Egyptians.* Hence several efforts have been made to clear up its meaning, but hitherto without success; so that after so many failures, I should be apprehensive of being con- sidered presumptuous in making a fresh attempt, were it not that those very failures, while they mark the difficulty of the investigation, serve at the same time to give a better direction to it by pomting out the errors which are to be avoided. Besides, part of the difficulty has been removed by the disco- veries in Egyptian antiquities which have been made within the present century, and further aid may be expected from the
a i a La So de |
@ The few scattered passages on this subject, which are found in the works of earlier authors than Clemens, are too scanty or vague to afford satisfactory information; and the descriptions given by Greek writers of the ages next after his, are evident plagiarisms from this and other passages of his Stromata, mixed up with puerilities and contradictions that render them very little worthy of attention. Any person who will take the trouble of looking into the writings of Iamblicus and Horapollo will see that this is not too severe a judgment on them; neither are the extant works of Porphyry, though dis- playing more subtilty, to be exempted from the same reproof; and I believe that much of the confusion and perplexity observable in Dr. Warburton’s treatise on hieroglyphs, may be attributed to his having relied on such autho- rities as the writers just mentioned.
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WIRTING. 43
same source, according as our knowledge of the subject to which the passage in question relates shall be extended.
Influenced by such considerations, an able writer not long since recommended a re-examination of the words of Clemens, and a renewal of the discussion respecting their meaning. Upon this point, M. Klaproth, in his Haamen Critique, published at Paris in the year 1832, expresses himself as follows: “ Un morceau célébre de saint Clément d’ Alexandrie a surtout été Pobjet d'un examen attentif de la part des savans, parce qu’ils le supposaient plus propre que tout autre a jeter du jour sur les différens procédés que les anciens Egyptiens employaient pour se communiquer leurs pensées. Une explication, plus lumineuse et plus plausible que toutes celles qui avaient précédeé, a été donnée recemment par M. Letronne ; et toute fois on ne saurait assurer que cette explication ait levé toutes les difficultés que le passage presentait, et qu’il n’ait, méme apres le travail du célébre helléniste, besom d’étre encore repris et discuté a l’aide de la connaissance que l’on aura acquise du sujet auquel il se rap- porte.” —p. 11.
It is true that he does not give much encouragement to the undertaking ; for, after the words just quoted, he goes on to say: “ Loin de servir a l’explication des hieroglyphes, on peut dire que ce fragment de saint Clement d’ Alexandrie ne sera lui- méme complétement éclairci qu’aprés que les hiéroglyphes auront été parfaitement connus, s°il est possible d’espérer que cette découverte puisse jamais s’effectuer.” But he appears to have here yielded to a greater despondency than was justified by the nature of the case ; and to have both overrated the diffi- culty, and underrated the value, of success. For the under- standing of the Greek passage in question does not depend solely and exclusively on our knowledge of hieroglyphs ; and therefore it is not fair to assume, that, unless the latter subject be completely developed, the former cannot be understood. Neither is the inference correct, that, because hieroglyphs afford aid towards the explanation of the Greek, therefore this Greek cannot afterwards contribute any help to the better understand-
44 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
ing of the hieroglyphs. On the contrary, it is very possible that the passage, when once its meaning is cleared up, may throw light upon the subject of which it treats, even though our pre- vious imperfect knowledge of that subject was one of the very means by which the true signification of the words had been discovered. This process of mutual elucidation may be observed in other investigations, and there is no reason whatever for despairing of its operation in this one also. Without further apology then I shall submit my attempt to the judgment of the reader ; first giving the original with a general rendering of its meaning, and afterwards entering more minutely into particulars. The previous interpretations to which I shall principally refer, are those of Dr. Warburton and M. Letronne; because the one was the most in repute of those published before the discovery of the Rosetta stone, and the other is, I believe, the latest and best of those which have since appeared.
““Aurixa oi map ’Avyurriows madevopevor, mparov ev mavrov tiv Avyumriov ypapparov pebodov expavOavovet, my “EINSTOAOPPA®IKHN $xadoupénv’ devrépav oe, mv IEPATIKHN, 7 ypavrac ot iepoypappareis’ VOTATNY de kal redevraiav, tnv IEPOTAY®IKHN: js 7 per éore dua TOV TpPdTwY GTOLYElwv KUpLOdOyLKH’ 7 Oe, ovpBorrkn* THs Oe cvpBodrrKhs, 1 pev KUpLoAoyetrae KaTa plunow" 7 O OOTEP TPOTLKOS ypaderar’ 7 de avtikpus aAAnyopeirae Kara Tivas aviypous. “Hoy y ody ypavat BovAdmevor, KUKAOV Totovor’ LeAnvnv Oe, TyHMA MyNvoEldes, KATA TO Kuptodoyou- pevov eidos. Tpomikas Oe, Kar olKkedTnTa METaYOVTES Kat perarievres’ ra O, e&addAarrovres’ Ta be, TOAAAX@S [LE- TaoXnmariCovTes, YapaTTovow' Tors y ody Tov Bacirkov eraivovs Oeooyoupevors pvOois Trapad.ddvres, avaypapovat Out Trav avayrvparv. rod S€ KaTa TOds cuVLypods Tpirov €l- Oous, Oetypa eorm TOOe’ Ta Mev yap TOV ARO aoTpov, dua THY Topetay THY rokHv, opeov coHpmacw ameikavov’ Tov dé
d o A / \ al HAwov, tp Tov KavOapou' émed) KuKdorepes ex THs Boelas
Cuar. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 45
ovOov oXnLa TAaTaMEVOS, avTUTpoTwTos KUAWOEL. — Strom. lib. v. p. 405, ed. Heinsii.*
“ Now those who are educated among the Egyptians learn, first of all, the method of Egyptian writing, called Eprsto.o- GRAPHIC; secondly, the Hirraric, or sacerdotal method, which the sacred scribes employ; and lastly, the final or complete kind, the Hrproctyeuic: of which indeed there are two sorts, the one, curiologic, by means of the first elements (of words), [that is, plainly and directly expressive of words, by means of hieroglyphs employed as letters]; and the other, symbolic : [in modern language these two sorts would be called the phonetic and the ideagraphic species of the hieroglyphic method of wri- ting]. Of the symbolic kind, again, there are three sorts; the first is curtologic, or plainly and directly expressive (of ideas), by means of imitation; [in other words, the characters of this sort are pictural, being employed to denote directly those par- ticular objects of which they are immediate imitations]; the se- cond is ¢ropic, being written after the manner of tropes or me- taphors; and the third is, on the contrary, enigmatic, expressing openly something different from the secret meaning, by means of certain enigmas, [which are of an opposite nature to that of the tropes in respect of their meaning being designedly ob- scure]. As an instance of the direct mimetic species, they in- dicate the sun by a circle, and the moon, by the lunar shape, a crescent. According to the ¢ropic species they insculp their characters in stone in three ways; partly, making such lesser changes or transfers of their meaning as is consistent with familyship, [that is, such, that the object to which the significa- tion of each character is transferred should be of the same fa- mily or class with that which it primarily and directly denoted]; partly, altering their significations in a more decided manner
* For the convenience of the reader, and also of the printer, I have re- moved the contractions from the above extract; and shall observe the same rule whenever, in the editions of Greek works which I may have occasion to consult, the text is printed in a contracted manner.
4G OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I,
without the preceding restriction; and partly, changing their forms in a great variety of ways; [in the modern style of ex- pression, the tropics, or characters turned and transferred from their primary and direct use as pictures, would be said to be formed by three operations; partly, by making the pictures ge- neral in their signification; partly, by making them metaphoric in their signification; and partly, by making them arbitrary in their shape]. ‘Transmitting then the praises of their kings in narratives told in the theologiec style, they make their inscrip- tions by means of these insculptures. Of the enigmatic, or third species of symbolic writing, let this serve as an example : as to the other [circumvolvent] luminaries, on account of the erratic nature of their motions, they represented them by the bodies of serpents ; but the sun, by that of the beetle, in conse- quence of the spherical shape of the ball of cow-dung, which this insect makes [to deposit its eggs in], and forms by rolling it round in a situation facing the sun, [for the advantage of a warm aspect].”
With respect to the methods of writing which are here men- tioned, but not described, under the denominations of Hieratic and Kpistolographic, although there was great uncertainty, and indeed ignorance, as to their nature, before the Rosetta inscrip- tion had presented to observation a specimen of one of them; yet since then, abundance of MSS. on papyrus have been found illustrative of both methods. Moreover, the expression concern- ing the direct representation (of words) by their first elements, has been fully explamed by Dr. Young’s discovery; and what Clemens intended by the direct mimetic and the enigmatic species of symbolic writing can be clearly ascertained; the for- mer, by the sole consideration of the examples contained in the passage; and the latter, by means of those here adduced, com- pared with an account of the same subject which he has left in another place. The only serious difficulty therefore which re- mains to be grappled with, is the meaning of the part of the passage in which the formation of the fropics is alluded to in general terms, vaguely and without any illustration. In sup-
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 47
port of the interpretation of this part, which is now submitted to the decision of the learned, I have some observations to make; but I shall go regularly in order through what appears to me deserving of notice in the whole of the description here given of the ancient hieroglyphic system.
js 9 mev core Sia TOV mporor OTOLXEl@Y KUpLOAOYLKT’ 7) dé, cupBorsxy] Clemens here divides hieroglyphic writing into phonetic and symbolic, but it should be borne in memory, that, in another passage already given, he stated the symbolic (or ideagraphic) kind to have been that which was principally cultivated in Egypt (or studied with zeal by the most intelligent of the Egyptians); and it is here also shown that he considered the former kind as comparatively unimportant; for he only barely mentions it, while, on the contrary, he enters into a de- tail of particulars respecting the latter. From both places it seems probable, that the phonetic writing formed but a very in- considerable portion of the entire system.
With respect to the terms in which the phonetic use of hie- roglyphs is here described, I am surprised at the great impor- tance attached to them by M. Letronne. In his essay on the whole passage,* he enters into a very minute examination of this part ; which he calls, « l’expression la plus controversée de tout ce passage et l'une des plus importantes,” p. 386; and, in par- ticular, he has himself raised a difficulty about the meaning of mporav, the determining of which he appears to consider the ‘point of most consequence in the entire investigation. I confess I do not think he has rightly fixed the sense in which the word is here used ; but even supposing he had, what advantage would result, or what new information would be thence derived? The only rational motive for investigating the meaning of any part of the passage, is in order that we may arrive at a knowledge of what is therem conveyed: it is not about the words we are
* Inserted in the second edition of the Précis of M. Champollion, pub- lished at Paris in 1828.—It is to this edition I shall always refer in specifying the page of any quotation from the Précis.
48 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part I.
anxious, but about the things described by their means. But in the instance before us, the thing alluded to is completely known already through Young’s discovery, and it is therefore very immaterial what view Clemens took of it, or in what terms he expressed that view.
However, as M. Letronne took such an interest in this point, which he tells us he would discuss “avec un soin proportionné al’extréme importance du passage,” p. 387; and as his opinions on subjects of Greek criticism are not to be lightly dismissed, I shall advert to the three which he successively held in refer- ence to the signification of the word in question. Two of these he admitted to have been refuted, so that there will remain but. the third to be minutely canvassed. He first supposed that by mporev was meant initial. “ Au premier coup-d’ail, Je crus qu il s’agissait des premieres lettres de chaque mot. Cette idée était favorisee par les exemples deja cites dans la lettre a M. Dacier, ot sont rassambles beaucoup de signes phonétiques exprimant des idées dont le nom, dans la langue parlee, com- mence par la lettre que ce signe represente,” p. 392. How- ever, he quickly abandoned this opinion for the following very decisive reason: “En effet, si telle eft ete intention de Cle- ment d’ Alexandrie, il etait absolument indispensable qw il joig- nit un complement a dia Tov mpoToy croLxél@y, Comme par exemple, dia Tov, Exaorov ovoparos, ou éxacTns A€EEws,
TpPOTOY TTOLXELWOV, OU toute autre chose de ce genre,” p. 392.*
@ M. Letronne here speaks as if he had himself hit off this refutation, for he introduces it with the assertion, ‘‘ mais le plus leger examen me fit aban- donner cette idée.”” But I am sure that such could not be his meaning, be- cause he saw the learned remark on this very point made by Professor Weiske of Leipsic, to whose commentary on the entire phrase he alludes in the beginning of his essay. The professor’s words are as follows: ‘At si noster [Clemens] rad tp@ra ororxsta inetiales voluisset esse verbi cujusque literas, haud dubie rod dvdpuaroe, vel dvouatoe Exaorov addidisset.” He then gives his own opinion and translates the Greek expression, “‘ stmp/icis- simos sonos, qui literis exprimuntur ;?’ which is just the same meaning as that finally adopted by M. Letronne, and of course the same refutation will answer for both.
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 49
He next thought that by rpoérav ororxetwv Clemens meant the sixteen letters, which, according to ancient tradition, were those first brought into Greece: “ Et cela est conforme a la nature de ces sons plus élémentaires, plus simples que les huit autres, et consequemment qui ont dti étre exprimés /es premiers par des caractéres.”’—p. 394. But he states an objection made against this notion, which he admits to be valid: «Il a paru singulier que Clement d’Alexandrie allat chercher son exemple dans histoire obscure de l’alphabet grec, pour expliquer la nature de celui des Egyptiens. Et cette objection, la bien examiner, me semble maintenant assez forte.” —p. 395.* Finally, he de- cided that the words signified the primitive simple sounds of language, generally, without reference to any particular alpha- bet: “— le mot para se rapporte, non a l’alphabet primitif, tel qu’était l’alphabet phénicien, mais aux sons primitifs, en general, c’est-d-dire, aux plus elementaires et aux plus simples de tous.” —p. 395.
Now, I must here beg leave to observe, that if the second opinion was rightly rejected, because it was not to be expected that the Egyptians could have known any thing about the early history of the Greek alphabet, so as to be thereby directed in the selection of their own phonetic signs; similar reasoning will apply, with finitely greater force, against the third hypothesis. For it is quite inconceivable that the Egyptians could have made so subtile a distinction as that between primitive and se- condary simple articulate sounds, or between letters of primitive and secondary powers. ‘To show the great difficulty of such distinction, I will just point out to the reader’s consideration one of the examples given by M. Letronne, in which he places in juxta-position the Greek letters IT and ®. A Hebrew scholar would probably say, that the sound corresponding to the second of these was the primitive one, because he has but one
et.
* The objection was made by the Edinburgh Reviewer, in his number of December, 1826, article on Hieroglyphics, p. 103. E
50 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part I.
character for both powers, which he more generally employs with the second, and formerly it was used with that one alone.* A Grecian, on the contrary, would be more likely to decide that II was the letter of primitive power, because ® was later introduced into his alphabet; and a person using Roman cha- racters might be inclined to the same conclusion, because, while he expresses the former power by p, he usually represents the latter by ph. But suppose he employs for this purpose f instead of ph, I suspect he will then find it not so very easy a matter to determine which is the primitive power, that of p or of fZ How is he to compare them? They are uttered by different organs, the former by the lips alone, and the latter by the lips and teeth : so that if the arbitrary classifications of grammarians be put out of view, it would require great philological acumen to decide the question.
However, it is but just to observe, that M. Letronne brings forward several examples of an indiscriminate use of powers by the Egyptians; of their confounding, for instance, in their system of phonetic signs, II with ®, I with K, A with T and ©, and so on, p. 396; and that he considers these examples as
* Numerous examples might be produced from the Septuagint version to show, that, where the letter ) is now pronounced as p, it was formerly made equivalent to ph. Thus, in the word mw 9b, Gen. xxi. 34, the initial letter
must, according to the rules laid down by modern Hebrew grammarians, be sounded py, without any aspiration ; and accordingly in all the pointed books there is a daggesh in it to mark that it should be so read; but it is rendered in the Greek @vAcorteu. This ancient pronunciation of the letter continued down as late at any rate as the time of St. Jerome; for, in his commentary on Isaiah, he makes the general remark which closes the following extract : “Pro Philisthiim semper LXX, alienigenas interpretati sunt, nomen com- mune pro proprio, que est hodie gens Palestinorum, quasi Philisthinorum, quia P literam sermo Hebraicus non habet, sed pro ea PHI Greco wtitur.”—Com. in Isaiam, cap. ii. ver. 7: and his authority for the correct pronunciation of the letter, in the above particular instance at least, is inde- pendent of the evidence to the same effect which may be derived from the LXX. as it appears from the commencement of the extract that he overlooked the example which I have given from the Greek version.
Cuar..IL.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 5t
illustrative and confirmatory of his opinion. There is certainly a little confusion of thought here; but where a writer’s state- ment of his opinion and his illustration of it are at variance, it is fair to understand him as speaking in a sense agreeing with that mode of expression, which of the two affords the more favourable representation of his views. By this rule then it appears, M. Letronne did not at all mean that the Egyptians distinguished between two kinds of simple articulate sounds, and employed only “les plus élémentaires, les plus simples de tous;” but, on the contrary, that they did not so distinguish between them, and not only that they did not discriminate between cer- tain powers, as to which were primitive, which secondary, but that they did not discriminate between them at all. Now, this exactly agrees with what we learn from Dr. Young’s discovery, as verified and extended by M. Champollion; and if the pur- port of the terms used by Clemens was hereto accordant, they would on the point in question correctly express the real state of the case. The only drawback on this explication of the third opinion is, that it is impossible to put on the words dua TPOT@OV oToLXYElwv a construction conformable to it, or to make first elements signify, different elements promiscuously used. But I ought to apologise to the reader for taking up his time with this difficult trifle, which indeed nothing could justify me in doing but the attention which M. Letronne bestowed upon it.
What Clemens precisely meant by the term apérar, it is, for the reason already stated, very immaterial to determine ; but if it were worth giving an opinion upon, I should say, that he used it m this instance as a mere pleonasm; just as in English we speak of the elements, or first elements, of any thing, in the same sense. Or, if he is to get credit for greater accuracy of expression, he may possibly have conceived the elements of words to be syllables, and the elements of these again to be letters, which would thus come out Jirst elements in reference to words. But however the result be arrived at or accounted
E 2
52 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS ~- [Parrl.
for, Young’s discovery has made it quite certain that first elements here denote /etters, in that loose sense in which they are synonymous with phonetic signs.
avrikpus aAdnyopetrat| M. Letronne translates these words, “se sert entiérement d’allegories ;” upon which he gives the following note, “ avrixpus pourrait indiquer opposition et signifier aw contraire, tout aussi bien que avTixpv, puisque la distinction établie par les anciens grammariens entre ces deux formes, est réellement nulle. On objecte, avec quelque raison, que les deux genres, le tropique et Pénigmatique, ne sont pas assez opposes pour autoriser un tel sens. J’ai done preferé de prendre le sens de dtoAov, mavTed@s, que les grammariens donnent 4 avrixpus,”—p. 379. Now, Ihave a double reason for preferring the meaning which is here rejected. In the first place, I shall presently show by an example of an enigmatic sentence elsewhere given by Clemens, that the epithet, entirely or throughout allegoric, is imapplicable to such sentences; as they may in great part consist of plain mimetic characters. In the next place, the passage with which he introduces that example will prove that there was a very decided opposition between the tropic and enigmatic species ; for he therein expressly informs us, that the latter was designed for the purpose of concealment and mystery. But this could not be the case with respect to the former, which was specially employed for celebrating the praises of the Egyptian kings; and being thus intended for the most public and open communication, cannot be supposed to contain any characters purposely obscure. J admit, that to us most of the tropic hieroglyphs are as unintelligible as any enigmatic ones could be : customs have long since ceased, and instruments have gone out of use, the allusions to which were quite familiar to the Egyptians ; but the significations which were founded on those allusions are now irrecoverably lost. The opposition, therefore, between the two kinds exists not in reference to our apprehension ; but this does not prevent its having been both a real and a very marked one in the time of Clemens.
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 55
“HXuoy yoov yparvar BovdAdpevor, KUKAOV TroLodct’ 2edn- yyy d€, oxnMa pnvoedes, Kara TO KUpLodoyovpeEvov €.0os. | It is to be observed, that the examples here given of direct mi- metics are images of particular objects, of which the ideas were not so generalized as that each object might be considered one of a family or species; for the ancients had no conception of there being several suns or several moons. It is true, that towards the close of the whole passage Clemens speaks of the sun and the other aorpa, which shows that he ranked these heavenly bodies in some respect or other under the same class. But he did so, not from supposing that the sun and planets had the same general nature, and belonged to the same species, but merely from their having, as was maintained by the astronomers of his day, the common property of revolving round the earth.
Tpomxas O€, Kar’ oikeornra perayovres Kal peraribev- tes’ Ta O, €&addAarrovres’ Ta Oe, TOAAAXOS pEeTATYNMATI- Covres, xapatrovow | The great obscurity of this description arises from Clemens confining himself in it to general terms, and not giving particular examples of the tropic species, as he has of both the other kinds of symbolic hieroglyphs. The consequence is, that the translations, hitherto made, supply, either, through vagueness, no meaning, or meanings decidedly wrong. Of the former class is the old Latin version, which is in the following terms : “ ‘Tropice autem per convenientiam traducentes et trans- ferrentes, et alia quidem immutantes, alia vero multis modis transfigurantes, imprimunt.”—Hd. Heinsii, p. 405. Bishop Warburton’s version is not much more explicit ; it runs thus : “The second, or tropical way of writing, is by changing and transferrmg the object with justness and propriety : this they do, sometimes by a simple change, sometimes by a complex multifarious transformation.’—p. 142. The Edinburgh Re- viewer, in the article already alluded to, proceeds thus: “ Ac- cording to the tropical method, they represent objects by means of certain agreements (or analogies), which they transfer into the expression of those objects, sometimes by modifications (of
54 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
form), most frequently [he here confounds oAAax@s with 7oA- haxis | by complete transformations.”—p. 102. This version is founded principally on the earlier ones of M. Letronne, and agrees in substance with his last, which is written as follows : “Dans la méthode tropique, changeant et détournant le sens des objets par voie d’analogie, ils les expriment, soit en modi- fiant leur image, soit en lui faisant subir divers genres de trans- formations.” —p. 379. All the translators whose attempts I have seen, however they may differ in other respects, have here fallen in common into two mistakes, which a due consideration of the subject, and particularly of the Greek itself, will enable us to detect. 1st. They make the first clause of the sentence to apply to the whole tropic method, and the second and third clauses to be subdivisions of the first. They were led into this error from there being no partitive particle prefixed to the first clause ; but such an omission is very common in the first member of a dis- tributive sentence, not only in Greek but also in other languages: and if the partition commenced, as they imagined, at the second clause, the partitive expression prefixed to this clause would have been ra pev; whereas it is Ta Oe, which indicates, not the beginning of a division, but the continuation of one already begun in the preceding clause.* 2. They make the
* From the charge of this mistake, I find by the following note of M. Letronne, that one translator is to be exempted: ‘‘ M. de Goulianoff voit ici trois opérations: 1. perdyovrec cat perariBévrec, 2. 2addadrrovrec, 5. peracxnparigovrec. Je ne puis étre de son avis; l’absence de régime devant les deux premiers montre bien que les deux seconds, devant lesquels sont les régimes ra 62, ne font qu’expliquer leur signification. Dans le sens qwil adopte, je doute que la phrase soit grecque: telle qu’elle est, elle re- vient 47a mpaypata perayovrec Kal peraTWévrec, Ta 0: 2& ... 7a O& peTay...” pp- 379, 380. M. Letronne was a little too precipitate here in his censure of this translator. When I found that M. de Goulianoff was so far on the right track, I was at first anxious to see how he got through the remainder of the sentence ; but my curiosity was entirely removed by another note of M. Le- tronne, in which he informs us that the two translators were in the main agreed : ‘‘ Le point principal sur lequel nous différons, concerne aussi l’ex- pression relative aux hieroglyphes phonetiques,’—p. 378.
Cuap. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 55
second and third clauses both to denote changes in the form of the character; the second, of a simpler, and the third of a more complicated and more decisive nature. But change of form is expressly indicated only in the third clause, and the addition of the qualification, oAAayos—multifariously or with great va- riety—shows that all transformations are reserved for that clause. What then can be the nature of the alterations alluded to in the first two? ‘To answer this question, we must consider that the only possible change that can be made in a graphic sign must be either in its shape or in its signification. But the former is wholly engrossed by the third clause, therefore, the latter one is all that remains for the other two. In both of them a change of meaning is indicated, but a greater one in the second than in the first clause, as appears not only from the different force of the Greek words, but also from there being a restriction added in the one case and none in the other. By such con- siderations I have been led to the conclusion, that the first ope- ration referred to by Clemens is a transfer of the meaning of a sign according to familyship. This act of transferring he expresses by two words, perayovres kat perariévres ; between which, in their application here, I confess I do not see any dif- ference, therefore, I will not pretend to assign one: possibly he used them with none, but, in a loose way, only added the second to enforce the idea conveyed by the first. But even supposing Clemens had some distinction here in his mind, the ascertaming it could not be of any great consequence, as the restriction he has added informs us of all that is material to be known as to the general nature of the operation: the transfer must be such, that the object of thought, newly signified by the hieroglyph, should be of the same family or class as the old one. The second operation is not a mere transfer of signification ; it is an alteration of it, an alteration of the meaning of a sign, unaccompanied by the preceding restriction. The third ope- ration is a changing of the shape of a hieroglyph in a great variety of ways.”
56 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part I.
rors yoov Tav BacAéwv éraivovs Oeordoyoupevois pvOors mapad.oovres, avaypapovor dia TOV avayAvpov.| In all the versions of this sentence there may be observed, in reference to its last word, the same want of meaning, or incorrectness of meaning, that was noticed in the several translations of the preceding extract. Thus the old Latin rendering here is, «‘ Regum itaque laudes fabulis theologicis mandantes, anagly- phicis describunt.’”—p. 405. Warburton’s note upon the mean- ing of the word is: “I suppose it was Clemens’s intention only to tell us that tropical symbols were chiefly to be met with on their stone monuments, engraven in relief: which was true.”— Note (HH), p. 400. The Edinburgh Reviewer and M. Le- tronne both imitate the old Latin translator in transferring the word in its Greek form into their versions ; but the former gives the paraphrase of it, which closes the following sentence : «Thus, when they transmit the praises of their kings in their theological fables, they describe them by means of anaglyphs, that is, by transpositions, or transformations of the hiero- glyphs.” —p. 102. The latter thus expresses the meaning which he attaches to the word: “Je voudrais pouvoir définir ce que Yauteur entend par anaglyphes, qui servaient, comme on voit, pour l’expression tropique ou figurée—Pourquoi donc Clément d’ Alexandrie borne-t-il les anaglyphes @ l’écriture symbolique figurée? Tl faut qu’il entend par-la une espéce particuliére de figures sculptées, servant toutefois comme ecriture.”—p. 382. Whether, like Warburton, he understood these “ figures sculptées” to be raised from the stone in relievo, I cannot tell, as he refers for a more particular description of them to obser- vations of M. Silvestre de Sacy, which I have not seen; but his opinion of their shape may be collected from his note on perayovres Kat peraribevres. “* La synonymie de ces deux mots est difficile, et le sens est obscur; mais on devine qu’il sagit de ¢ransposition, comme serait telle partie dun objet transportée sur un autre, et de changement de forme; idées
e . ” ° , . , qui doivent étre expliquées par les mots suivans, e&adAarrovres
Cuap. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 57
et peracynmariCovres, qui me paraissent s’entendre l’un d’une modification de forme, lautre d’un changement total ou de transformation.” ‘The paraphrase of the Reviewer seems to be a mere abridgment of this note, and of course the same refuta- tion serves for both: the reader is, I hope, already satisfied that the words perayovres Kat perariévres have no reference what- ever to the shape of the characters, but only to their meaning ; and even if this had not been proved, the mind surely, after any reflection, could never acquiesce in the arbitrary distinction here made between them; a distinction that has no foundation what- ever in either their Greek etymology, or in the nature of the subject to which they are applied. With respect to the notion, which was, I believe, originally started by Dr. Warburton, and is still retained by some writers, that the tropics stood out from the surface in relievo; this is contradicted by the words of Clemens in the most express manner: for he says, in the former part of his description of them, that men yaparrovow, sink them in the stone; and accordingly they are not raised, but sunk characters, differing nothing in this respect from hiero- glyphs in general. What led Dr. Warburton astray in this instance, was his looking to the separate force of the component parts of the word avayAvpwr ; but experience shows this to be a very unsafe way of determining the meaning of a compound. ’Avaypade is more frequently met in Greek; and in several passages the context proves it to correspond with the Latin inscribo; from which it may be fairly inferred, by analogy, that avaydvdw means insculpo. The difference of the combinations by which the same idea is expressed in the two languages, may be accounted for by conceiving, that, in formimg them, the Greek looked to the surface on which; and the Latin, to the substance im which, the sculpture was made. “AvayAvgdov then means insculptures ; and Clemens called the hieroglyphs, when tropically used, znsculptures, instead of sacred sculptures, only because the subjects they were then employed to record were not sacred ones. But that he did not use the word ana-
58 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
glyphs to express a different set of characters from hieroglyphs, is quite evident even from the simple consideration, that he made the writing composed of them to be one kind of hiero- glyphic writmg. He did not then at all mean by these ana- glyphs a distinct species of character, but merely the common hieroglyphs applied to a distinct use.
I have been thus particular in exposing the fallacy of the notion, that hieroglyphs and anaglyphs constituted quite diffe- rent kinds of writing ; because from this assumed difference it has been attempted to deduce the conclusion, that the accounts of Egyptian legends left us by the ancients, related all to texts formed of anaglyphs, and not of hieroglyphs. The great value of this position to a supporter of the phonetic theory now in vogue may be easily seen: because if it was once established, it would remove a fatal objection to his system. For should he be asked, why, if the hieroglyphic writing be in the main phonetic, have the ancients given it the general character of being sym- bolic, i. e. ideagraphic; and how, upon that supposition, is it to be accounted for, that every single specimen of it which they have transmitted to us is ideagraphic? he could evade the force of the question by replying, that the ancient accounts were not about hieroglyphs at all, but about anaglyphs. Accordingly M. Champollion was particularly anxious to establish this point, and having remarked that scarcely any of the groups described by Horapollo are to be found in’ the hieroglyphic legends now extant, he assumed, in conformity with the suggestions of M. Letronne already noticed, that certain distorted figures, and unnatural combinations of figures, still remaining in relievo on the walls of Egyptian buildings, composed the characters called anaglyphs by the ancients.* And he proceeded to draw his
aa a
a “¢
qui sont des compositions extraordinaires, ot des étres fantas- tiques, soit méme des étres réels qui n’ont entre eux aucune relation dans la nature, sont cependant unis, rapprochés et mis en action, Ces bas-reliefs, purement adlégoriques ou symboliques, qui abondent sur les constructions égyptiennes, furent particulitrement désignés par les anciens sous le nom
Cuar. II.}] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 59
inference as follows, (with respect to one ancient writer, but it is plain that the same reasoning might be applied to all of those who have transmitted to us any information upon the subject 2) “ Cette distinction établie, il est aisé de voir que l’ouvrage d’ Horapollon se rapporte bien plus spécialement a l’explication des images dont se composaient les anaglyphes, qu’aux éléments ou caracteres de Pécriture hiéroglyphique proprement dite.” — p. 349. There is, it is true, a trifling objection to this conclu- sion, viz. that Horapollo entitles his book ‘IepoyAu@ixd, which seems to imply that the legends therein described were hiero- glyphic, (and it might be added generally, that the texts, of which accounts have been transmitted to us by the ancients, are expressly called by them hieroglyphic). But the fact is, Hora- pollo did not know the meaning of the Greek word as well as M. Champollion, and made a wrong application of it in this instance, which was the cause of the very prevalent mistake now rectified by the learned Frenchman: “ Le titre si vague de ce livre, ‘lepoyhugixa (sculptures sacrées ou gravures sacrées), est la seule cause de la méprise. Confondre un anaglyphe
Vanaglyphes, que nous adopterons desormais.””—p. 348, Having now found out characters for this writing of his own creation, the next thing to be done was to get some use for it. But M. Champollion was never stopped by a trifling difficulty, and disposed of this one as follows: “S’il existait en Egypte, comme certains témoignages trés-multipliés des anciens peuvent nous porter a le supposer, un systéme réservé a la caste sacerdotale et a ceux-la seuls qu’elle initiait 4 ses mystéres, ce dut étre necessairement la méthode qui présidait au tracé des anaglyphes. Ces bas-reliefs ou tableaux, composés d’étres fantastiques, ne procedant que par symboles, contiennent évidemment les plus secrets mystéres de la théologie,’—p. 426. The evident certainty of the use he made out for his newly discovered writing is very amusing. In the meantime we know, through Clemens, that it was the enig- matic method which was used for the purpose here described; and as to the tropic writing, in which employment of hieroglyphs they were called ana- glyphs, we are expressly informed by the same authority, that this kind was intended for celebrating the praises of the Egyptian kings, and of course for the most general and public reading, the very opposite use to that attributed to it by M. Champollion. To such an extent did this giddy writer betray either ignorance of his subject or disregard of truth.
60 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part I.
avec un texte hieroglyphique, ce serait tomber dans l’erreur trop commune que nous avons signalée dans notre paragraphe premier.” !!!—p. 349. Thus to establish his conclusion, he re- quires the reader to believe, Ist, that anaglyphs were quite a different kind of character from hieroglyphs, although Clemens makes them out hieroglyphs, that is, hieroglyphs applied to a particular subject; 2nd, that anaglyphs were used to conceal the mysteries of religion, though Clemens tells us expressly they were used for the publication, not concealment, of a subject quite unconnected with religion; 3rd, that the characters ex- plained to us by the ancients were not hieroglyphs, though the ancients themselves expressly called them by that name. Surely the reader must be very unreasonable, if he will not acquiesce in so modest a demand.
To return to Clemens’s account of the tropics: what makes the development of its meaning particularly interesting is, that the Rosetta inscription—the true touchstone of Egyptian in- quiries—the great standard and criterion by which the ques- tions connected with this subject must be decided—this inscrip- tion is all about the praises of a king; that is, it is on the very subject to which Clemens informs us tropics were applied. Let us try then how far actual observation will confirm his tes- timony in reference to this inscription. That there are no enigmatic characters here is nearly certain from their myste- rious signification being absolutely inconsistent with the public nature of the communication for which the document was in- tended. At the same time it must be admitted that this point cannot be confirmed by observation; because, although the dis- tinction was probably a very obvious one to the Egyptians, yet we are, for the most part, now unable to discriminate between tropic and enigmatic characters; to us they are all, with few exceptions, equally obscure. ‘There is, however, one kind of character employed in the inscription, which, with the help of the Greek translation, we are perfectly able to understand, viz. the mimetic characters. Now it deserves to be remarked, that not a single one of these is pictural: every one, without ex-
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 61
ception, is a tropic, and is, in its meaning, referred to a family or species. Here then, as far as our observation can be brought to bear upon the subject, it fully and completely agrees with the testimony of Clemens, in proving the general text of this lau- datory document to be ideagraphic,—to be that particular spe- cies of symbolic or ideagraphic writing which he denominated tropic.
It remains to be considered how many kinds of characters there can be in this inscription besides the phonetic ones, which are separated, by the cartouches surrounding them, from the general text.*. And here it is to be observed, that the division of Clemens is not, like the modern one, into species, but is what is called by the logicians an integral division; the tropics, ac- cording to his account, being formed by three operations; partly by generalizing the sign; partly by metaphorizing it; and partly by rendering it arbitrary. Now, from this way of describing the division, it is evident that each species may be formed by one or more operations; so that we can have three species by separate operations; three more by them combined two by two; and one by the combination of all three. Thus, instead of getting, in addition to pictural characters, the two kinds supplied by the modern division, namely, the metaphoric and arbitrary kinds; instead of these two we get seven: and the great superiority of this over the modern division is not merely that it is more comprehensive; but also that the opera- tion referred to in it, the consideration of which is altogether omitted in the other, is by far the most important one of all. For as Locke observed, that we should be incapable of language
@ I do not mean to say, the account of Clemens proves there were no phonetic signs employed in the general text. I admit this would be straining his words too far; and that all that can be fairly inferred from them is, that the great body of that text was ideagraphic. However, from other conside- rations, and particularly from an examination of the inscription itself, I think it may be shown probable that there were scarcely any phonetic signs in it outside the cartouches; afterwards it is likely that their use gradually in- creased,
62 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
without general words, so without general graphic signs we could have no writing that deserved the name.
With respect to pictural characters, great abundance of them is to be found in the sacred legends still extant, in which the names of individual gods are frequently thus written; the total omission, therefore, of these characters in so long a text as that of the Rosetta inscription, is a very striking circumstance, and presents a marked line of distinction between the historic and the sacred records in corroboration of the account left us by Clemens. ‘There occurs indeed sometimes in this inscription a character which was originally pictural, and denoted the God Osiris, but afterwards became a generic sign for Deity, as has been already explained. It is not, however, here employed to express the idea of a god (a hatchet is the characteristic emblem applied to that purpose*), and what precise meaning it is in- tended to convey has not yet been ascertained; but this much at all events is known, that it is not used as a pictural character ; for a proper name is never met in a corresponding part of the alphabetic writing. On the other hand, where the name of the individual called Phtha occurs in the Greek, we never find a mimetic character in the place that tallies with it among the hieroglyphs, in which situation it necessarily would be pictural ; but we meet there a plough. This, however, is a natural em- blem of the god; for we are informed by Eusebius, that he was the Vulcan of the Egyptians, and was considered the inventor of instruments of husbandry. Here we have an example of a tropic formed by all the three operations combined: there is evidently generalization, for the plough is one of a class; there is employment of metaphor, for the sign of the thing invented is transferred to signify the inventor; and there is apparently
* What a deplorable picture does this present of the religious creed of the wretched Egyptians. They did not look up to one God as a tender and merciful parent, but they lived in constant dread of a whole set of frightful demons, whose principal attribute they considered to be that of exercising their power as evecutioners,
Cuap.II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 63
simplification of figure. However, of this last point we cannot be certam, as we do not exactly know the shape of the ancient Egyptian plough. I shall close my review of this part of Cle- mens’s description, with the remark, that of the three methods of using hieroglyphs in the symbolic or ideagraphic branch of the art, the ¢ropic one was by far the most extensive. For hiero- glyphic writing of the pictural kind could not be formed with- out some tropics in it, and we shall presently see that they were also employed in the enigmatic kind: but it has been just proved, from the testimony of Clemens, confirmed by our own observation, as far as it can be applied to the subject, that all writing of the tropic species consisted solely and exclusively of characters tropically used.
Tod O€ kara Tovs auvtypovs Tpirov éous, Seiypa ero TOOE TH pev yap TOV aANov aotpov, dia THY TWopelav THY oEnv, heov cdpacw ameikagov’ rov dé “Hnduov, T@® TOU kavOapov' x.T.r.] Here it is to be observed, that although Clemens is treating of the enigmatic species of writing, yet thé examples he gives are merely those of detached characters ; which shows that the aveyya, whatever meaning he attached to the word, did not depend upon any obscurity in the connexion between the parts of a sentence, but on the signification of the separate parts. Another passage of the Stromata, to which I shall presently come, will, I expect, afford some further eluci- dation of the matter.
I shall conclude what I have for the present to remark on Clemens’s account of the different kinds of hieroglyphic writing, by giving Dr. Warburton’s division of the same subject. This affords me another opportunity of showing with what extreme carelessness and inaccuracy he considered the matter, and to what very little authority his opinion on it is entitled. He here makes distinctions without a difference, and violates the definition, which he had himself given in another place, of the term Curio- logic. His words are as follows: “But the inconveniences attending the too great bulk of the volume in writings of this
£% " e 64: OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part L
kind, [consisting of simple pictures of things,] would soon set the more ingenious and better civilized people upon contriving methods to abridge their characters : and of all the improvements of this kind, that which was invented by the Egyptians, and called Hieroglyphics, was by far the most celebrated. By this contrivance, that writing, which amongst the Mexicans was only asimple painting, became in Egypt a pictural character. ‘This abridgment was of three kinds; and, as appears from the more or less art employed in the contrivance of each, made by due degrees ; and at three different periods. 1. The first way was, to make the principal circumstance in the subject stand for the whole. Thus, when they would describe a battle, or two armies in array, they painted (as we learn from that admirable frag- ment of antiquity, the hieroglyphics of Horapollo) two hands, one holding a shield, and the other a bow ; when a tumult, or popular insurrection,—an armed man casting arrows ; when a siege,—a scaling ladder. 'This was of the utmost simplicity ; and, consequently, we must suppose it the earliest way of turn- ing painting into an hieroglyphic; that is, making it a picture- character. And this is what we shall hereafter distinguish by the name of Curtotocic Hirroctypuic. 2. The second, and more artful method of contraction, was, by putting the instru- ment of the thing, whether real or metaphorical, for the thing itself. Thus an eye, eminently placed, was designed to repre- sent God’s omniscience; an eye and sceptre, to represent a monarch; a sword, their cruel tyrant Ochus; and a ship and pilot, the governor of the universe. And this is what we shall call the Tropicat Hirrocrypuic. 3. Their third, and still more artificial method of abridging picture-writing, was, by making one thing to stand for, or represent another, where any quaint resemblance or analogy, in the representative, could be collected from their observations of nature, or their tradi- tional superstitions. And this was their Sympouic Hiero- GLYPHIC.”’—pp. 120, 121.
Now, in his translation of the celebrated passage of Clemens, p. 142, he very justly paraphrases cwriologic by the words
Cuar. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 65
“plain and common way, and again, “ plain and direct ;”’ which evidently imply the being “devoid of all figure ;” and yet he here gives the title of curiologic to the very decided figure by which part of a subject is made to represent the whole. Again, it is evident that the relation of part to the whole, or of the instrument of a thing to the thing itself, are analogies ; and, consequently, when a scaling ladder is made to denote a slege, under the first head of the division ; or an eye to denote omni- science, under the second ; it may be said of these instances, as well as of any that could be produced under the third head, that “one thing is made to stand Sor, or represent another, on account of some quaint resemblance or analogy.’ Tn fact then, notwithstanding the appearance of a distribution, he here gives only one kind of hieroglyphic writing, namely the tropic species of the symbolic or ideagraphic branch of that art. Why he should leave out the pictural (or direct mimetic) species, and suppose (contrary to the evidence of Clemens) that none of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was pictural,* I cannot divine. But his keepmg in the back ground the enigmatic species, and withdrawing it from view in his introductory divi- sion of the subject, can be easily accounted for; because one great object of his essay was to prove (in opposition, as I shall presently show, to the express testimony of Clemens), that none of the hieroglyphic writing was originally intended for the pur- poses of mystery and concealment. He afterwards makes other
a
* Indeed he here goes a great deal farther, for as throughout the extract he makes an indiscriminate use of the terms writing and characters, his words intimate that among the Egyptian hieroglyphs there were no pictural characters. But on this point he is contradicted, not merely by Clemens, but also by a vast multitude of hieroglyphic inscriptions now extant. Still farther, as he made no distinction between pictural characters and mimetics at large, comprising them both indiscriminately under his denomination of pictures, he by excluding these pictures from being hieroglyphs, unwar- rantably dropped out of the catalogue a class of characters, which are found yet more frequently in hieroglyphic legends than the pictural ones, namely, the mimetic tropics.
F
66 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part I.
divisions of Egyptian writing, inconsistent with this one ; and, like this, inconsistent with themselves: but it would be tedious to carry the reader further through such a maze of perplexity and confusion.
"Aurika ot map “Acyumriows madevopevol, Tp@Tov LEV mavtov thy Aryurtiov ypapparov péOodov expavOavovot, tiv ETLLZTOAOLPPA®IKHN xadoupévny’ Sevrépay 6€, THY ‘TEPATIKHN, 3) ypavrae of tepoypappareis’ vaTarny de Kat redevtaiav, Tyv TEPOTAY®IKHN’] Having gone through Clemens’s description of the principal kind of Egyptian writ- ing, I now revert to the commencement of the passage, in which he barely mentions two other kinds, without entering mto any particular explanation about them. The best commentary I can give on this part of the passage is Dr. Young’s account of the two kinds, which I shall transcribe in his own words.
“The question, however, respecting the nature of the Encuortt character [the writing formed of this character con- stitutes the middle part of the Rosetta inscription, and is by all admitted to be the same as that called Epistolographic by Cle- mens] appears to be satisfactorily decided by a comparison of various manuscripts on papyrus, still extant, with each other. Several of these, published in the great Description de? Egypte, have always been considered as specimens of the alphabetical writing of the Egyptians, and certainly have as little appearance of being imitations of visible objects, as any of the characters of this inscription, or as the old Arabic or Syriac characters, to which they bear, at first sight, a considerable resemblance. But they are generally accompanied by tablets, or delineations of certain scenes, consisting of a few visible objects, either detached or placed in certain intelligible relations to each other; and we may generally discover traces of some of these objects, among the characters of the text that accompanies them. A similar correspondence between the text and the tablets is still more readily observed in other manuscripts, written in distinct hiero- glyphics, slightly yet not melegantly traced, ma hand which
Cuap. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 67
appears to have been denoted by the term Hrgraric; and by comparing with each other such parts of the text of these manu- scripts as stand under tablets of the same kind, we discover, upon @ very minute examination, that every character of the distinct hieroglyphics has its corresponding trace in the running hand; sometimes a mere dash or line, but often perfectly dis- tinguishable, as a coarse copy of the original delineation, and always alike when it answers to the same character. The par- ticular passages which establish this identity, extending to a series of above ten thousand characters, have been enumerated in the Museum Criticum ; they have been copied in adjoming lines, and carefully collated with each other ; and their number has been increased by a comparison with some yet unpublished rolls of papyrus lately brought from Egypt. A few specimens from different MSS. will be sufficient to show the forms through which the original representation has passed, in its degradation from the sacred character, through the hieratic, into the epis- tolographic or common running hand of the country.” — Supp. of Enc. Brit. article Egypt, p. 54. He then proceeds to ‘account for a correspondence between the hieroglyphic and en- chorial characters not being as observable in the Rosetta inscrip- tion as in the enchorial MSS. : « It seems at first sight incom- prehensible that this coincidence, or rather correspondence, should not be equally observable in the two inscriptions of the Rosetta stone, which, if the enchorial character is merely a de- gradation of the sacred, must naturally be supposed to be as much alike as those of the different manuscripts in question, while in reality we can but seldom trace any very striking analogy between them. But the enchorial character having been long used in rapid writing, and for the ordinary purposes of life, appears to have become so indistinct in its forms, that it was often necessary to add to it some epithet or synonyme serv- ing to mark the object more distinctly.” — Ubi supra. It might be here added, that as the Greek part of the Rosetta inscription is certainly not an exact translation of the hieroglyphic part ; or, to express myself more accurately, as the Greek is not word F 2
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for word the same as the train of expressions which would be used by a person reading out the hieroglyphs in Greek with a strict reference to every character among them; so, in like manner, it is very probable that there is not an exact correspon- dence between the two ideagraphic parts of that imscription. This analogical inference is confirmed by the very remarkable difference which Dr. Young found between the conclusions of the two parts, for though the difference is not, as I think I shall be able to show, so great as he imagined, still it is quite suf- ficient to establish the inference in question. But if the trains of thought expressed in the two parts be not exactly the same, it is no wonder that such a correspondence between the charac- ters cannot be traced as is found in the instance of the Encho- rial MSS. above mentioned. Still some close resemblances can be observed ; for instance, the serpent expressing eternity 1s in the outline just the same in the sacred and enchorial characters ; and perhaps I may be able to point out the derivation of the latter set of signs from the former in a few other instances where the resemblance is not so striking, and where, im consequence, the connexion has been hitherto unnoticed.
The correctness of Dr. Young’s view of the nature of the Epistolographic and Hieratic methods, is now very generally admitted, and I should not have touched upon the question if I had not found that some corroboration of his decision upon it might be deduced from the passage itself of Clemens. In this it may be observed, 1. that the author does not give any de- scription of either of the methods under consideration ; and, 2. that he calls the hieroglyphic one, as compared with them, the finished or complete method. Now, from this latter circumstance it follows, that they could not, either of them, have been alpha- betical; for if they were, Clemens would never have deno- minated this hieroglyphic method a complete one in reference to them: he himself made use of alphabetical writing, and could not be ignorant of its vast superiority over any ideagraphic system whatever. Again, from the former circumstance, I conceive, it equally follows, that the two kinds must have been
Cuap. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 69
essentially of the same nature as the hieroglyphic method. For if they were not, it would be quite unaccountable, why Clemens should omit to describe them in a passage in which he professes to give a distinct explanation of all the different kinds of Egyp- tian writing. But suppose them to have been mere successive copyings or running hand imitations—the hieratic of the hiero- glyphic, and the epistolographic again of the hieratic,—and then all difficulty as to the reason of the omission is removed. Clemens, by detailing the several varieties of the perfect model, told, at the same time, all that could be found in the inferior imitations; and the enumerating those varieties over again would have been superfluous. In one respect indeed Doctor Young’s representation of the matter appears to be at variance with the account transmitted to us by the Alexandrian pres- byter: for as an original is older than its copies, the hierogly- phic method must, according to Dr. Young, have been the first of the three; whereas Clemens speaks of it as the last. But there is no real inconsistency in this, because the author is here treating of the three methods, not in the order in which they were invented, but in that in which they were taught ; and it was very natural for the Egyptians to learn the last of these methods first; because it was the one in which they had most concern, as being employed by them in their familiar intercourse respecting the ordinary transactions of life. On the whole then, the passage in no way opposes the decision of Dr. Young, while, on the other hand, it corroborates it in two ways, that is, both positively and negatively ; by showing, as to the Hieratic and Epistolographic methods, with a high degree of probability, in the first place, that they are of a hieroglyphic nature, and, in the second, that they are not of an alphabetic one.
As a resemblance to external visible objects can be observed less in the /ieratic characters than in the hieroglyphic, and still less in the epistolographic or enchorial than in the hieratic : this fact confirms my former assertion, that in the Egyptian, as well as in every other writing of human invention, a tendency towards arbitrary characters may be traced. The Egyptians
70 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
did not, as Dr. Warburton supposed, revert from arbitrary marks to dwell principally on images of things ; for their latest ideagraphic writing, and that in most common use among them, was the most arbitrary of the three kinds. They certainly retained the use of the least arbitrary sort to the very last ; but this did not, as I conceive, arise so much from any thing pecu- liar in the genius of the people, as from causes already assigned, which probably would have operated in a similar manner upon any other people similarly placed.
Before the archeographic discoveries of the present century all European writers were unanimous in deciding, that the Epistolographic method was an alphabetic one. Men, them- selves accustomed to the use of letters, concluded that no other characters could answer for ordinary familiar communication in Egypt; not making any allowance for the particular circum- stances of that country, but arguing on pretty much the same principles as those, by which a poor African comes to the deci- sion, that every face which is handsome must be black. Had the Chinese known any thing about the passage of Clemens, they probably would, upon equally fallacious reasoning, have arrived at a right conclusion on the subject. With respect to the nature of the Hieratic method, there was greater uncer- tainty, and less agreement of opmion. The truly venerable and learned Bishop Walton, who knew nearly all that was known in his day of ancient languages and ancient writing, candidly admitted his ignorance on this pomt, and in the Prolegomena of his Polyglot, published in 1657, expressed himself in the fol- lowing terms: “ Quomodo vero litera Sacerdotales ab Episto- laribus discriminentur, an aliud habuerint alphabetum, an sym- bolis constarent ut Hieroglyphice ; et quomodo singulas ab aliis distinguerent, nondum satis ex ejus [i. e. Clementis] verbis colligitur.”—p. 9. In 1735, Du Halde broached the opinion, that the characters employed in this writing were musical notes ; or perhaps he merely mentioned them as an illustration to show that the characters in question might be quite distinct from both hieroglyphs and letters, without still pretending to specify ex-
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 71
actly what they were. The latter construction may, I think, in fairness be put upon his words; but, to enable the reader to judge for himself, I here subjoin the passage: «“ Comme Cle- ment d’ Alexandrie attribué aux Egyptiens, trois sortes de carac- teres, les premiers qu’il nomme Epistolographiques, c’est-d-dire, propres a écrire des lettres, comme sont ceux de notre alphabet ; les autres Sacerdotaux, propres seulement a des Prétres, pour écrire les choses sacrées, de méme qu'il y a des notes pour la Musique; et les derniers Hiéroglyphiques, propres a étre gravez sur les monumens publics.”—tom. i. p. 227. Five years after Dr. Warburton published his Essay on Mieroglyphs, in which he confidently maintained that the characters employed in the Hieratic method, as well as in the Epistolographie one, be- longed to the class of alphabetic letters ; and he very ingeniously, but grossly, perverted the meaning of Clemens, in order to make out the Christian Father a supporter of this position. The argument is worth consulting as a specimen of ingenious so- phistry, but at the same time it serves to show that no depen- dance is to be placed on the Bishop’s judgment on any point that interfered with his preconceived opinions. The critique to which I allude, is contained in the following extract from his work :
“Hs n pev ore dia TOY Tperor aroryetwv KUpLodoytKry’ 7 O€, cvpBorcKy’ the Latin translator turns thus, CUJUS UNA quidem est per prima elementa kvptodoytKn, id est, proprie loquens ; altera vero symbolica, id est, per signa significans. This is so faithfully translated, that it preserves the very ambi- guity of the original, and leaves us still to guess at the author’s division. Marsham takes it just wrong ; and so does his nephew Stanley ; the first of these learned men quotes and translates the passage thus: Triplex erat apud Aigyptios characterum ratio, ‘Emuorodoypadixn, ad scribendas epistolas apta, sive vulgaris ; ‘Teparixy, qua utuntur ‘Tepoypapparets, qui de rebus sacris scribunt ; et lepoydvduxn, sacra sculptura : Husus duw@ sunt species, Kupsodoytxy, proprie loguens per elementa prima ; et
72 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Part I.
LupBorxy, per signa. The second thus, the last and most perfect, hieroglyphical ; WHEREOF one ts curiologic, the other symbolic. By this interpretation the learned father is, 1. made to enumerate three kinds of writing, but to explain only the last, namely, hieroglyphics ; 2. which is worse, he is made to say, one kind of hieroglyphics was by letters of an alphabet ; for that is the meaning of dva Tov TpéTav arolxelov; 3. which is still worse, he is made to divide hieroglyphics into two sorts, cwrrologic and symbolic ; and symbolic into three sorts, cv- riologic, tropical, and allegorical ; which makes the prior division into curiologic and symbolic, inaccurate and absurd ; and spreads a general confusion over the whole passage. Their mistake seems to have arisen from supposing p4e00dov tepoyAvdxns (the imme- diate antecedent) was understood at ns 7 wév €ort; whereas it was the more remote antecedent, weOodov ’Aryutriov ypappa- Tov; and what made them suppose this was, I presume, the author’s expressing the common plain way of writing by letters of an alphabet, and the common plain way of imitating by figures (two very different things) by the same words, kupvo- Aoytxy and KvpioAoyetrac; not considering that dua Tov mpo- Tov orotxetov, joined to the adjective, signified writing by letters; and, kara piunowy, jomed to the verb, signified writing by figures. Inaword then, the plain and easy meaning of Clemens is this,— The Egyptian method of writing was epis- tolic, sacerdotal, and hieroglyphical: of this method, the epistolic and sacerdotal were by letters of an alphabet ; the hieroglyphical, by symbols: symbols were of three kinds, curiologic, tropical, and allegorical.””—Note (11) pp. 401, 402.
Now, independently of the forcedness of the construction which would pass by the immediate antecedent in order to refer the relative to a remote one, there are two insurmountable objec- tions to this translation. In the first place, there is no such remote antecedent at all in the original as that adduced by the Bishop: there is not in the Greek sentence a single word about the general method of the Egyptians ; but the first method men-
Cuap. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 73
tioned in it is the Epistolographic, then the Hieratic, and then the Hieroglyphic. In the second place, he translates, As ev cart, of which [general] method the Epistolographic and Sa- cerdotal were, &c.; that is, he makes two of the methods to be expressed by the relative 7 in the singular number ; and thus he refers the first word of this short sentence to an antecedent that does not exist, and the second to one with which it could not possibly agree. Certainly Dr. Warburton must have had great confidence in the laziness of his readers, when he sup- posed that such perversion of the Greek could escape detection. It is impossible he could have made this gross mistranslation un- intentionally through ignorance, for he was an expert Greek scholar; and all that can be said in palliation of his conduct is, that he put forward the misrepresentation with the view of esta- blishmg, through its means, what he had preconceived to be the truth. This, it must be allowed, is a very lame excuse for him, but the case, I am sorry to say, admits of no better. With re- spect to the three objections made by him against the commonly received version of the sentence, they have been all of them already answered; the first, by anticipation, in this chapter ; the second, by Dr. Young’s discovery; and the third, by the Bishop himself in the remainder of the note that has been just quoted. For if the two cwriologics, by means of the qualifica- tions respectively adjoined to them, express “two very different things,” there can be no inaccuracy or absurdity in their being made members of different divisions. He himself brings for- ward this very reason to answer any objection against their being classed under different methods; and it surely just as strongly removes his own objection against their being ranked under different subdivisions of the same method.
The second of his objections deserves attention, because it not only affords his own direct testimony against his having dis- covered the phonetic use of hieroglyphs made by the ancient Egyptians, but also shows that he considered the very idea of such a use of them absurd, to such a degree, that when the dis- covery was suggested to him by the words of Clemens, he abso-
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lutely perverted the meaning of those words, in order to get rid of the suggestion. And yet several of the popular works of the present day teem with his praises on account of this very discovery, and dilate upon the profound judgment and admirable sagacity which he displayed in making it. Indeed the authors of these works would have us believe that his penetration reached not only to what is now actually known upon the subject, but a great deal farther; and that he discerned the hieroglyphic texts of the Egyptians to be wholly phonetic, so as to constitute a written language, which is more than any one else has been since able to prove. ‘To show to what an extent these writers impose upon themselves and on the public, I subjoin an extract from one of their works, which, I believe, is generally con- ducted with ability, and stands high among the periodical pub- lications. In the article of the Edinburgh Review to which I have already referred, and which has been extensively read on the Continent, as well as here, the Reviewer gives us the fol- lowing information :
«¢ But the cabalistical reveries of Kircher failed to impose on the strong sense and powerful intellect of Bishop Warburton. In his celebrated work, the ‘The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated,’ that learned prelate has discussed, with consum- mate scholarship, the different ancient texts relative to the Egyptian modes of writing; distinguished theoretically, the se- veral sorts of characters employed; and made the important ob- servation, now completely verified, that the hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were not so denominated, as being exclu- sively appropriated to sacred subjects, but that they constituted a real written language, applicable to the purposes of history and common life, as well as those of religion and mythology. He was undoubtedly mistaken in concluding that each of the three sorts of characters, mentioned by Clemens, formed a dis- tinct and separate system of writing; but, as he confined him- self exclusively to such general inferences as the ancient autho- rities seemed to warrant, without attempting to verify his de- ductions by a direct application to the Egyptian monuments
Cuar. IL] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 15
then existing in Europe, his error in this respect is venial, and calculated, in no degree, to lessen owr admiration of the saga- city which led him to divine a truth so far beyond the reach of an ordinary mind. Had Warburton’s profound remark been prosecuted to its consequences, the ‘questio vexata’ of the Egyptian hieroglyphics would probably have been resolved half a century earlier.”—p. 107. And a little farther on: “ A very cursory inspection of the pillar of Rosetta was sufficient to es- tablish, as incontrovertible, Bishop Warburton’s profownd ob- servation, already noticed, that the hieroglyphics constituted a real written language.’—p. 111.
The same error, committed in such direct opposition to the real state of the case, may be found in still later publications, though the matter is perhaps not so forcibly or so fully msisted upon as in the above extract. The mistatement seems to have been transmitted from one popular writer to another, just as a forged bank note sometimes passes current through a number of hands without detection. But although I have exposed the forgery, I have not the least wish to hang the Reviewer: the probability is, that he took the note himself from some one else, and that his fault consisted only im vouching for its goodness without sufficient examination, and in promoting the circulation of bad paper by some additions to its embellishment.
As Karcher has been mentioned in the quotation just given, I take this opportunity of observing, that he has not been fairly dealt with by subsequent authors. I am as little disposed as any one else to defend his reveries ; but how few writers on this subject have been free from reverie? At all events Dr. War- burton had no right to speak of him as he has done in the fol- lowing passage: “and here Kircher’s visionary labours on this subject might have been pitied; had he discovered, in any of his voluminous writings on hieroglyphics, the least regard to truth or probability.” —p. 147. This censure surely came with a bad grace from one who himself indulged in visionary assump- tions, as well as the jesuit, and whose mode of defending what he fancied to be the truth was just as objectionable. I must
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here add, that, in comparing these two authors, as far as their writings bear upon a common subject, the fashion of the present day is to give a very undue preference to the Bishop. The point above considered will serve to show this; and affords a fair opportunity of directly contrasting their relative merits. Kircher actually hit upon the true meaning of Clemens as to the point which has been under discussion, and drew from it the inference, that some hieroglyphs were employed with alpha- betic powers; which powers, he then proceeded to assume, must be determined by a resemblance in the outline of the zoographic characters to the shape of the Greek letters; and he very inge- niously constructed on this principle the alphabet which is exhi- bited in Obel. Pam. lib. 1. cap. 6. Here then, as far as they had common data to proceed upon, Kircher went right at first, and subsequently erred by trusting to his ingenuity alone for making out his way further. But the Bishop, with the same data, went wrong from the very outset, and exercised all his in- genuity afterwards in justifying his deviation from the right path.
I now proceed to give from the Stromata the enigmatic sen- tence to which I have already alluded; it is as follows: “ Nat pv Kai ev Avoomoder Tis Avyvrrov, emt Tod tepod Kadoupe- vou IIvA@vos, OvarervTr@rae Tadlov pev, yeverews TUpULBoAOY" POopas de, 0 yepwv' Oeod re av, 6 tépak’ as 6 iyOds, pi- gous’ Kal, Kar GAO TAAL oHpaLvoMEVOY, 6 KpoKOdELAOS, ava.delas. Daivera roivvy cuvTiOeuevoy TO TaV TUuLPoAOY, OnArwrikoy eivat Tod de” & yivomeEvoL Kal amoyivopuevol, Qeos pucet avaidecav. — Strom. lib. y. p. 413. Ed. Heinsii.
“ Moreover, indeed, also in Diospolis of Egypt, on the tem- ple called Pylon, is delineated, by insculptures, a boy, the em- blem of birth; and an old man, that of death; and again, a hawk, the emblem of God; likewise a fish, that of hatred; anda crocodile, by still another signification [Clemens had just be- fore given two different significations of this symbol, 1. the sun, 2. time], that of impudence. The entire emblematic sen- tence then, put together, seems to be expressive of this mean-
Cuar. II.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. v7
ing: O you who are born, and you who die, God hates impu- dence.”
The legend here presented to the reader’s notice is very remarkable for the bare nakedness of the symbols, and the total absence of all modifying or connecting signs. This cannot be accounted for by the enigmatic nature of the sentence; for the auvtypa depended, as has been already proved, on something relating to the separate detached symbols, and not at all upon any obscurity in their connexion. ‘The peculiarity, therefore, now under consideration can be attributed solely to the very im- perfect state of the art at the time when the inscription was originally made, and points out a limit for its date of no great distance from the commencement of writing in Egypt. If we compare the inscription on the Rosetta stone with this one, the contrast will be found very striking. In the former the plural number is marked by the delineation of a figure three times, or by the figure once inserted, with three short lines after it; the verb appears to be distinguished from the noun by a natural in- strument and representative of action, some limb of the human body; and the number of auxiliary signs serving to modify and connect the leading thoughts is so great, that the metaphysician has not yet been able, even with the help of the Greek part of the inscription, to unravel their contexture, and fix the precise use and power of each:* all that is known with any degree of probability about them is, that they are subordinate, not leading signs, which seems obvious from the frequency of their occur- rence. But in the text before us there is not a smgle sign of the kind; so that even supposing the reader had discovered the meaning of all the separate symbols (which an uninitiated person never could have done, as long as the system of the priests re-
a The want of success hitherto in the efforts to ascertain the precise power and signification of each of the hieroglyphs in the Rosetta inscription, can- not be brought as an argument against the ideagraphic theory, in the same manner as it can against the phonetic one; because the metaphysical investi- gation has been discontinued since the time of Young.
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mained in full vigour), and had ascertained that they denoted boyhood, old age, divinity, hatred, empudence ; he had yet a most embarrassing difficulty to encounter. For it would, in addition, be requisite to make out the modification and con- nexion of the ideas which were thus thrown naked before him; and in order to read out the legend, it was necessary for him to settle which of those ideas he would express by nouns, and which by verbs; then to determine, with respect to the former words, whether they should be abstract or concrete, substantive or adjective, smgular or plural; and, in reference to the latter, what was to be the voice, mood, tense, number, person, &c. Thus, for instance, he might have taken the verb of his sentence from the third idea as well as from the fourth, and have read the legend as follows: « All men, young as well as old, should pay worship or respect to the hatred of impudence; or, all are rendered divine by such hatred.” It is evident that the variety of forms in which the expression of the sentence might be thus put, is very great; still, however, one common meaning, com- prising the censure of impudence, will be found loosely to per- vade most of the forms; and farther than ascertaining this vague general purport of the legend, the ancient reader could not have gone. Even Clemens himself did not pretend to limit the reading of the text to one precise determinate form; and although he pronounced with certainty on the meaning of the separate symbols, he only gave his opinion [ faiverac] as to that of the sentence. Now if we put out of view the enigmatism of the legend, and confine our attention to the difficulty I have been just describing, which arose solely out of the antiquity of the writing, it will enable us to form some notion of the great vagueness and obscurity of the earlier graphic productions of the Egyptians.
I now turn to the more immediate object for which I pro- duced this sentence. Here a confirmation is presented to us of an observation before made, that in order to a legend bemg enigmatic it was not necessary that throughout, or in all its parts, it should be so; for in the example before us the first two
Cuar. IL] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 79
symbols are mimetic tropics, and the third a metaphoric one ; so that only two, out of the five, remain to be denominated enigmatic. What their enigmatism consisted in, we shall be assisted to determine by considering the remarks with which Clemens prefaced his example. In these he expressly declared that the enigmatic style was employed by the Egyptians for the purpose of concealment—erixpv\v—* for they did not in- trust their mysteries indiscriminately to every one that came in their way, nor commit the knowledge of divine affairs to the uninitiated, but solely to those who were to be advanced to the throne, and to those of the priests who were most approved of, both from education and from learning, and from nobleness of birth.” [He added, that there was a similiar design of conceal- ment in part of the Hebrew Scriptures; but what he exactly meant by this comparison, it would be going out of the way of the present discussion to investigate, as he is here consulted only for his knowledge of facts connected with Egyptian writing, and not for his opinions about the Bible.} The words of the original are as follows: “ 60ev kat “Avyvmrioe ov rots ém- TUXOveL TA Tapa ohicw averiMevTo pvaTHpia, OVde pV Be- Byrows THY Tov Oelov &dnoww e€éhepov, aX 7 povows ye Tois méeAAovow éri Bacirelav mpoieva’ Kai Tov iepewv Tots KpiOeor eivar Soxypwwraros, aro Te THS Tpodns, Kal THs TaL- delas, kai Tov yevouvs. “Opmora yoov rois ‘EBparkois, Kare ye THY emikpuYv, Kat ta Tov “Aryutriov aviypara. “— Ed. Heinsii, «be supra. From this information respecting the nature of enigmatic writing, compared with the definition which Clemens gave of it in the first passage quoted from him (namely, that it—adAnyopetrar—says one thing and means another); it follows, that every enigmatic character must have had at least two significations; the one in general use, the other privately annexed to it by agreement among the priests: and thus the symbol might be said openly to express the former signification, and secretly to mean the latter. In confirmation of this explanation, it may be observed, that when Clemens
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mentions an enigmatic character he generally gives more mean- ings than one for it: it is true he enly assigned one for each of the two examples he gave of his definition; but he may have looked on their common meanings as so notorious that it would have been superfluous to add them. The ordinary signification of the beetle, according to Horapollo, was “the world;” and that of the serpent is clearly known to have been “ eternity ;” for in the whole of the Rosetta inscription no leading character appears in commoner use than the serpent with this meaning. Now if the tropic and enigmatic significations of the last symbol be compared (that is, eternity and the planets), it will be found that the former is far the more abstruse one, and founded on the more abstruse analogy. The nature then of the Egyptian enigma did not at all consist in the meaning of the symbol being difficult either in itself or in its dependance on a far-fetched al- lusion, but merely in the circumstance of its origmating in the agreement of a few individuals, and of its being kept secret by them from the multitude. It was only necessary that the allu- sion should be so far remote in reference to the apprehension of an Egyptian, as that the signification should depend upon arbi- trary convention, and not be obvious to him on the mere view of the character. And here a farther confirmation is had of what I before stated; that it is impossible for us now to deter- mine, by our own observation, whether a character m any in- scription be tropically or enigmatically used, even when we know the meaning therein annexed to it: for in order to ascer- tain that it was in this instance enigmatic, we should still further know, that it had another meaning among the Egyptians, and that this other was the one in common ordinary use.
With respect to the remarks with which Clemens prefaced his example of an enigmatic sentence, it is to be observed, that, as far as the Egyptian writing is concerned, they present to us, not the mere expression of an opinion, but positive testimony as toa fact, given with all the accuracy of circumstantial detail, by one who was perhaps the most competent witness we could have on the subject. He lived in the country of hieroglyphs, and in
Cuar. II.) OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 81
the age when still the art of writing with them had not entirely gone out of use;* so that he had opportunities of information which no author subsequent to him ever enjoyed; for the knowledge of this art appears to have expired almost imme- diately after the practice of it had ceased. Of his ability to avail himself of the opportunities which lay in his way, there can be no question; neither is there the slightest imputation on his veracity. When, therefore, we consider the intrinsic marks of antiquity in the legend, which he brought forward as an in- stance of Egyptian writing employed with the express design of concealment; can there be any reasonable doubt of such de- sign having existed among the priests of Egypt, and of its having been put in execution by them from the earliest ages of their hieroglyphic art? And yet, strange to say, Dr. Warburton produced the very same legend to prove, that all the earlier hieroglyphs were employed for the purpose of plain. and open communication. The following are his words: “The Kegyp- tians, therefore, employed, as we say, the proper lieroglyphics” to record, openly and plainly, their laws, policies, public morals, and history; and, in a word, all kinds of civil matters.” —p. 145. Of this tenet his second illustration is thus given: “ This is further seen from that celebrated inscription on the temple of
ee
* The names of the Greek sovereigns of Egypt and of the earlier Roman emperors have been discovered, nearly to a certainty, written in hieroglyphic characters employed with phonetic powers. The latest name, ascertained to be thus expressed, is that of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, which brings down the use of hieroglyphic writing in Egypt to A. D. 161 ; and Clemens must have been born at this time, or not very long after.
> By the proper hieroglyphs, he here means all the earlier ones; for, by
avery arbitrary division (in which he violates that given by Clemens, and
also confounds the ordinary meaning of the term symbol) he distinguishes hieroglyphs into two kinds, the proper and the symbolic ; comprehending under the first class all the older ones; and under the second, those of later date—pp. 148, 149. The object of all this confusion it would be easy to show, but it is not worth dwelling upon: I shall merely observe, that chang- ing the commonly received signification of words may disguise a subject, but cannot change the nature of things,
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Minerva at Sais, so much spoken of by the ancients; where an infant, an old man, a hawk, a fish, and a river-horse, expressed this moral sentence, All you who come into the world, and go out of it, know this, that the gods hate impudence.”—p. 147. He does not indeed quote this legend from Clemens, for the preamble with which the ancient presbyter introduced it, would not have answered his purpose; but there can be no question about its identity, notwithstanding its being described with a little variety of circumstance ; which may be accounted for, probably, by its having been inscribed in more places than one, or possibly by the desire of some later writer, who took it from Clemens, to conceal his plagiarism.* Now on this point, upon which there is a direct contradiction between the Alexandrian and the Englishman, what is there to balance against the inte- erity, the learning, and the local knowledge of the former au- thor? Does Dr. Warburton bring forward any counter-testi- mony to rebut the evidence of Clemens? No. Does he show any thing in this evidence, considered by itself, that would ren- der it suspicious or doubtful? No. What have we then in support of his adverse position? Simply, that the inscription (to use his own words) “ was a very plain and important truth, to be read and understood by the people; as appears from the place where it was engraved, the vestibule of a public temple.” —p. 147. A very convincing reason this, and quite sufficient to overturn the testimony of Clemens! Upon the same grounds it may, I suppose, be hereafter justly concluded that, once upon a time, Greek was read and understood by all the people of Dublin, in consequence of the Greek inscription so conspi- cuously placed over the entrance into one of its parochial churches.
The Bishop, in the passage which I have just quoted from
4 The former of these suppositions appears to be the true one; as a de- scription of the legend, agreeing to that given by the Bishop, occurs in Plu- tarch’s treatise on Zsis and Osiris: it is found there with the interpretation of the separate characters, but without that of the entire sentence.
Cuar. I.] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 83
his treatise, confounded two very distinct things, the writing of the inscription, and the meaning of it. The former might be excessively difficult, and yet the latter, when arrived at, be found quite simple. In the example under consideration, the hidden truth, when uncovered, comes out as plain and simple as possible; while, on the other hand, the correct reading of the inscription was entirely out of the reach of persons not initiated in the secret meaning of the last two symbols. Even Clemens was not confident that he had given the exact rendering of it; though, as he had ascertained the signification of the separate symbols, his difficulty had not so much reference to the general purport of the whole sentence, as to the particular form in which he should put the expression of it. As to the importance which Dr. Warburton attached to the truth elicited from the inscrip- tion, I confess I cannot perceive it. The sentence appears to me to be little more than a mere truism; and, as I conceive, it affords a striking specimen of the worthlessness of the wisdom of the Egyptian priests. They contrived to excite the admira- tion of the stupid multitude, not by true learning, but by the false appearance of it; by cloaking their ignorance under the mysterious cover of writing which was illegible to the public: and their conduct in this respect exhibits a very remarkable correspondence to that of the Mandarins in China at the pre- sent moment, of which some account shall be given in the next chapter.
Here it may be worth observing, that there is reason to sus- pect that the peculiar language of the Egyptian priests matched their enigmatic writing in the mode of its formation, and con- sequently in the purposes to which it was applied. I cannot speak on this point with certainty, because there are so few al- lusions to the sacred language of Egypt in the works of ancient authors; and there is not in any of them, as far as I can find, a direct description of it. The last mentioned circumstance, how- ever, is in accordance with my suspicion; and Manetho, who was himself a priest, and consequently acquainted with this lan- guage, incidentally lets transpire enough, as I conceive, to show,
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with some degree of probability, what its true nature was. Josephus accounts for the ambiguity of Hycsos, which denoted either Shepherd King or Shepherd Captive, in giving an ex- tract from the historic work of this writer; from which, com- bined with his own statement, it may be collected, that, while Sos was the Egyptian for Shepherd, Hyc signified King in the sacred tongue, and Captive in the common language. The whole passage is as follows: “ ‘’Exadetro d€ 70 ovpmay ‘ durav evos YKIQX, rotro dé éore Bacrrels troéves. To ‘vap YK kal iepav yAoooar Bacihéa onpaiver, To Oe DOS ‘crouny éoTe Kal Troueves Kara THY Kony SiadeKTOV, Kal 6 ovtw cuvTibeuevov yiverat YKTOS. Twes de A€yovar av- ‘rovs ApaBas eivar. “Ev 8 ado avriypap@ ov Bacirels onpalver Oa Sia. THs TOD YKTOQT rpoonyopias, ada rov- vavriov aixpadrarovs OnAodcbae mopévas. To yap YK madw Avyyrriaoti, Kat ro AK dacvvdpevor, aixpadorous pntos pnvve. *—Liber i. contra Apionem, sec. 14.
«« But their entire nation were called HYCSOS, that is, ‘ King Shepherds. Yor HYC im the sacred tongue signifies ‘ King ; while SOS, in the common language, is Shepherd or ‘ Shepherds ; and thus put together is made out the compound ‘word HYCSOS. But some say that they were Arabians.’ In another copy of his work I have found it stated, that by the appellation of HYCSOS was signified, not Aing Shep- herds, but, on the contrary, Captive Shepherds. ‘The ground for which interpretation is, that HYC, in opposition to its sa- cred use, does, in the common language of Egypt (as well as AC when aspirated), expressly denote Captives.”
Hence it appears that the priests managed with the word before us just as they did with their enigmatic symbols; that iS,
a The final sentence of this passage, by the way, shows that the an- cient Egyptians employed aspirations in their language; also that (as is well known through various other means) the Greek marks of aspiration did not come into general use till after the time of Josephus.
Cuar. 11] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 85
they perverted its ordinary meaning, and agreed among them- selves to employ it in a sense that would, as long as the secret was kept, be unintelligible to the public. But the practice in which they are thus detected, with respect to one of their words, may well be suspected to have been extended to all, since it is go completely accordant with the policy displayed by them in their peculiar writing. If this conjecture be right, their sa- cred language was a species of gibberish, not unlike to that now employed by the Gypsies, with respect to either its general na- ture or its use.
With respect to Dr. Warburton, as I shall have no farther occasion to refer to his treatise, I now take leave of him with a few remarks. His great learning, especially his extensive ac- quaintance with the productions of Greek writers, I readily ad- mit; and, though I am very far from assenting to the leading tenet by which he endeavoured to establish “the divine lega- tion of Moses,” yet I must say, that where his judgment was not warped by passion or prejudice, he proved himself a clear and powerful reasoner; and in particular, that the metaphysics of morality are indebted to him for some very judicious observa- tions, in which he has corrected mistakes of even the most able of the ethical writers who preceded him in this branch of sci- ence. But that he showed judgment, accuracy, or fairmess of reasoning, in his Essay on Hieroglyphs, I deny; and, as the very false notions which now prevail on the subject, are the main support of an error whose removal is important to the pro- gress of this work, I have been forced to substantiate my denial by proof. ‘The employment has afforded me no gratification, but it was absolutely necessary for me to undertake it: however, I trust that I shall be found to have proceeded in the perform- ance of so ungracious a task no further than truth and justice permitted, and the necessity of the case required.
In placing M. Champollion in his true light before the pub- lic, I do not feel the same compunction. With ability enough to enable him to be mischievous, this writer endeavoured to sap the foundation of religious belief, by attacking the historic truth
86 OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS [Parr I.
of the Bible; for he pretended to establish, through means of his phonetic system, the correctness of a chronicle which is at variance with the account of time deducible from the Mosaic record, by at least three thousand five hundred years ;* and, whenever the nature of his subject permitted it, he lost no op- portunity of throwing out hints against the veracity of the Jewish historian in other matters as well as in chronology. ‘To expose, therefore, the nature of his efforts, in order to defeating them, will, I trust, be considered a useful act; and although it is impossible not to pity the miserable bemg who could have been capable of pursuing such an object, still the mischief he at- tempted is not to be allowed to pass without obstruction, merely from a reluctance to subject him to public scorn. He has been convicted, from his own writings, of falsehood—of falsehood for the purpose of robbing another of the exclusive credit of a dis- covery to which he knew him to be justly entitled. He endea- voured, under false pretences, to suppress a publication which interfered with his dishonest claim; but some copies of it eés- caped destruction, and have since come out to prove at the same time his falsehood and his dishonesty—admirably fit companions for infidelity. I must however add, that with all these damning qualities he united an industry, a zeal, and an ingenuity, that were worthy of a better cause, and his works are written in a remarkably light, easy, agreeable style. But poison is not the less dangerous because it is varnished over with an agreeable colouring, nor is danger to be disregarded and despised merely because it comes from a reptile.
In offering this plain, undisguised representation of the cha-
@ The chronicle of Manetho (which M. Champollion pretended com- pletely to verify as far back as 1774 B. C.) extended the Egyptian monarchy through thirty dynasties, and made it commence more than five thousand three hundred years before the reign of Alexander the Great, or three thou- sand three hundred years before the time at which the Bible history would lead us to place the Flood. But the commencement of the Egyptian mo- narchy can hardly be dated so early as two hundred years after that event.
Cuar. I] OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN WRITING. 87
racter of M. Champollion, I feel that I need make no apology to his countrymen. The French are too honourable and en- lightened a people to approve of the above-named vices in any quarter; and have been foremost in exposing and censuring the insincerity and fraud of M. Champollion* in the instance alluded to. It only remains for me to put his infidelity in a proper point of view, and at the same time to show that the attack made by him on the truth of the Bible has no foundation what- ever to rest on.
* See Haamen Critique of M. Klaproth, first five pages; also <percu sur les Hiéroglyphes d’ Egypte, Paris, 1827, Preface, p. xi.; and compare with these statements the following declaration of M. Champollion: ‘ Je dois dire qu’ A la méme époque [that is, in 1819, when Dr. Young’s remarkable essay on hieroglyphs was published], et sans avoir aucune connaissance des opinions de M. le Docteur Young, Je croyais étre parvenu, d’une maniére assez sire, a des résultats 4-peu-prés semblables.”—p. 18.
88 FACTS AGAINST ALPHABETIC WRITING [Parr lI.
@
CHAPTER III.
GENERAL ARGUMENT AGAINST THE DISCOVERY OF ALPHABETIC WRITING BY MAN, CORROBORATED BY PARTICULAR INSTANCES—ESPECIALLY BY THE CHINESE CASE—BY THE EGYPTIAN CASE—GRAPHIC SYSTEM OF THE EGYPTIANS TO BE MORE MINUTELY EXAMINED, IN ORDER TO REPEL THE ATTACK INDIRECTLY MADE THROUGH IT ON THE HIS- TORIC TRUTH OF THE BIBLE.
I wave already stated, that the general reasoning which has been brought forward against the invention of letters by man, might be sustained by particular observation; and I now proceed to show that such position is corroborated by a variety of con- siderations, derived from the peculiar circumstances of the seve- ral ideagraphic systems which have ever to any extent prevailed in the world. The argument, indeed, which can be drawn from the state of writing in the different countries of the new world, when first visited by Europeans, is, I admit, only of a negative kind; but still, as far as it goes, it carries some weight. If any concurrence of circumstances could ever have proved let- ters a human invention, the fact would have been established on the discovery of the western continent, had an alphabet been then found in use among the native Americans; for they could not by any possibility have learned it through intercourse with the inhabitants of this side of the globe,* and there is no reason to think that miraculous communications had been made to them. But although, at the time, writing of different sorts was practised, by the Mexicans, the Peruvians, the savages in some northern districts, and probably by other nations of America,
* It could not be supposed that they had brought letters with them from the old world on their separation from it, because upon such supposition they must have had some records of that event.
Cuar. III.) BEING AN INVENTION. 89
yet no where among them was there detected the slightest trace of letters, or indeed of any phonetic signs whatever. It may be also added, that all vestiges of the kind have been equally wanting in every newly discovered country. Alphabetic wri- ting then has never by actual observation and experiment been proved to have originated from the unaided powers of the mind ; and in no instance where its existence would have made such origin in any degree probable, has it ever been met with at all.
The argument, however, which is supplied by a considera- tion of the Chinese writing, bears more directly on the subject. In their modern books there may be observed a mixed phonetic use of signs, which is described in M. Klaproth’s Hxamen Critique as follows : “ Les Chinois ont aussi une maniére pho- nétique d’écrire les noms propres, qu ils entourent souvent d’un cartouche comme les Egyptiens. La seule différence entre leur systéme phonétique et celui des bords du Nil est que, chez eux, _les caractéres idéographiques, employés phonétiquement, ne de- viennent pas des lettres alphabétiques, mais qu’elles representent la syllabe entiére qu’ils expriment dans leur usage ordinaire.”— p. 24. The mode here described of marking that the charac- ters are phonetically used (by surrounding the whole collection of them with a figure, which the French call a cartouche, con- sisting of two parallel lines joined at each end by semicircles) is very curious, because the Egyptian characters, which Young’s discovery proves to have been used in somewhat the same way; are surrounded by just the same figure. However, the Chinese have other modes also, which it is unnecessary here to detail, of pointing out to the reader that certain characters are stripped of their ordinary significations, and transferred to denoting merely the sounds that are in the Chinese language associated with those significations; the sounds thus obtained are found to give the syllables of some foreign name, and the characters, being ar- ranged in the same order as the syllables, are made to represent that name. Now with respect to this innovation on their old system it is to be remarked, 1. that it did not arise till long after
90 FACTS AGAINST ALPHABETIC WRITING [Parr I.
the European trade with them had commenced,* and is confined to the designation of words not belonging to their own lan- guage;” that it evidently therefore has grown out of foreign in- tercourse, and is not the offspring of their own invention; 2. that it is employed by them in a manner totally at variance with alphabetic practice, and with that limitation of signs which is essential to an alphabetic system. In fact no two Chinese would select the same group of characters to represent a foreign name; nor is this anomaly likely to be soon removed, as the dis- advantages resulting from it are not immediately perceptible to an ideagraphic reader; for he must be acquainted with the sig- nification of all the characters at any rate, on account of his original system, and thence with their phonetic powers on the new plan; consequently any one of the groups by which the foreign name can be expressed, will suggest it to his mind as readily as another. Of the prodigious variety of combinations open for such purpose to the choice of a Chinese writer, some idea may be formed from the following considerations. ‘The characters of his system are generally reckoned to amount to about 80,000°, while it is as generally agreed that the number
4 It will be presently shown that no phonetic practice began either among the Chinese or the Japanese till within the last hundred years.
t Though the phonetic employment of signs above described is confined to this purpose; yet an enlargement of the system has already taken place in China, and shall be presently noticed, in which the characters are phonetically applied to quite another purpose.
© Quorum quidem tantus est numerus, ut hodie é summorum literatorum numero non habeatur, qui ad summum octoginta characterum millium noti- tiam non possederit; atque aded, quanto quis plurium literarum cognitionem habuerit, tanto czeteris doctior habeatur.—Kircueri Chin. Illus. pars vi. cap. 1.
Les Lettrez ne doivent pas seulement connditre les caracteres qui sont en usage dans le commerce ordinaire de la vie; ils doivent scavoir encore leurs diverses combinaisons, et les divers arrangemens, qui de plusieurs traits simples, font des caracteres composez; et comme l’on compte jusqu’ 4 quatre vingt mille de ces caracteres, celui qui en s¢ait le plus, est aussi le plus s¢avant: et peut lire et entendre un plus grand nombre de livres: d’ou l’on
Cuar. III.] BEING AN INVENTION. 91
of words in his language is extremely small :* it is not more than three hundred and thirty, according to Du Halde.® But the fairest way 1s to compare these words (which are all mono- syllables), not with the total amount of characters, but with as many as would be known by one of ordinary proficiency in the art; and this number is by the same author rated at from fifteen to twenty thousand; so that there are, on the average, above fifty characters for every word, and, the distribution not being equable, there must be above a hundred a piece for several of them. If then the words, making up a foreign name of, sup- pose, three syllables, should be of the latter description, a writer of ordinary skill would have an option, out of above a million of different ways, of writing that name: so strongly is the system of the Chinese adapted in its nature to mark the distinction between their phonetic, and an alphabetic, method of writing, and likewise to render that distinction permanent.
It is hard to say which is more extraordinary, the writing or the language of this extraordinary people. Where the number of words bears so very small a proportion to the thoughts of a speaker, itis evident, that, to enable him to express those thoughts, he must employ many other modifications of voice besides arti- culation; and accordingly we are informed that the Chinese give great varieties of signification to their three hundred and thirty words, by accentuation, by intonation, by aspiration, and
peut juger, combien il faut d’années, pour connditre une multitude si prodi- gieuse de caracteres, pour les demeler, quand ils sont réunis, et pour en rete- nir la figure et la signification—Le commun des Lettrez n’en scait guéres plus de quinze ou vingt mille; et il y a peu de Docteurs qui soient parvenus Jusqu’ a en connditre quarante mille—Du Hatpe Deseription de v’ Empire de la Chine. tom. ii. p. 226.
* Est idioma Sinarum valde limitatum; unde quemadmodum multitudine literarum omnes alias Mundi nationes superat, ita quoque vocabulorum pau- citate cedit omnibus.—Krreneri Chi. Illus. pars vi. cap. v.
> La langue Mandarine parait pauvre; car elle n’a guéres qu’environ 330 mots, qui sont tous monosyllabes et indeclinables, et qui se terminent presque tous par des voyelles, ou par cette consonne N, ou Ne.—Du Hanns, tom. ll. p. 225,
92 FACTS AGAINST ALPHABETIC WRITING [Parr I.
by other modes of altermg the voice.» The Missionaries ob- served five changes produced by the first of these means alone ; thus, for instance, the word ya, according to the different ac- cents with which it is pronounced, signifies god, dumb, excel- lent, stupidity, goose. As to the varieties of intonation they are probably still more numerous, for the Chinese appear to chant or sing their words rather than to speak them. Hence it fol- lows, that, even if they had a perfect alphabet to denote the words of their language, this would not be sufficient to denote the language itself; they would still require, in addition, some graphic marks for the accents, the tones, the aspirations, and the other modifications of voice, which with them form such impor- tant elements in the vocal expression of their meaning. But, with these additional marks, an alphabet of the very simplest construction would answer their purpose; and peculiar circum- stances place it within their reach to form one in the easiest manner that can well be imagined. All they would have to do is merely to confme themselves to one graphic character for each of their three hundred and thirty words, and they would have at once, ready made to their hands, an alphabet, im which the names of the letters would be those words, and the powers of the letters would be identical with their names. This alphabet is, | admit, of a very clumsy nature, and very inferior to those in use among other nations; but still it contains within itself the principle that gives the essential superiority to an alphabetic, over a mere phonetic, method of designation; and the Chinese could apply it to their own language by combining, not letter with letter, but letter with accent, tone, aspiration, &c.; while its application to foreign languages, being independent of those latter marks, would be made simply by the combination of let- ters; and they could express by these three hundred and thirty
R ce peu de mots suffit pour s’expliquer sur toutes sortes de matieres ; parceque, sans multiplier les paroles, le sens se multiplie presque 4 linfini par la diversité des accens, des inflexions, des tons, des aspirations, et d’autres changemens de la voix.—Dvu Hatpg, tom. il. p. 225.
Cuap. III.] BEING AN INVENTION. 93
letters every foreign nathe that they now do by means of an in- definite number of characters.
Such an alphabet the Chinese are actually now using, but they employ it promiscuously with a great many other alpha- bets, in all of which the letters have the same names and powers, but differ in their shapes. All then that is necessary to render their phonetic system alphabetic, is to disengage one of the alphabets from the rest; and, as I have already observed, all that is requisite for this purpose is, simply, that they should con- fine themselves to one character for each of their words. Yet, simple and easy as this step appears to be, it has not yet been taken by them, nor is it likely to be taken without the farther action of external causes on their system. Surely here is a pow- erful argument, from actual experiment, against the discovery of an alphabet in any age, and particularly in the early ages of the world: this discovery has not, in fact, been yet made by a people placed in circumstances the most favourable for making it that can well be conceived.
Indeed the experimental proof which is supplied by a view of the whole of the Chinese case, bears most forcibly against the hypothesis which would represent letters as a human inven- tion. In the first place, abundance of time has been afforded for the experiment. The ideagraphic system of the Chinese existed for a long series of ages before the commencement of their intercourse with nations employing alphabetic writing ; quite long enough for them to have discovered an alphabet, if they could be expected ever to have made one out by their own ingenuity. A considerable time also has now elapsed since their foreign intercourse began, and in that interval they have been advanced on their way to letters a very important step, by the adoption of the phonetic use of characters, which they have learned from observing a foreign practice. Now if the Chinese, with the help of time and the help of foreign intercourse, have not been able to get to letters; how is it to be supposed that persons without these helps—and it is not pretended that those to whom the credit of the invention is attributed had either—
94 FACTS AGAINST ALPHABETIC WRITING [Parr I.
could have possibly reached them? Time bears against the probability of the invention in another way also, by experimen- tally showing that ideagraphy has no tendency towards an al- phabet. The surest experimental criterion of the tendency of any system is supplied by the alterations which it experiences in the lapse of a considerable portion of time; and these, in the case before us, point not to letters, but in the very opposite di- rection; for the number of Chinese characters, now become enormous, 1s still constantly on the increase, and so is every day carrying their writing yet further and further from that limita- tion which constitutes the essential principle of an alphabet. In the next place, let us consider them in their actual state of being advanced to a phonetic use of characters, and see how very easy is the remaining step to an alphabet in their peculiar circumstances, compared with those of any other people: Ist, then, they have no process of decomposition to go through in order to get to the most simple articulate sounds : their words are already uncompounded, and by far the greatest number of them are simple syllables, the remainder of them differing from such only by the addition of an N or Ng;* 2d, they have no classification or arrangement to make in order to find out the smallest number of syllables in their lan- guage, and exclude duplicates; for this also is already done for them, and they have only to take their words just as they come in their way; 3rd, as they have not to invent the ~ phonetic use of characters, for they have been already taught this, so neither have they to invent the characters them- selves, but merely to select one set out of those already in-
* If the syllabic alphabet under consideration was as perfect as its imper- fect nature admitted, it would have ad/ its letters with powers that were simple syllables. But my object is not to find out the least faulty alphabet that could be derived from the phonetic practice of the Chinese, but to consider one of those which they are actually using mixed up with others; and to the separate use of which, as they are so short a distance from it, they probably will be led, not indeed by their own system, but by the further influence of external causes.
Cuap. III. ] BEING AN INVENTION. 95
vented; and this can be so much the more easily done, be- cause it can be gradually done, by a gradual reduction of the number of characters which they now employ for each word. So easy, in a comparative point of view, is the operation which remains to be performed by them, thus divested of the difficul- ties of decomposition, classification, and invention. Here then again the question presses with accumulated force against the advocates for the human invention of letters. If the Chinese, with such helps to overcome difficulties on the one side, and such a reduction of difficulties on the other side, have not yet succeeded in working the problem, is it reasonable to think that men could have solved it in the infancy of nations without any help, and without any simplification of the process ?
Clumsy and imperfect as the alphabet is which has been just described, still the application of it by the Chinese to their own language would give them an immense advantage over their present method of graphically expressing their thoughts. Whe- ther there has yet appeared any indication of their approaching to this alphabet by a reduction in the number of homophones employed by them, I am not aware: but their observation of foreign practice will obviously lead to such reduction, though their own system never would. There is one cause, however, which exerts a powerful influence in retarding their adoption of any sort of alphabetic writing. In China the only road to pro- motion in the civil branch of government is through learning— if indeed the mere knowing how to read and write can be called