hieroglyphic; and that Ifis, Ofiris, and Tot, were all after inventions relating to it; and, in faying this, I am fo far warranted, because there is not in Axum (once a large city) any other hieroglyphic but of the dog-ftar, as far as I can judge from the huge fragments of figures of this animal, remains of which, in different poftures, are ftill diftinétly to be seen upon the pedestals everywhere among the ruins.

It is not to be doubted, that hieroglyphics then, but not aftronomy, were invented at Thebes, where the theory of the dog-ftar was particularly inveftigated, becaufe connected with their rural year. Ptolemy has preferved us an obfervation of an heliacal rifing of Sirius on the 4th day after the fummer folftice, which answers to the 2250 year before Chrift; and there are great reasons to believe the Thebans were good practical aftronomers long before that period; early, as it may be thought, this gives to Thebes a much greater antiquity than does the chronicle of Axum juft cited.

As fuch obfervations were to be of fervice for ever, they became more valuable and ufeful in proportion to their priority. The most ancient of them would be of use to the aftronomers of this day, for Sir Ifaac Newton appeals to thofe of Chiron the Centaur. Equations may indeed be difcovered in a number of centuries, which, by reafon of the fmallness of their quantities, may very probably have efcaped the moft attentive and fcrupulous care of two or three generations; and many alterations in the starry firmament, old ftars being nearly extinguished, and new emerging, would appear from a comparative ftate of the heavens made for a feries of ages. And a Theban Herfchel would have given us the history of planets he then obferved, which, after appearing for ages, are now vifible no more, or have taken a different form.

The dial, or gold circle of Ofimandyas, fhews what an immenfe progress they had made in aftronomy in fo little time. This, too, is a proof of an early form and revival of the arts in Egypt, for the knowledge and ufe of Armille had been loft with the deftruction of Thebes, and were not again difcovered, that is, revived, till the reign of Ptolomy Soter, 300 years before the Chriftian æra. I confider that immenfe quantity of hieroglyphics, with which the walls of the temples, and faces of the obelisks, are covered, as containing fo many aftronomical obfervations.

I look upon these as the ephemerides of fome thousand years, and that fufficiently accounts for their number. Their date and accuracy were indifputable; they were exhibited in the most public places, to be confulted as occafion required; and, by the deepness of the engraving, and hardness of the materials, and the thickness and folidity of the block itself upon which they were carved, they bade defiance at once to violence and time.

I know that most of the learned writers are of fentiments very different from mine in these respects. They look for myfteries and hidden meanings, moral and philofophical treatifes, as the subjects of thefe hieroglyphics. A fceptre, they fay, is the hieroglyphic of a king. But where do we meet a fceptre upon an antique Egyptian monument? or who told us this was an emblem of royalty among the

Egyptians

Egyptians at the time of the firft invention of this figurative writing? Again, the ferpent with the tail in its mouth denotes the eternity of God, that he is without beginning and without end. This is a Chriftian truth, and a Chriftian belief, but no where to be found in the polytheism of the inventors of hieroglyphics. Was Cronos or Ouranus without beginning and without end? Was this the cafe with Ofiris and Tot, whofe fathers and mothers, births and mar. riages are known? If this was a truth, independent of revelation, and imprinted from the beginning in the minds of men; if it was defined to be an eternal truth, which must have appeared by every man finding it in his own breaft from the beginning, how unne. ceffary must the trouble have been to write a common known truth like this, at the expence of fix weeks labour, upon a table of porphyry or granite?

It is not with philofophy as with aftronomy; the older the obfervations, the more ufe they are of to pofterity. A lecture of an Egyptian priest upon divinity, morality, or natural history, would not pay the trouble, at this day, of engraving it upon ftone; and one of the reafons that I think no fuch fubjects were ever treated in hieroglyphics is, that in all thofe I ever had an opportunity of feeing, and very few people have feen more, I have conftantly found the fame figures repeated, which obviously, and without difpute, allude to the hiftory of the Nile, and its different periods of increase, the mode of meafuring it, the Etefian winds; in short, fuch obfervations as we every day fee in an almanack, in which we cannot fuppofe, that forfaking the obvious import, where the good they did was evident, they fhould afcribe different meanings to the hieroglyphic, to which no key has been left, and therefore their future inutility must have been foreseen.

I fhall content myfelf in this wide field, to fix upon one famous hieroglyphical perfonage, which is Tot, the fecretary of Ofiris, whofe function I fhall endeavour to explain; if I fail, I am in good company; give it only as my opinion, and fubmit it chearfully to the correction of others. The word Tot is Ethiopic, and there can be little doubt it means the dog-ftar. It was the name given to the first month of the Egyptian year. The meaning of the name, in the language of the province of Siré, is an idol, composed of different heterogeneous pieces; it is found having this fignification in many of their books. Thus a naked man is not a Tot, but the body of a naked man, with a dog's head, an afs's head, or a ferpent inflead of a head, is a Tot. According to the import of that word, it is, I fuppofe, an almanack, or fection of the phænomena in the heavens which are to happen in the limited time it is made to comprehend, when expofed for the information of the public; and the more extenfive its ufe is intended to be, the greater number of emblems, or figns of obfervation, it is charged with.

Befides many other emblems or figures, the common Tot, I think, has in his hand a crofs with a handle, as it is called Crux Anata, which has occafioned great fpeculation among the decypherThis crofs, fixed to a circle, is fuppofed to denote the four elements, and to be the fymbol of the influence the fun has over

ers.

them.

them. Jamblichus records, that this crofs, in the hand of Tot, is the name of the divine Being that travels through the world. Sozomen thinks it means the life to come, the fame with the ineffable image of eternity. Others, ftrange difference! fay it is the phallus, or human genitals, while a later writer maintains it to be the mariner's compafs. My opinion on the contrary is, that, as this figure was expofed to the public for the reafon I have mentioned, the Crux Anfata in his hand was nothing elfe but a monogram of his own name TO, and IT fignifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon a collection published for the fame purpose.

The changing of thefe emblems, and the multitude of them, produced the neceffity of contracting their fize, and this again a confequential alteration in the original forms; and a file, or small portable inftrument, became all that was neceffary for finishing thefe fmall Tots, instead of a large graver or carving tool, employed in making the large ones. But men, at laft, were fo much used to the alteration, as to know it better than under its primitive form, and the engraving became what we may call the first elements, or root, in preference to the original.'

Thus have we endeavoured to collect, within as narrow a compass as poffible, Mr. Bruce's opinion concerning the origin of arts, letters, idolatry, and hieroglyphics; all of which he refers to the Ethiopians above Egypt; an affertion, which, if well afcertained, would doubtlefs render the Abyffinians the most interesting nation of all Pagan antiquity. In matters fo ancient and fo obfcure, the obfervations of a writer, who has enjoyed the peculiar advantage of accurately examining the ground, and obferving the wants and refources of the country and climate, are entitled to much attention: but if his fyftem be ill-founded, the refpect which it naturally claims, will only ferve to render that which was before obfcure, altogether unintelligible, to perplex with intricacy, and to multiply error. Confidering Mr. Bruce's opinions, it appeared very extraordinary to us, that the first and third books of Diodorus Siculus, and the fecond book of Herodotus, which have hitherto furnished materials for defcribing the antiquities of Egypt and Ethiopia, fhould not afford the flighteft foundation for any of his affertions. Inftead of faying that Egypt was colonized and civilized by the neighbouring Ethiopians, Herodotus (1. ii. c. 31.) fays the exprefs contrary, τέτων δε εισο κισθέντων ες ως Αιθίοπας, ημερότεραι γεγονασι Αιθίοπες ήθεα μαθοντες Αιγυπτία. "This colony of Egyptians being planted among the Ethiopians, the latter became more civilized, learning Egyptian manners." The facred fcriptures fpeak of the wildom of Egypt, not of that of Ethiopia: but even the Egyptians themfelves are reprefented by the moft learned of the prophets, as founding their claim to knowlege on their eaftern defcent, and thereby admitting the fuperiority

fuperiority of their oriental masters. Ifaiah, xix. 11. "I ant a fon of the wife, a fon of the kings of the caft;"for fo the word hitherto translated ancient, as it has often been obferved, should be rendered. The Chronicle of Axum, which Mr. Bruce tells us, is a book efteemed the firft in authority after the facred fcriptures, fays, that Abyffinia had never been inhabited till 1808 years before Chrift; and 200 years after that, which is 1600 A. C. it was laid wafte by a flood, the face of the country much changed and deformed, fo that it was denominated at that time Oure Midre, or the country laid waste, or, as it is called in fcripture itself, a land which the waters and floods had fpoiled.' Vol. i. p. 398.

Befide this occafional calamity, the hand of nature seems to have fixed an indelible impreffion on Ethiopia above Egypt, which must have rendered that country nearly as barbarous in all ages as Mr. B. found it to be in the prefent; a nation compelled, by the inclemencies of the sky, to burrow under ground in caves; for we cannot believe with Mr. Bruce that the caves of the Troglodytes are artificial dwellings, any more than that the Pyramids are natural rocks. Vol. i. p. 42. A nation, compelled by the zimb or fly to change their habitation twice in every year; a people deluged by rains, tormented by infects, and always in danger of being devoured by wild beasts; fuch a nation, we say, is not the most likely to have invented arts and fciences, much lefs to have carried them to the higheft perfection that they ever attained; nor is it probable that a people, once fo ingenious and refined, fhould degenerate into fuch grofs ignorance as to become incapable of making a fishing net.

Mr. Bruce, however, may afk, what does Homer mean when he fpeaks of αμυμονας Αιθιοπνας the well initiated Ethiopians: (Iliad i. v. 423; or Diodorus Siculus, iii. 2.) when he fays the Ethiopians pretended to be the most ancient of men, and that the Egyptians were their colony?-Homer will best explain himfelf-Αιθίοπας, το διχθαδεδαιαται εσχατοι ανδρων. Odyss. i. v. 25. Extremos hominum Aethiopopas, geminifque diremtos partibus; and Diodorus will be beft explained by Strabo, of whom we may fay, with Cafaubon, that, in a question of this kind, one Strabo is worth many Sicilians. Both explanations agree in this, that there were two Ethiopias, which the great geographer (1. 1. p. 35.) tells us were divided from each other by the Arabian gulph. The natives of both, we are told by Herodotus, (v. 69.) followed the ftandard of Xerxes. They fpoke different languages; both were of dark complexions but the western Ethiopians were woolly-headed, the caftern had long hair. Herodot. ibid. Now, we think it

more

more than probable that Mr. B. has confounded the hiftory of thofe two nations, and afcribed to the former the tranfactions and inventions which belong to the latter.

In this inquiry, our bounds will not permit us to launch into the wide ocean of erudition. The celebrated Bochart, in the 4th book of his Geographia Sacra, proves that the countries to the east of the Arabian gulph formed the portion of Cush, whose fon Nimrod founded the Affyrian monarchy. Genefis, x, 8, 9, & 10. This opinion which, Mr. B. fays, involves the fubje& in more than Egyptian darkness, is not, at the bottom, inconfiftent, as Bochart himfelf believed it to be, with that of other commentators on the 10th chapter of Genefis, who affign Ethiopia for the land of Cufh; because we learn from Strabo and from Ephorus, that eaftern Ethiopia comprehended the countries in which Bochart has placed the Cufhites. (Strabo, p. 34. edit. Par.) In thofe countries, the Babylonians and Chaldæans are known to have early cultivated aftronomy; and, together with that feience, to have introduced aftrology and idolatry, particularly the worship of the Sun. The aftronomical obfervations of the Chaldæans were fent to Ariftotle by the philofopher Callifthenes, who had accompanied Alexander to Babylon. They remount to the year 2134 before Chrift, and are continually referred to by Ptolomy the geographer, though himself an Egyptian, in preference to the pillars of Hermes, and other records and monuments of his own country. This his patriotifm would never have allowed him to do if he had not regarded them as more ancient and more authentic.

At Nifa in Arabia, a country contiguous to Chaldæa, (Strabo, xvi. p. 739.) obelifks had been erected to Ofiris and Ifis, the fun and the moon, before thofe luminaries were tranf formed into the gods or kings of Egypt. (Diodor. i. 27.) It was in the Eaft that this fpecies of idolatry began, which extended to Egypt and to many other countries; and it was in the Eaft that Euhemerus unveiled the majefty of ancient fuperftition. Lactantius, i. 11.

After the conqueft of Egypt by Auguftus, the obelifk, fent by that emperor to Rome, was infcribed, not to Sirius, as Mr. B.'s fyftem requires, but to the Sun. The infcription is fill legible on the base: Im. Auguftus Ægypto in poteftatem populi Romani redacta Soli donum dedit. The teftimony of Herodotus, Pliny, and Caffiodorus, is exprefsly to the fame purpose 3 and as the worship itfelf came from the Eaft, fo did the figns or emblems by which it was explained or indicated. They are called Signa Chaldaica, and feem to have been introduced into Egypt before the Trojan war, in confequence of the in