to Egypt. We shall see in the following chapters, the philological, historical, and geographical results which grow out of the application of hieroglyphics to the sacred books, and the means which they afford for a satisfactory solution of certain very weighty difficulties.

CHAPTER II.

PHILOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

Relations between the Egyptian writings and those of the Hebrews. Analogies between the style of the sacred writings and that of certain hieroglyphic legends. Egyptian names preserved in the Bible.

LEARNED men have for a long time conjectured that some relations existed between the Hebrew and Egyptian languages. We may indeed suppose that language, so important a part of national usages, could not remain uninfluenced by the mutual and frequent communications of the Israelites and Egyptians. The Egyptian monuments, decyphered by Champollion, support this conjecture, and reveal many examples of this kind of analogy. We will notice here only those which are the best established and the most striking.

* A letter from the Duke of Laval-Montmorency, our ambassador at Rome, addressed to the minister, expresses this opinion of the sovereign pontiff in a manner very flattering to Champollion and to France. The head of the Church desired that the king should know the judgment of his Holiness with regard to the labors of the learned man.

[The reader will remember, in perusing this note, that the writer is a member of the Romish church; which accounts for the style here employed.-TR.]

In the table of phonetic, hieratic, and demotic alphabets, placed at the end of his Précis, Champollion exhibits a correspondence of each of the signs with equivalent letters of the Coptic alphabet. The object of his work demands such an exhibition, because phonetic hieroglyphics must form words that are preserved, for the most part, in the Coptic language. To make this synoptical table more complete and more useful, he has copied there in the same order the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabetic signs. This excellent arrangement gives readers an opportunity of observing the striking relations in form, between the writings of Egypt and those of the Hebrew alphabet. We notice particularly the letters and TM, as presenting, with the correspondent signs in the three Egyptian alphabets, resemblances which it is impossible for one not to perceive, however little skilled he may be in this kind of study. Although the generally admitted fact, that the Jews when transported into Assyria changed their primitive characters for those of the Chaldee alphabet, may rob our observation of part of its pertinency, still we can add, that the same relations exist, though they may be less sensible and numerous, between the signs of Egyptian writing, and the ancient characters employed by the Hebrews which the Samaritans have preserved. We would not enter into details which might appear minute; suffice it to say, the fact may be verified by an easy collation.

Champollion makes an ingenious remark with regard to the phonetic signs which compose his alphabet. He finds that each hieroglyphic expresses always the sound of the initial letter of the name given, in the Egyptian tongue, to the material object which the phonetic sign represents. Thus an eagle, called by the Egyptians Hшя (Akhóm), expresses the letter ; an axe KEDEBIN

(Kelebin), expresses the letter K; an owl Hordax (Mouladj), the letter U; a mouth Pu (R6), the letter

P, etc. It is just the same as if, wishing to establish a mode of phonetic characters according to [English] usage, we should make an eagle to represent the sound of the vowel E, a wheel the sound of the consonant W, the sun that of the consonant S, etc. This curious circumstance is interesting, because it will serve to determine the phonetic import of new signs, which may be hereafter found upon the hieroglyphic legends not yet studied. But it has another kind of interest relating more to our present object. It reveals to us a new analogy between the Egyptian writings and those of the children of Israel. We know that in the Hebrew, as in many other Shemitish languages,† each letter of the alphabet constitutes the first of those which compose its written name; for example, the letter N, which may be rendered by our A, is called letter, which is our D, is named n letter, equivalent to our L, is called

(Aleph); the (Daleth); the

(Lamedh), etc.

Does this manner of rendering the sounds of the spoken language by the initials of the names of objects in one part, and by those of alphabetic characters in another, present a purely fortuitous relation? It does more, in the opinion of certain learned men, who have thought they could discover, in the primitive letters of the Hebrew alphabet or Samaritan, true figures, though indistinct, of the objects to which their names relate; as for example, the letter ♬ (Ghimel) expresses the name of camel in Hebrew, etc.

* See the Précis du Syst. hiéroglyph. pp. 359–361.

This designation, Shemitish, doubtless inexact because it is applied to some languages which do not belong to the posterity of Shem, is a term substituted by science for the old denomination of oriental languages, a denomination more inexact still in a geographical relation, and besides too general.

These letters then, though always phonetic, yet being true figurative signs of objects, they exhibit very striking relations with those of the Egyptian writings. [See Appendix O.]

We will call to mind here what we have already said, upon the employment of vowels in the phonetic part of Egyptian texts. They are frequently not expressed, and frequently a vowel is susceptible of representing different sounds; lastly, one vowel is sometimes substituted for another in various transcriptions of the same word. Champollion has had frequent occasion to repeat these remarks in reading the hieroglyphic legends; and they give rise, in our view, to a new relation with the Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee languages, and with the language in which the precious books of divine revelation are written. Every individual knows that the Hebrew, strictly speaking, has no written vowels; and that the points employed to fix its pronunciation, are a modern invention, and that they are not found in the Samaritan. Rules are established to explain the changes of these Masoretic points; and perhaps the Egyptian scribes likewise possessed established rules for the suppression or substitution of vowels in the phonetic parts of legends; but they are unknown to us, and will always remain unknown, so far as we can conjecture.

The various philological phenomena which we have considered, are of some interest in a new science, called ethnography, which has for its aim to study the filiation and relations of nations, and to class them after their idioms. Divers analogies of an ancient kind, will still indicate, in two languages, the traces of a primitive language from which they are both derived, and will relate back to that great event which dispersed the descendants of Noah, at the tower of Babel.

2. The reading of the various Egyptian writings, affords

occasion to remark other close relations in parts of the style of legends, to those of the sacred writings. We cannot dispense with noticing some of them here. Though they may be of little importance when separately considered, yet taken together they are of some interest in relation to other more definite data. Besides, as it has often been remarked, nothing should be neglected which pertains to knowledge; and it is true, especially of a subject so essential and elevated as that which claims our attention in this work.

M. Jomard, member of the Institute, and Dr. Young, published at the same time four numerical signs of the ancient Egyptians. Champollion has since added a fifth, and the import of these ciphers has been proved by experiment*. Aided by this discovery, the number of vanquished enemies can be determined upon the monuments, or the objects consecrated as offerings, the age of the dead, and, what is of still higher importance, the date of an event, the days, months, or years of the reign of a Pharaoh. For the dates which have been found in great numbers in hieroglyphic inscriptions, upon hieratic or demotic stele, on papyrus, etc., are always mentioned according to the same formula, and differ in no respects from the manner in which they are expressed in the sacred books; e. g. in the fifth year, the fifth day of the month of according to the direction of the king of an obedient people; (the cartouches containing the name and surname of the prince.) Is not this similitude of expression striking?

....

There are examples more striking still of this similarity, in certain titles of honor given to princes and to gods, which Champollion has collected in his General Table.

*The system of numeration among the Egyptians was one of great simplicity, and resembles very nearly that of the Romans. Quantities are expressed by signs equivalent to numbers, 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, which are repeated as many times as is necessary. [See App. P.]