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of what he heard or saw at Elis, that ought to give us any confidence in his facts.

As to the Arundelian Marbles, Parian Chronicle, Marmora Oxoniensia, we need not enter into any history of their discovery or their present state. We consider them not as public records, otherwise some reference to them would have been discovered. We think they were the private collections of some man of learning, putting down the facts and their dates upon the best authority he had at the time. To us, they are of no authority, not knowing, as the case actually is, any thing of their history. We have read over, with great care, all the objections of Mr. Robertson, in his dissertation on the Parian Chronicle, without conviction. But one of his objections satisfies us that this chronicle is not a forgery. In the 58th Epoch, 468 B. C. a stone is said to have fallen from the heavens into the Ægean Sea. We think Aristotle somewhere remarks the same fact; and says it was as big as a cartload. "Now," says Mr. Robertson, "can any man believe the improbable story of a stone having fallen from the heavens into the Ægean Sea?" Yes: since the accounts of meteoric stones, collected and published by Dr. Chladni and Mr. Howard, and the almost monthly accounts now observed and described of similar events, any man may well believe it. But who would, in that day, have ventured to forge such a fact? We are therefore satisfied the Parian chronologist inscribed no more than he really believed his authorities would justify. But we know not who he was, when he compiled this chronology, for whom, upon what occasion, upon what authority, or any fact concerning it, that ought to give us confidence in its accuracy. No writer, now known, has ever cited or noticed it. No evidence exists of its truth.

We come next to Egyptian history. We say there is no authority for any fact of profane history relating to it. Thales, Pythagoras, Herodotus, Plato, and Diodorus, travelled into Egypt, There is no trace of any knowledge they brought from thence, excepting the manners and customs and natural objects which Herodotus observed with his own eyes, and described, and the history which the priests related to him of past times. Of what he saw, he is an honest and faithful narrator. Of what he heard, he is an honest and credulous retailer. For instance, he tells us, lib. 2., that the priests of Egypt reckoned from the reign of Menes to that of Zethon, who put Sennacherib to flight, 341 generations, as many priests of Vulcan, and as many kings of Egypt. That 300 generations make ten thousand years. But, as the gods reigned longer than the kings, the priests calculated 17,000 years from Hercules to Amosis, and 15,000 years from Pan to Amosis. The Egyptian priests, with their predecessors of 12,000 years back, were manifestly unprincipled impostors, and fabricators of

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falsehoods not credited by themselves. He saw and read no book; he produces no authority for the related facts, but their traditionary accounts, He tells us what they told him.

No ancient, no modern, pretends to have seen a book, or frag'ment of a book, of Egyptian history. There is no evidence that any such thing ever existed. Messrs. Young, Champollion, and Salt, have deciphered some isolated names and words from their clumsy characters; but no evidence exists that they ever wrote any continued narration, or were capable of doing so, till that truly great man, Alexander, built Alexandria, and made it the school of universal literature. They had papyrus, and used it perhaps a thousand years before our era; but who can point out the purpose of history, literature, or science, to which they* applied it. Their reputation rested on their ignorance, and their impudent pretensions. Foreigners thought, from their secrecy, and their boasting, that much knowledge was enveloped in their unintelligible hieroglyphics. Omne ignotum, pro magnifico est. But what real knowledge did the great men of Greece, who visited them, ever bring away and disclose? There is not one historical fact that ever was, or ever can be, verified by Egyptian authority.

Let us take a brief view of the modern discoveries.

They used, at first, hieroglyphics, to represent, by imitation, natural forms, as, the shape of a dog to represent a dog.

Then abridged hieroglyphics, as, the head of a dog or rabbit, to represent a dog or a rabbit.

Then they assigned symbolical, enigmatical, and metaphorical significations to their representations, as, to signify eternity, pow. cr, courage, &c.

Then they introduced signs, to signify sounds, and thus arrived at a phonetic language, of the most rude and clumsy descrip

tion.

In forming their characters for phonetic sounds, they proceeded to a certain degree, as the Chinese have done, by adopting characters, partly representative and partly syllabic; but by no means after the manner of the Chinese, as M. Abel-Remusat, in his elements of Chinese grammar, has described it. The description of M. Champollion we will translate, (omitting the Coptic character, of which we see not the use here,)† from p. 312 of his

* Mixaves, (black men,) as Herodotus terms them. The Sphinx's head is that of a negro.

We can see no good reason for using the comparatively modern Coptic character, as Champollion has done: it is nothing more than the ancient Greek, somewhat altered. The Egyptians, and their descendants, the Copts, had no alphabetic character separate from their very inconvenient hieroglyphics, so inconvenient, that they appear to have been nearly useless to the literary men of Egypt, if indeed any such class, beyond the priestly professors of Pseudology there, ever existed.

Précis du Système Hieroglyphique. Par. 1824. "Thus the representation of an eagle, ahom, became the sign of the vowel A; a small vessel, berbe, of B; a hand, tot, the sign of the consonant T; a hatchet, kelebin, of K; a lion, labo, of L; a species of owl or bat, mouladi, of M; of a flute, sebiandjo, the consonant S, a mouth, ro, of the consonant R; the abridged representation of a garden, schne., the sign of the consonant SH."

Hence, as the Edinb. Rev. for Dec'r. 1826, No. 89, observes in substance, the phonetic language of Egypt was a system of acrostics. How there can be any difficulty, after this curious discovery, of the meaning of the rà nera oroigia of Clemens Alexandrinus, we cannot conceive.

In that learned and laborious Review, there is given a plate of Egyptian characters, containing the names of Ptolemy, Cleopatra, and Berenice, taken from the hieroglyphic compartment of the Rosetta Stone. This plate is made up from several parts of the Précis of Champollion; the names, above mentioned, are contained in the first of Champollion's plates. Précis, p. 21.

Now we say, that the simple inspection of the names, and the clumsy method of forming the phonetic characters, indicating the pronunciation, are enough to convince any reasonable man, that this mode of writing is not calculated for the contents of a book, or continued narration; and it sufficiently explains why none such exists, of Egyptian composition.

The same reviewer, probably, in No. 90, for March 1827, p. 528, in the review of the Leipsic professor, Gustavus Seyffarth's Hieroglyphical Tables, gives the authorities which Champollion has omitted, (Précis, p. 310,) on which George Zoega, de origine et usu obeliscorum, founds his opinion, that the Egyptians were the inventors of letters, viz: Plato in Phileb. p. 157. ac in Phod. p. 213.* Cic. de Natura Deorum, 1. 3. ch. 22. Plin. 1. 7. ch. 56. Arnob. I. p. 135. Diod. Sicul. p. 14. Sanchoniatho apud Euseb. Prep. Evang. 1. 1. ch. 9. p. 31. Plut. Sympos. 1. 9. quæst. 3. Jablonski Panth. Egyp. 1. 5. ch. 5. p. 161. et seq. Georg. Zoega de usu et orig. 475, to which may be added from Champollion, 556 to 558.

Of this learned list of ancient authors, we have only to say, that it proves nothing but their pretensions to knowledge they could not possess, and the utter ignorance of the value of evidence, both of Zoega and the Edinburgh reviewer. What? When it is utterly uncertain, from the most ancient authoritics,

Jablonski, in his Pantheon Egyptiacum, 1. 5. ch. 5. §. 6. making these refer ences to Plato, observes very properly, id in Ægypto à sacerdotibus accepisse videtur; voce Thoth, Mercurius. No wonder if any foreigner inquired after the invention, these lying priests, who knew not what genuine alphabetic characters meant, would of course say, it was an Egyptian invention. The passage Diod. Sic. 1. 3. must be attributed also to Egyptian tradition.

whether letters were introduced by Cadmus, Palamedes, or Simonides, or when, or where, or how many, or on what occasionwhether Cadmus was a real or fictitious person-where he came. from, when he lived, what is the earliest notice of him, whether there be any thing resembling an authentic account, or even notice of this often-named personage-to refer the decision to Greek writers, all of whom, except Plato, are subsequent to the Christian era-not one of whom ever saw an Egyptian book, or ever perused a line of Egyptian writing-may show great diligence in citing authorities, but no exuberance of sound judgment. Why did not Pythagoras, Thales, Herodotus, Plato, or Diodorus, bring away an Egyptian book? Because no such thing existed.

Notwithstanding the very natural reference of τὰ πρῶτα στοιχεῖα to the acrostic formation of the phonetic character, this reviewer, in a note to p. 532, seems to think, that this expression of Clemens Alexand. may mean τὰ παλαιότατα τὰ ἐξ ἄρχης γράμματα, δια Kaduov óróμaslevra, as if there were any evidence, (supposing Cadmus to have been a real personage,) that he ever travelled into Egypt, or the Egyptians ever sought out Cadmus! What Egyptian is ever said to have travelled, to acquire knowledge?

Sure we are, that not one fact in one thousand, of ancient or modern history, rests upon evidence that would justify a court and jury, in awarding one dollar. Let any one peruse, for instance, the voluminous and violent controversies, neither settled, nor to be settled, whether Mary, Queen of Scots, and Anna Boleyn, were, or were not, two notorious strumpets; and then decide, if he can, in favour of historical veracity.

Once more: the researches of M. Etienne Quatremère on the language and literature of the Egyptians, after Father Kircher, seem to have verified the common opinion,-that the old Coptic was the Egyptian language. When the Copts were conquered by the Arabs, and had communicated with the Greeks, so that their language received a strong intermixture of Arabic and Greek, it became necessary to attend, in some degree, to literature; but though the Copts were Egyptians, and spoke the Egyptian language, it became necessary, when they began to express themselves on paper, to borrow the Greek letters for the purpose, because they had none of their own. Not a vestige of a book appears to have been known to them. Hence, all the Coptic Bibles and Liturgies are in the old Greek character, and none other are extant. See Barnard and Morton's tables for the Coptic character of the years 700 and 800.

We hold this to be conclusive. All these discoveries of Dr. Young, M. Champollion, Mr. Salt, &c. may relate to the time when the Alexandrian School existed; that was a brilliant period of literary history: but the Copts-the true and original Egyp

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tians-the airózoves of the country, who must have succeeded to all the literature as well as all the language of ancient Egypt, were compelled to borrow the Greek character, to express themselves in writing! Yet Diod. Sic. I. 3. says, the Egyptians obtained their letters from the Ethiopians!

The fragments of Sanchoniathon, and Manetho, are not to be considered as authorities.

Let any one read the translation of Sanchoniatho, by Bishop Cumberland, from the Prepar. evang. of Eusebius, 1. 1. ch. 10, and if he thinks that one line of it is deserving of a moment's credit, he must enjoy his opinion. As to Eusebius himself, he is professedly a fabricator of fictions, a forger, and a defender of such frauds, in principle, and as a duty. We refer, for proof of what we assert, to the title of the 32nd chap. of the 12th book of his Evangelical preparation, or dérsel rotè tù feúde, &c. We regret to say, that this abominable practice and principle, which render all history uncertain, were too common in those days.

Eratosthenes, who died 194 B. C. is cited by Bishop Cumberland, in confirmation of Sanchoniatho; he published a chronological canon. He begins in Upper Egypt, with Menes and Mesraim, in the year of the world 1849, according to the good Bishop. In Lower Egypt, with Salatis, Anno Mundi 1920. In Upper Egypt, we have an uninterrupted succession of monarchs from Anno Mundi 1849, to the first Olympiad, in 3228. Eratosthenes was followed by Apollodorus. Is it necessary to proceed with Eratosthenes?

Manetho was a priest of Heliopolis, and dedicated a history of Egypt, written in Greek, to Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 270 or 280 years before our era. It was compiled from the annals of the priests vigu. Jos. cont. App. He makes seven gods reign in Egypt, before the demi-gods, who preceded the mortals. Osiris was the fifth of these gods. His work does not exist at present, unless in extracts found in authors who cite him. His accounts of these gods, monarchs of Egypt, are not much unlike the stories which Herodotus retails from the accounts of the Egyptian priests with whom he conversed. Neither Manetho nor Herodotus furnish an account of the expeditions and conquests of Osiris in India. We owe all that to the credulity of Diodorus Siculus; in particular, the famous inscription on the Column at Ilyssa, in Arabia. "I have, for my father, the youngest of the gods. I am the first-born of Chronos, of his most pure blood, and brother of the Day. I am King Osiris, who, with a numerous army, overran the whole inhabited earth, from India to the arctic pole, and from the sources of the Ister to the shores of the ocean; and I have spread every where my discoveries and my benefactions." This is called history! It is useless to pursue these Egyptian fables any further, or to examine whether they

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