or,

in a general sense, of the external life of a nation, the historical materials for filling up the outline of the Egyptian annals during so many centuries would certainly fall most lamentably short. A large portion of the detail of what is called the historical tradition of the Egyptians, must be referred to the province of legend and popular tale; and the frail edifice raised partly upon these, and partly upon a misunderstanding of the Bible narratives, which has been dignified by the title of Egyptian chronology and history prior to Psammetichus, thus falls entirely to the ground. The residue of historical reality reduces itself to little more than what we learn incidentally from the monuments; which, however, certainly is considerably more than the scoffers at hieroglyphical research have supposed. But we have already, in the Introduction, discarded the above pitiable view of history as unworthy of our age, and of the object of this work; it were, therefore, but a waste of time further to allude to it.

While treading the sacred ground of the primeval period—that is, of the times anterior to the Egyptian, and, therefore, to all chronology-we have a strong temptation to overstep the limits of our present inquiry, and to soar to a height from which the importance of that period may be discerned, and the way to its complete elucidation, that is, its connexion with universal history, may be pointed out. But the plan of our work constrains us to abide within the immediate province of Egyptian history. The Egyptian primeval period can be elucidated but in one way-by connecting its monuments with the development of universal history: but this view of the subject is postponed to the fifth book. We shall here be contented with a few words of introduction to the following practical exposition of the Egyptian records of that primitive epoch.

The life of all those nations who form a part of history oscillates, during the primeval period, between two

poles, by the reciprocal action of which the feeling of a national existence is developed. One of these poles is language, the other, religion. By means of the former individual objects are connected with the images they excite in the human mind, and a continuous, conscious perception of them becomes possible. By the latter the intercourse between the human mind and the centre of all being and all thought is regulated and sustained. Without language there can be no religion, and without the intuitive consciousness of a God there can be no connexion between the essence and the modes of Being-consequently, no proposition or affirmation, no word, and no language. Without the two, religion and language, no science, no art, no sense of human community can exist, therefore no development of civil polity, no history.

In this ancient epoch there can be no chronology, for chronology implies the consciousness of a past and a future, which can only form a sequel to the primeval period, the first step in advance from it. The primitive time can only be computed by epochs--strata, as it were, of previous formations, from whence the fertile soil of authentic history is produced.

Its records are language and mythology-its poetical monuments, which are also its grave-stones, are popular ballads and legends, containing traditions of the reigns of the Gods, years of the Gods, and narratives of the miracles and exploits performed by Gods, Heroes, and Ancestors.

Let us here be clearly understood. In this primeval epoch of Egyptian history we do not attempt to discover the mysterious import of tales and legends, nor offer interpretations-whether ingenious or the reverse —of astronomical subtleties, and astrological chimeras: neither do we contemplate any addition to the existing stories of etymological artifice, in order to impart plausibility to this or that theory, as to the origin of

the nation. The objects of our inquiry are language and mythology themselves records more valuable than all others that exist of the history of the old world-primeval facts, upon which all later facts are based. Our method of treating them will, however, be the same as that pursued in examining the sources of chronological history. The records and facts themselves will be exhibited in a distinct, and in all essential respects, an integral form, and one intelligible to every class of readers.

Our inquiry, therefore, will be threefold. The first of the three following sections will treat of the language, in the state of development in which we find it soon after the beginning of the reign of Menes; the second, of their written characters; the former the earliest, the latter the most recent fact of the primeval time, bordering on the commencement of the historical period. The mythology of the primeval period, which forms the third branch of our inquiry, intervenes between the two. Chronology, both on external and internal grounds, requires the existence of written characters. With writing, the nation, already Egyptian in language and religious feelings, advanced to that complete consciousness of their connexion with universal history, which constitutes the essence of chronology. In this respect, likewise, the Egyptians stand forth pre-eminently as the monumental people of the world. In the first stage we find a system of language capable of being completely restored, and combining more important data for investigating the development of human speech than that of any other nation. In the second we meet with a system of divine cosmogony, which likewise owes its origin to the primeval times of history. From the third we obtain a system of writing no less remarkable in its bearings on universal history, and with which the empire of Menes becomes historical. Our plan of analysis in respect to all these records will be based on a

rigid critical distinction between the epoch of primeval aboriginal existence, and their later more complete historical development.

The full verification of the results of this analysis must be sought in that portion of our inquiry which is necessarily reserved for the fifth book. What we are here about to offer must like our previous observation-be considered rather as a mere practical exposition of the system, than as an attempt to establish it on any firm philosophical basis.

A.

HISTORY OF RESEARCH INTO THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE ITS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES -AND METHOD OF ANALYSIS.

THERE is palpable proof that the Old Egyptian language, in so far as yet known or investigated, was in its essential element a legacy, inherited by Menes and his empire, from their forefathers. We possess monuments from the 2nd down to the 12th Dynasty (the last but one of the Old Empire), and in particular of the 4th, 6th, and 12th. In all these we find the same language and writing, differing in but a few slight details of grammar and construction from those of the New Empire, especially during its two first and most celebrated Dynasties, the 18th and 19th. To elucidate these remains of the primeval times is the object of our present section.

The identity of the more ancient and more recent Egyptian language was unanimously admitted by the Fathers of the Church. But Josephus had also previously remarked the difference between the "Sacred Dialect" and the ordinary language. All sacred language is, however, essentially nothing but an earlier stage of the popular dialect, preserved by means of the sacred books. Such are the Hebrew as contrasted

with the so-called Chaldee the old Hellenic in the Greek Church, with modern Greek-the Latin with the Romanic, and the ancient with the modern Sclavonic languages. It does not indeed follow that the more modern idiom is everywhere the immediate offspring of the sacred language: the true connexion between the two is most conspicuously exemplified in the Romanic and Sclavonic. The "common dialect" of the Egyptians therefore is not necessarily the immediate descendant of the sacred language of this nation: yet the distinction between them may be merely dialectical, for we meet with no trace of any further subdivision of national interests than that between Upper and Lower Egypt. The conclusion, therefore, is, that the dialect of the Christian Egyptians, or Copts, is but the younger branch of the Egyptian language, the latest form of the popular dialect, although, from the age of the Ptolemies downwards, mixed with Greek words and forms, and, since the third or fourth century, written with an alphabet, containing only five old Egyptian, in addition to the twenty-four principal Greek letters. This was the view entertained by the more distinguished men of letters who at the period of the revival of learning devoted any attention to Egyptian antiquity. The German Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, was, however, the first who by the publication of his Prodromus Egyptiacus at Rome, in the year 1636, and of the Lingua Egyptiaca restituta in 1643, gained the credit of compiling a vocabulary, however defective and inaccurate, of the Coptic language, 189 In this compilation he availed himself of the Coptic and Arabic dictionaries of Semnudi, and of an Arabo-Coptic grammar and a few Coptic texts, which Pietro della Valle had brought to Rome, together with the collections of Peiresc. But his fallacious interpretation of the in

189 Upon this and what follows, see the admirable disquisition of Etienne Quatremère, Recherches critiques et historiques sur la langue et la litérature de l'Egypte, Paris, 1808, p. 48.