An ingenious, but fanciful writer, the late Mr. King, in his Morsels of Criticism, Vol. III. 87, 93, &c. revived the longexploded scheme of Peyrerius, adopted by Blunt, in his Oracles of Reason; namely, that of the Pre-Adamites, or an inferior race, or caste, created before Adam and Eve; with whom Cain intermarried, and produced a black progeny; some of whom, surviving the deluge, propagated the species afterwards! But nothing can be more express than the Scripture-account of the total and absolute destruction of " all mankind," and "every" man, by the deluge, except Noah's family. Gen. vii. 21-23. And, indeed, to suppose that "some persons might escape on floating trees or timber, or on the summits of mountains, (from which the water soon flowed off) or by other extraordinary means—as men sometimes escape and are preserved, from a wreck at sea,”—evinces the height of credulity, and would be a miracle greater than the deluge itself. THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. Which was the primitive language? and wherein did the confusion of tongues consist? These are curious and interesting questions, more easy to propose than to resolve. None, therefore, have been more warmly disputed by antiquarian philologists; and the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldee, Phoenician, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Greek, Sanscrit, and Chinese, have each had their respective advocates for the palm of priority and precedence. Of these various claimants, the language spoken by the inhabitants of the first districts occupied by Noah's family, after the flood, seem to have the fairest pretensions to originality, or rather of affinity to the primitive language, supposing all to be altered, more or less, by lapse of time and change of place. Mortalia facta peribunt, Nedum sermonum stet honos, et gratia vivax.-HOR. The great affinity that still reigns, at the present day, among the kindred dialects of the east, and the remoter of the west, lead us to suspect, that the confusion of tongues consisted rather in diversity of pronunciation of the same words, than in the introduction of new words expressing the same ideas. If these assumptions be valid, the Hebrew and the Syriac have the fairest pretensions to originality; and they accordingly have been patronized by the most skilful orientalists, and a decided preference given to them above the rest. That this preference is well founded, may perhaps be most simply and satisfactorily proved from their respective alphabets; for the names and the numeral values of the Hebrew and Syriac letters, which agree together, are almost generally adopted in the rest, however unlike the letters themselves may be in their respective shapes. Thus, the names of the Hebrew and Syriac letters, Aleph, Beth, &c. have been adopted, with some slight variations, by the Arabians, Persians, Copts, Ethiopians, Greeks, &c. But whatever dislocations may have arisen in the order of the letters of each respective alphabet, yet it is truly remarkable, that, for the most part, in the kindred dialects they still retain the same numeral powers as in the primitive alphabets. From inspection of the several alphabets, it appears, that only the two first letters of the Hebrew and Syriac alphabets, Aleph and Beth, retain their primitive order in the other dialects, and also their numeral powers. Thus, the third Arabic letter Ta, retains both the name Thau, and the numeral value 400, of the last letter of the Hebrew and Syriac alphabets; the fifth Arabic letter, Jim, corresponding to the third Hebrew Gimel, retains its proper value, 3; the sixth Hha, corresponding to the eighth Hebrew Hheth, retains its proper value, 8; while the twentyeighth and last Arabic letter Ya or Ia, corresponding to the tenth Hebrew letter, Iod, still retains its proper value, 10. This furnishes demonstrative evidence of the dislocation of the present Arabic alphabet *; and, consequently, that it must have deviated from the primitive alphabet, as well in the order and power, as in the form of its several letters. The same argument will apply to the other alphabets, which are still more modern than the Arabic, the Ethiopic, the Sanscrit, &c. To this we may add, that the superior simplicity of the Hebrew and Syriac letters, which originally had each only one form, decides their superior antiquity also above the Arabic, the Ethiopic, the Sanscrit, &c. alphabets, in which each letter has a distinct form, at the beginning, middle, and end of words, * The Arabic alphabet was originally the same as the Syriac; a change was made in the order of the alphabet, and character of the letters, about the age of Mahomet. to the great embarrassment of learners, and sometimes even of adepts. The Hebrew language also furnishes internal evidence of its priority before the other dialects, and of their descent from it. 1. In the original nomenclature, Adam called his wife N (Aishah) "Woman," because she was taken out of N (Aish) "Man." Gen. ii. 23. Here the derivation is obvious in the Hebrew language, but the resemblance is lost in the ancient ver ,איתתא in Chaldee, or אתתא sions. Though the derivation of in Syriac, (Aitta) "Woman," from the Hebrew, Aishah, (by the usual and frequent interchange of the letter Shin, and Thau, both in the eastern and western dialects) is obvious, yet the primitive Hebrew root, 'N, Aish, “ Man,” is not now found in these dialects, but has grown obsolete; and in its stead, the Chaldee has substituted by (Baal) "Master," the Syriac, (Gebura) "the strong." 2. From the primitive name of GOD in Hebrew, 8 (EL) signifying "power," was obviously derived N (ELOH) in Hebrew, signifying "potentate;" ALAH, in Syriac; AL-ALAH (or, by contraction of the article Al, "the," prefixed) ALLAH, in Arabic; ULLAH, in Ethiopic; ALOH, in the South Sea Islands, where Captain Cook found ALO ALO, the name of the Supreme God, in Hapaee, one of the Friendly Isles, similar to the Hebrew, ÆL ELOHIM, “God of gods." 3. The Hebrew p (Sak) "a bag," pervades most of the eastern and western languages, precisely in the same sound and sense. The Hebrew (Math) "dead," runs through all the Oriental dialects *; and Mat, or Matte, is found in the vocabularies of the South Sea Isles exactly in the same sense. same may be observed of many other words. The 4. The primitive proper names of Rivers, Mountains, Cities, Persons, &c. throughout the east, are all deducible from the Hebrew. 5. When Abraham," the Hebrew," travelled through Palestine and Egypt, he appeared to be easily understood in all these countries, without the aid of an interpreter, and freely conversed with Melchizedek, Abimelech, Pharaoh, &c. 6. When Laban called the pillar, erected in memory of his * Hence the Arabic phrase in the game of chess, Cheik Mat, "the king is dead." It is also the name of a place near Arbela, in Assyria Proper. convention with Jacob, in Syriac, d, Jegar Sahadutha, which Jacob called, Gal-eed, in Hebrew, Gen. xxxi. 47. they are synonymous phrases, as "the mount of testimony," and "the heap of witness," in English. The formation of the nearer dialects of the east, and remoter of the west, from the primitive language, by change of vowels, and interchange of consonants of the same or kindred organs of speech, may be aptly illustrated by a few instances, ancient and modern. 1. The primitive name of Lower Egypt was DD 'N, Ai Caphtor*, or " the covered land," Jer. xlvii. 4; because, according to Herodotus," the Delta was originally a marsh covered with water, and so was all the Lower Egypt, as far as Mount Masius, and the Sirbonic lake." Hence, by elision, came Aicapht, or Ai-copht; and by transmutation, Aigupt; whence our English word Egypt, retaining only the two last original letters. In Sanscrit, it is called Gupta-sthan," the covered land ;" and Cardama-sthan, "the mud-land." Wilford on Egypt and the Nile. Asiat. Research. Vol. III. p. 335. 2. From the Greek Еmiσкожоç, by elision, came Piscop, and thence the English Bishop; or Episk, whence the French Evêque. 3. From the Latin, Dies, came the adjective Diurnus, from thence the Italian, Giorno; whence the French, Jour, "day;" not retaining a single letter of the original word. ALPHABETICAL AND HIEROGLYPHICAL WRITING. An hypothesis seems to be pretty generally prevalent among antiquaries, that hieroglyphical was earlier, and that it gave rise to the invention of alphabetical writing, by contraction of the hieroglyphic symbols into alphabetical letters. In favour of this hypothesis, it has been asserted, that the letters of the primitive alphabet were originally intended for symbols of the things whose names they bear; as Aleph, 66 an ox," Beth," a house," Gimel," a camel," Daleth," a door," &c. but in process of time were curtailed and reduced to simpler forms. * The Egyptian word Caphtor, is evidently derived from the Hebrew,, Caphar, "to cover," which is the root of the English word, also. 1. This however may be doubted: for as the learned orientalist Schultens remarks, "the names given to the primitive letters were rather designed as artificial helps of the memory, to excite the attention of learners," by means of the alliteration; as our spelling-books for children contain cuts or figures, in which A is connected in the same compartment with an Ass, B with a Bear, C with a Cat, D with a Dog, &c. without the remotest likeness between the letters and the objects themselves, intended to be conveyed or understood. 2. The original structure of hieroglyphical symbols, and of alphabetical letters, seems to be totally and radically different, and incapable of transmutation into each other. Hieroglyphics are imperfect outlines of the figures or objects themselves intended to be represented, which, in process of time, were transferred from sensible objects to intellectual, by a metaphorical language; whereas, letters are arbitrary marks of a few simple elementary sounds of the easiest and readiest pronunciation, to which they bear no manner of resemblance; and the progress of writing, like that of oral language, is from monosyllables to dissyllables; from thence to trisyllables; and so on to polysyllables: thus, by their various combinations, forming all that endless variety of oral or of written words, which serve to communicate ideas or notions. If the origin of language, or articulate speech, was divine, how much more the invention of writing, of alphabetical letters, and written words! "Those wondrous symbols that can still retain M'CREERY's Press. Which, by the magic spells of a few cabalistical characters, grouped together in various clusters, can fix and embody, as it were, fleeting sounds and perishable ideas, with which they have no natural union or connection whatsoever, and embalm or preserve them to ages yet unborn! 3. Notwithstanding this, the author of the account of the late Embassy to China, Sir George Staunton, endeavours to uphold the fashionable hypothesis, from the introduction of an alphabetical mode of writing in China, by the British factors at Canton, for convenience of communication with the Chinese merchants, founded on their hieroglyphical writing. B b VOL. I. |