6

the words which denote these objects, in the spoken language of the country) and another sort is symbolic. Of the symbolic [there are several kinds]: one represents objects properly by imitation; another expresses them tropically' (that is, indirectly, by synecdoche, metonymy, or metaphors); the third, on the contrary, suggests them by means of certain allegorical ænigmas. Thus, according to the method of representing the proper form of objects [by imitation], the Egyptians make a circle when they wish to indicate the Sun, and a luniform figure (or crescent) to denote the Moon. According to the tropical method, they represent objects by means of certain agreements (or analogies) which they transfer into the expression of those objects, sometimes by modifications [of form], most frequently by complete transformations: Thus, when they transmit the praises of their kings in their theological fables, they describe them by means of anaglyphs, (that is, by transpositions, or transformations, of the hieroglyphs). Of the third kind of symbolical writing, which is ænigmatical, let this serve as an example: They assimilate the oblique course of the other [planetary] stars to the bodies of serpents, but ⚫ that of the Sun to the body of a scarabous,' &c.

Now, it is scarcely necessary to observe, that the method of writing which is called Epistolographic in this passage, is obviously the same with what is termed Demotic by Herodotus and Diodorus, and Enchorial in the Rosetta inscription. Neither is there any perplexity in the circumstance, that none of the other authorities use the term Hieratic of the learned Father; and that neither Herodotus nor Diodorus employ even the word Hieroglyphic. The Sacred characters spoken of by the two last authors, evidently include both the hieratic and hieroglyphic-both being used for sacred purposes, the former chiefly in manuscripts, and the latter, as the name indeed implies, on sculptured monuments. Upon these points, we believe, all the learned are now agreed-and it is needless to say more of them. But the chief difficulty, and the important feature of the passage, is that which treats of the Kuriologic method of writing, δια των πρώτων στοιχείων. That this refers to a phonetic system, or a method of representing spoken words, or sounds, might, we think, be pretty safely concluded, from the mere fact, that all the other varieties or applications of picture-writing are distinctly enumerated and exhausted in the succeeding parts of the description-the symbolical, by direct copying or imitation-the tropical, by metaphors and similitudes-and the anigmatical, by more obscure and far-fetched analogies. Now, besides all these, it is here clearly and formally announced that there was another, namely, the kuriologic, dia twy newTWV OTOIXINE;'

-and this, we think, can only mean a reference to spoken sounds or words. The expression is no doubt exceedingly elliptical and obscure. But we think it sufficiently clear, that it must mean some other way of communicating ideas than by the direct suggestion of the prototypes, or types respectively of the figures employed; and, with the knowledge we now have, we cannot but think it reasonably certain, that it must have been by the suggestion of words, or spoken sounds. Almost all those who have recently cited the passage, we observe, have substantially agreed in rendering rayua' by letters;'-though they do by no means agree on the sense which should here be given to the very familiar words, τα πρωτα. Sir W. Drummond, in his Origines (Vol. II. p. 284) translates them the first elements '(or alphabetical characters)' and M. Letronne, more directly, 'les premiers lettres de l'alphabet;' a version which he afterwards made a little less vague, by ingeniously suggesting that the very simple words, the first,' were here used to denote the original or primary alphabet, of sixteen letters, brought into Greece by Cadmus-as distinguished from the larger alphabet afterwards adopted in that country.

M.

In all this, however, there is nothing satisfactory, and much that seems extremely objectionable. In the first place, if orax, by itself, does not mean alphabetical characters, it is not easy to conceive how it should get that meaning, by having the very general term gara prefixed to it; and if it have that meaning by itself, it is obvious, that Sir W. Drummond's paraphrase takes no account of that important epithet at all, and actually drops it out of the translation. Letronne's version, again, taken without his commentary, plainly does not advance a single step in elucidating his author's meaning: For what, we would ask, are we to understand by the first letters of the alphabet?-or how are kuriologic signs to become significant by means of such letters? The same remark is applicable to the Cadmean hypothesis, -which is farther inadmissible, we think, for the two following reasons:-1st, that the phrase, the first letters,' even allowing Tox to mean letters, is a phrase by which it is inconceiv able that any one, treating, not of the Greeks, or their system of writing, at all, but of the varieties of the picture-writing of the Egyptian, should have thought of denoting the original imperfect alphabet of the Grecian nations; and second, because, if such pictures or signs were ever employed to denote words or sounds at all, it is impossible to see why they should not be used to express such words or sounds as could not be rendered by that imperfect alphabet, as well as those that could. None of those explanations, therefore, appear to us to give any definite or available sense to the passage in question; and for this reason we have ven

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tured to suggest, in the preceding version, that its true meaning is, that one of the ways of writing was by figures, which were significant, by reference to the first, or initial, elements or sounds of words'—that is, by figures that expressed or suggested sounds, by representing objects, the familiar names of which, in the spoken language of the country, begun with these sounds. The word Toxa properly signifies only elements, or component parts; and though letters are no doubt the elements of written words, after alphabetical writing has been invented, we really do not see how it could possibly have been used to signify letters, in a passage which professedly treats of a state of things anterior to that invention or rather, perhaps, describes the first steps which led to it. The picture-writers, seeking for the first time to express sounds, and so to render their work Phonetic, could not well accomplish this object, by referring to the letters of an alphabet, first or last, which was not yet in existence-and of which, in that very act, they were probably laying the foundations. They were desirous, it is supposed, to express words, by means of pictures or figures. We shall see, by and by, that they did, in point of fact, express them by painting or engraving a series of visible objects, the first or initial sounds in the spoken names of which, taken successively, made up the compound sounds, or words which they wanted. Now, if this was in truth the process they adopted, and if the fact was known, as it must have been, to the learned Father, we really can see no reason for doubting that ours is the true version of the disputed passage-that by roue he meant the elements, or elementary sounds of words-and by gara, simply their first or initial sounds-corresponding, no doubt, to their initial letters, after they came to be expressed by letters-but not alluded to by that title, in describing the first rudiments of a phonetic character. All this will be more developed hereafter: But, in the mean time, the different kinds of Egyptian writing mentioned by the ancients, and their relations to each other, will be understood at once from the following scheme:

Accustomed to a method of writing which employed signs as the representatives of sounds merely, the Greek and Roman authors, who had, either directly or indirectly, acquired any tolerably distinct notions of the graphic system of the ancient Egyptians, and, in particular, of their monumental writing, appear to have been chiefly struck with the figurative and symbolie, or, in other words, ideographic, characters, intermixed in it: these, as the most remote from the nature of the signs they themselves made use of, seem to have almost exclusively engaged their attention. Hence, they nowhere expressly mention any other order of characters; they nowhere explicitly and distinctly state, what they could hardly fail to have known, that the Egyptians employed, at the same time, a certain class of signs as phonetic, or as the representatives of simple sounds. Even Clemens Alexandrinus himself, in the celebrated passage above quoted, describes the phonetic hieroglyphics in the most concise manner;-so concise, indeed, that his statement, from being isolated and unaccompanied with explanation, remained quite unintelligible, till recent discoveries furnished a key to its meaning.

It is chiefly to this circumstance that we are to attribute the ineffectual efforts of the moderns to decipher the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Finding in the classic authors indications only of symbolic signs, and of images of objects, and never once suspecting the existence of any other, the learned of the last three centuries invariably concluded, that the hieroglyphic writing was solely composed of characters each of which was the representative of an idea. On this elementary principle they were all agreed; and, to say the truth, it seemed to receive confirmation from the fact, that the forms and values of a certain number of hieroglyphic symbols had been indicated by Diodorus Siculus, Horus Apollo, Plutarch, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Eusebius. The number of these symbols, compared with the immense variety of characters observable on the monuments, was, indeed, extremely small; but modern ingenuity soon supplied the defects of the ancient records. From the preconceived notion that each hieroglyph was the representative of a distinct idea, the great object of ambition came to be, to extort per force the esoteric meaning which it was supposed to involve. It was never doubted that the most profound mysteries of nature and art lay hidden in these monumental sculptures; the simplest characters were conceived to be the types of ideas too lofty for vulgar comprehension, and worthy of the eternal records to which their preservation had been consigned. Thus, imagination usurping the place of reason, and conjecture that of fact, the learned, who had ad

dicted themselves to these inquiries, soon became involved in an inextricable labyrinth, and like Milton's Devils, posed by their metaphysical speculations, found no end in wandering

'mazes lost."

6

Such was the method-if method it may be called-pursued by Father Kircher. The six folios of that indefatigable author contain some tolerably faithful, though inelegant, representations of the principal monuments of Egyptian art, which had been brought to Europe before his time; but, according to his interpretation, which succeeded equally well, whether he began at the beginning or the end of an inscription, the hieroglyphics on the obelisks, mummies, and amulets, are filled with the cabalistic science and monstrous fancies of a refined system of Daemonism. Thus, in the elliptical ring or cartouche on the Pamphilian Obelisk, which contains merely the title AOTKPTP (AUтoxgaтwę) Emperor, expressed in phonetic characters, Kircher, with rare ingenuity, detects the following luminous oracle: The author of fecundity, and of all vegetation, is Osiris, whose generative faculty is derived from heaven in his kingdom by the holy Mophta.' In like manner, the cartouche of the same Obelisk, which contains, in phonetic characters, the words, ΚΗΣΙΣ ΤΜΤΙΑΝΣ ΣΒΣΤΣ (Καισαρ AqUITIATOS ZEBACTOS), Caesar Domitianus Augustus, signifies, according to Kircher, † neither more nor less than this: Generationis beneficus praeses, coelesti dominio quadripotens, aerem per Mophta beneficum humorem aereum committit Ammoni inferiora potentissimo, qui per simulacrum et caeremonias appropriatas, trahitur ad potentiam exerendam; words which we hope to be excused for not attempting to translate.

Extravagant as all this may appear, Kircher was the founder of a school; and, as usually happens in such cases, the pupils speedily improved on the absurdities of their master. Indeed, he seems to have still a few lingering admirers; for so late as the year 1821, there issued from the archiepiscopal press of Genoa, a new translation of the hieroglyphics of the Pamphilian obelisk, a monument which, according to this dipus of symbols, 'preserves the remembrance of the triumph over the ungodly, obtained by the worshippers of the Thrice Holy Trinity, and of the Eternal Word, under the sway of the sixth and seventh kings of Egypt, in the sixth century after the Deluge.' From the same admirable authority we learn, that one of these pious monarchs was no other than Sesac, the same who, according to the Old Testa

* Obeliscus Pamphilius, 557.

† Ibid. 559.