this opinion, that alphabetic writing was in use amongst the Egyptians before the time of Moses: He has likewise adopted the arguments here employed in support of it, as well as this whole theory of hieroglyphic writing. P. 207. UU. Exod. xxviii. 21. And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names; LIKE THE ENGRAVINGS OF A SIGNET, every one with his name shall they be, according to the twelve tribes. And again, ver. 36. And thou shalt make a Plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD. Had letters been invented by Moses, and unknown till then to the Israelites, would he not naturally have said, when he directed the workmen to engrave names and sentences on stones and gold,-and in these engravings you shall employ the alphabetic characters which I have now invented and taught you the use of? On the contrary, he gives them a very different direction; he refers them to a model in familiar use,—like the engravings of a signet. For the ancient people of the East engraved names and sentences on their seals, just as the Mahometan princes do at present. Mr. Fleuri with great ingenuity confesses the high perfection of the arts at this time amongst the Israelites. "Ils sçavoient tailler et graver les pierres precieuses. Ils etoient Menuisiers, Tapissieurs, Brodeurs et Parfumeurs. Entre ces arts, il y en a deux que j'admire principalement la taille des pierreries, et la fonte des figures, telles qu'étoient les Chérubins de l'Arche et le Veau d'or. Ceux qui ont tant soit peu connoissance des arts, sçavent combien il faut d'artifices et de machines pour ces ouvrages. Si des-lors on les avoit trouvées, on avoit déja bien raffiné, même dans les arts qui ne servent qu'à l'ornement; et si l'on avoit quelque secret pour faire les mêmes choses plus facilement, c'étoit encore une plus grande perfection, ce qui soit dit en passant, pour montrer que cette antiquité si eloignée n'etoit pas grossière et ignorante, comme plusieurs s'imaginent." Mœurs des Israelites, sect. 9. P. 207. XX. A certain anonymous writer, quoted by Crinitus from an ancient MS, in his de honesta disciplina, is of this opinion. But I quote him chiefly for his pacific disposition to accommodate and compromise matters, by giving every nation its share in the glory of the invention; not, I mean, of the alphabetic powers, but of the various alphabetic characters: "Moses primus Hebraicas exaravit literas ; P. 213. YY. "Les Iroquois, comme les Lacedemoniens, veulent un discours vif et concis ; leur Style est cependant figuré, et tout metaphorique.” Mœurs des Sauvages Ameriquains comparées aux Mœurs des premiers Temps, par Lafitau, tom. i. p. 580, 4to. And of the various languages of all the people on that great continent in general, he expresseth himself thus, "La plupart de ces Peuples Occidentaux, quoiqu'avec des Langues tres differentes, ont cependant peu pres la même genie, la même façon de penser, et les même tours pour s'exprimer ;" tom. ii. p. 481. Condamine gives pretty much the same account of the Savages of South America. Speaking of their languages he says, "plusieurs sont energiques et susceptibles d'eloquence," &c. p. 54. which can mean no other than that their terms are highly figurative. But this is the universal genius of the lan guage of Barbarians. Egede, in his History of Greenland, says, the Language is very rich of words and sense; and of such ENERGY, that one is often at a loss, and puzzled to render it in Danish, p. 165. This energy is apparently what the French Missionary calls tout metaphorique. Quintilian, speaking of metaphors, says, "Qua quidem cum ita est ab ipsa nobis concessa natura, ut indocti quoque ac non sentientes ea frequenter utantur," lib. viii. c. 6. which shews, by the way, that Quintilian did not apprehend their true cause or original.-By all this may be seen how much M. Bullet mistakes the matter, where, in his Memoires sur la langue Celtique, he says, "Dans les pays chauds une imagination ardente decouvre aisement la plus petite ressemblance qu'une chose peut avoir avec une autre. Elle voit d'abord, par exemple, la report qui se trouve entre un homme cruel et une bête feroce; et pour faire connoitre qu' elle apperçoit cette ressemblance elle donne à cet homme le nom de Tigre. Voila l'origine du langage figuré et metaphorique. Dans les pays froides, où l'imagination n'a pas une vivacité pareille, on se sert de terms propres pour exprimer chaque chose, ou appelle tout par son nom." Vol. i. p. 6. But we find the fact to be just otherwise. Ρ. 213. ΖΖ. Κατὰ δὲ τὰς ὁμιλίας βραχυλόγοι, καὶ αἰνιγματίαι, καὶ τὰ πολλὰ αἰνιττόμενοι συνεκδοχικώς πολλὰ δὲ λέγοντες ἐν ὑπερβολαῖς.-Ρ. 213, This being the nature and genius common to all the barbarous nations upon earth, I am almost tempted to believe Geofry of Monmouth, when he says, that he translated his worthy history of Britain from the Welch ; of which, his original, he gives this character,-Phallerata verba et ampullosa dictiones. If this was not so, one can hardly tell why he should mention a circumstance that neither recommended his copy nor his original. But the character of the ballads of the old Welch Bards fully supports Diodorus's account of the style of the ancient Gauls. P. 214. AAA. But the important use to which the very learned the Abbé de Condillac has employed all that has been here said on this matter, may be seen in his excellent Essay on the origin of human Knowledge, Part ii. which treats of Language. 66 P. 214. BBB. Quintilian makes an objector to the figurative style argue thus,-"Antiquissimum quemque maxime secundum naturam dixisse contendunt; mox Poetis similiores extitisse, etiamsi parciùs, simili tamen ratione, falsa et impropria virtutes ducentes." On which he observes— qua in disputatione non nihil veri est."-It is true, there is something of truth in it, and indeed, not much; for though the polishers of human speech did, as the objector says, turn the improprieties of speech into ornament, it is utterly false that the most ancient speakers used only simple and proper terms. P. 217. CCC. So I thought: and so it has been generally thought. But M. de Beausobre, in his Histoire de Manichée, lib. iv. cap. 4. has made it probable, that the heretics had no hand in these Abraxas, but that they are altogether Pagan. P. 217. DDD. This charm, which the Arabs called Talisman or Tsalimam, the later Greeks, when they had borrowed the superstition, called ETOIXEIA; which shews of what house they supposed it to have come; σTOXEîa being, as we have observed, the technical Greek name for hieroglyphic characters. P. 217. EEE. The same error has made the half-paganized Marsilius Ficinus fall into the idle conceit, that the Golden Calf was only a Talisman:-" Hebræi quoque" (says he) "in Ægypto nutriti, struere vitulum aureum didicerant, ut eorundem astrologi putant, ad aucupandum veneris lunæque favorem, contra Scorpionis atque Martis influxum Judæis infestum."-De Vita Coelit. Com. 1. iii. c. 13. P. 218. FFF. This Discourse on the EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS hath had the same fortune abroad, that the Discourse on the BOOK OF JOB hath had at home: Like this, it hath been the occasion of much waste paper, and violation of common sense. For the Discourse on the Hieroglyphics having been well translated and well received in France, both the subject and the author became known enough to invite all gentlemen scholars, better able to entertain the Public, to oblige us with their ingenious conjectures ; and many a French pen, even to that of a captain of grenadiers, hath been drawn, to shew that the nature of Hieroglyphics is yet as unknown as ever. A nameless dissertator, sur l'Ecriture Hieroglyphique, (who chuses to write, as he himself very truly says, in his title-page,-sub luce maligna) assures us, that Hieroglyphics were not a species of writing to convey intelligence to the reader, but a mere ornament upon stone, to entertain the eye of the spectator: So there is an end of the SUBJECT. The learned captain, who wheels in a larger circle, and takes in all the wisdom of Egypt, laments with much humanity, the superficiality and ignorance of all who have gone before him, and their utter incapacity of getting to the source of things: So there is an end of the AUTHOR. Indeed, the Journalist who recommends this important work to the public seems to have his doubts as to this point.-"N'est ce pas s'avancer un peu trop" (says he), “et peut-on dire que MARSHAM pour la Chronologie et l'Histoire, M. WARBURTON pour les Hieroglyphes, et d'autres sçavans ayent negligé de consulter les sources?" 66 To say the truth, these wonderful investigators of the learning of ancient Egypt, by the mere dint of modern ingenuity, had provocation enough to fall upon this unlucky Discourse, which no sooner appeared amongst them in the fine translation of a very learned French lawyer, than the celebrated writers of the Journal des Sçavans, of March, 1744, and of Trevoux of July, in the same year, announced it to the public in these terms. "Il regne" (says the first) une si belle analogie dans le systeme de Mr. Warburton, et toutes ses parties tiennent les unes aux autres par un lien si naturel, qu'on est porté à croire que l'origine, et les progrès de l'ecriture et du language ont été tels qu'il les a decrits. Le public doit avoir bien de l'obligation au Traducteur de lui avoir fait connoitre un Ouvrage si curieux.”—“M. Warburton" (says the other) "n'a pu sans une erudition profonde, une lecture murement digerée et des reflexions infinies traiter avec tant de precision, de justesse et de netteté, un sujet de lui même si difficile à mettre en œuvre. Les plus savans hommes se sont laissé seduire sur l'origine des Hieroglyphes; et la plupart ont regardé un effet du peu d'experience des Egyptiens comme un refinement de la plus mysterieuse sagesse. C'est cette erreur que M. Warburton s'applique particulierement à detruire dans la premiere partie. Il le fait de la maniere la plus naturelle. Ce n'est point un systeme fondé SUR DES IMAGINATIONS VAGUES. Ses raisonnemens, ses preuves, sont appuiées sur des FAITS, sur la NATURE des choses, et sur LES PRINCIPES LES PLUS LUMINEUX DU SENS COMMUN." P. 219. GGG. Amongst the rest, the author of Sacred and Profane History connected; who says: "We have no reason to think that these hieroglyphics [namely, what we call the curiologic] were so ancient as the first letters:" This is his first answer to the opinion that hieroglyphics were more ancient. His second is in these words: "They would have been a very imperfect character; many, nay most occurrences, would be represented by them but by halves," vol. ii. p. 295. Now this to me appears a very good argument why hieroglyphics were indeed the first rude effort towards recording the human conceptions; and still, a better, why they could not be the second, when men had already found out the more compleat method of alphabetic letters. P. 220. HHH. What hath been said above of the reason why Egypt alone continued their hieroglyphic characters after the invention of letters, and why all other nations thenceforward left them off, will give an easy solution to what a curious traveller seems to think matter of some wonder, namely, that "the symbolic learning was the only part of Egyptian wisdom not translated into Greece." [Dr. Shaw's Travels, p. 391.]—But if this learned man meant not hieroglyphic characters, but only the mode of Egyptian wisdom employed therein, he raises a wonder out of his own mistake that mode was translated into Greece with the rest; for the precepts of Pythagoras were a fantastic kind of translation of hieroglyphic pictures into verbal propositions; and on that account, doubtless, called SYMBOLS :-Μάλιστα (says Plutarch) δὲ οὗτος [ὁ Πυθαγόρας] ὡς ἔοικε, θαυμασθεὶς καὶ θαυμάσας τοὺς ἄνδρας, ἀπεμιμήσατο τὸ συμβολικὸν αὐτῶν καὶ μυστηριώδες, ἀναμίξας αἰνίγμασι τὰ δόγματα· τῶν γὰρ καλουμένων γραμμάτων ἱερογλυφικῶν οὐθὲν ἀπολείπει τὰ πολλὰ τῶν Πυθαγορικῶν παραγγελμάτων, οἷόν ἐστι τὸ Μὴ ἐσθίειν ἐπὶ δίφρου, μηδ' ἐπὶ χοίνικος καθῆσθαι, μηδὲ φοίνικα φυτέυειν, μηδὲ πῦρ μαχαίρῃ σκαλεύειν ἐν οἰκίᾳ. De Is, et Os. p. 632. Edit. Steph. 8νο. Αὐτίκα τῆς βαρβάρου (says Clemens Alex.) φιλοσοφίας, πάνυ σφόδρα ἐπικεκρυμμένης ἥρτηται τὰ Πυθαγόρια ΣΥΜΒΟΛΑ. παραίνει γοῦν ὁ Σάμιος χελιδόνα ἐν οἰκίᾳ μὴ ἔχειν, τουτέστι, λάλον καὶ ψίθυρον καὶ πρόγλωσσον avoρшπov, &c. Strom. lib. v. p. 558. Edit. Colon. 1688, fol. P. 221. III. The reader may now see how inconsiderately the learned W. Baxter pronounced upon the matter when he said, "The iepa ypáμμara of the Egyptians were notæ sacræ borrowed from the Onirocritics, and therefore divine." [App. to his Gloss. Antiq. Rom. pag. 414.] Nor does the more judicious Mr. Daubuz conclude less erroneously, when he supposes that both onirocritic and hieroglyphics stood upon one common foundation. But he was misled by Kircher, and certain late Greek writers, who pretended that the ancient Egyptians had I can't tell what notion of a close union between visible bodies in heaven, the invisible deities, and this inferior world, by such a concatenation from the highest to the lowest, that the affections of the higher link reached the lower throughout the whole chain; for that the intellectual world is so exact a copy and idea of the visible, that nothing is done in the visible, but what is decreed before and exemplified in the intellectual. [Prelim. Discourse to his Comm. on the REVELATIONS.] This was the senseless jargon of Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, and the rest of that fanatic tribe of Pythagorean-Platonists; and this they obtruded on the world for old Egyptian wisdom; the vanity of which pretence has been confuted in the first volume. It is hard to say whether these Enthusiasts believed themselves, there is such an equal mixture of folly and knavery in all their writings: however, it is certain, Kircher believed them. * P. 222. KKK. But hieroglyphic writing, as we have observed, not only furnished rules of interpretation for their Onirocritics, but figures of speech for their Orators. So Isaiah expresseth the king of Assyria's invasion of Judea by the stretching out of his WINGS, to fill the breadth of the land: And afterwards, prophesying against Egypt and Ethiopia, he says, Wo to the land shadowing with WINGS. Most of the interpreters, indeed, explain † Isai. xviii. 1. Isai. viii. 8. wings to signify the sails of their vessels on the Nile: but the expression evidently means, in general, the over-shadowing with a mighty power: of which wings in hieroglyphic language were the emblem. P. 222. LLL. Thus Suidas on the word ETOIXEIA ai cikóves kai diaπλάσεις τῶν ὀνείρων αἱ δι ̓ ὀλίγου ἢ πολλοῦ χρόνου τὴν ἔκβασιν ἔχουσαι. Artemidorus tells us this was the technical word for the phantasms in dreams : "Ονειρός ἐστι, κίνησις ἢ πλάσις ψυχῆς πολυσχήμων σημαντικὴ τῶν ἐσομένων ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν· τούτου δὲ οὕτως ἔχοντος, ὅσα μὲν ἀποβήσεται μεταξὺ χρόνου διελθόντος, ἢ πολλοῦ, ἡ ὀλίγου, ταῦτα πάντα δι ̓ εἰκόνων ἰδίων φυσικῶν τῶν καὶ ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΩΝ καλουμένων, προαγορεύει ἡ ψυχὴ τὸν μεταξὺ χρόνον νομίζουσα ἡμᾶς δύνασθαι λογισμῷ διδασκομένους τὰ ἐσόμενα μαθεῖν. Oneir. lib. i. cap. 2. And in his fourth book he begins a chapter which he entitles περὶ ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΩΝ in this manner: Περὶ δὲ τῶν ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΩΝ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιφθόνως εἰρῆσθαι δοκοῦντας, οὗτος ὁ λόγος ἁρμόσει, ὅπως ἔχῃς ἀποκρίνασθαι καὶ αὐτὸς, καὶ μὴ ἐξαπατηθῇς ὑπὸ τῶν πλείονα λεγόντων εἶναι. cap. 3. P. 222. MMM. But the learned Daubuz, in consequence of his trusting to the fanatic notion of the late Greek philosophers, supposes that hieroglyphic marks were called Eroxeîa, because the first composers of them used the heavenly bodies to represent the notions of their minds, there being, according to them, a mystic sympathetic union and analogy between heavenly and earthly things; consequently that Eroixeta, in this use, signifies the host of heaven. That it may do so, according to the genius of the Greek tongue, he endeavours to prove by its coming from σreixw, which is a military term, and signifies to march in order. [p. 10. of the Prel. Disc.] But this learned man should on this occasion have remembered his own quotation from the excellent Quintilian, p. 54. that analogy is not founded upon reason, but example. Non ratione nititur analogia, sed exemplo; nec lex est loquendi, sed observatio: ut ipsam analogiam nulla res alia fecerit, quam consuetudo. Inst. lib. i. cap. 10. P. 222. NNN. Here perhaps I shall be told, with the candour I have commonly experienced, that I have applied the history of Pharaoh's dream in illustrating the old Pagan method of onirocritic for no other purpose than to discredit Joseph's prophetic interpretation of it: Therefore, though this matter be explained afterwards at large, I must here inform the reader, of what every one will be content to know, except such as these, who never think but to suspect and never suspect but to accuse, that when GoD pleases to deal with men by his ministers, he generally condescends to treat them according to their infirmities; a method which hath all the marks of highest wisdom as well as goodness. Phantasms in dreams were superstitiously thought to be symbolical: GOD, therefore, when it was his good pleasure to send dreams to Pharaoh, made the foundation of them two wellknown symbols; and this, doubtless, in order to engage the dreamer's more serious attention: But then to confound the Egyptian Onirocritics, these dreams were so circumstanced with matters foreign to the principles of their art, that there was need of a truly divine Interpreter to decipher them. P. 223. 000. But if you will believe a late writer, Animal-worship was so far from coming from Hieroglyphics, that Hieroglyphics came out of Animal-worship. This is an unexpected change of the scene; but, for our comfort, it is only the forced consequence of a false hypothesis, which will be well considered in its place: "The hieroglyphical inscriptions of the Egyptians" (says he) "are pretty full of the figures of birds, fishes, beasts, and men, with a few letters sometimes between them; and this |