SEYFFARTH THE HIEROGLYPHIC TABLET OF POMPEIUM. 279 



in the writer's Alphabeta genuina, Leips, 1S40. Even the basis of 

 the hieroglyphs was, as Plutarch bears witness, an alphabet of 25 

 letters with 7 vowels, of which the first was our A. See Pl.xxxii. 

 (5, Nos. 450-56, where the coincidence of the primitive (Phceni- 

 cian) letters with the Egyptian hieroglyphics is demonstrated 

 ad oculos. 



Eusthadius, one of the most enlightened savans of Greece, says 

 (II. b, 841) the Pelasgi alone are said to have saved the alphabet 

 at the time of the deluge {xazd zbu xaTa:/.oap.bv ocTjaac to. azoc- 

 yzla fibvouz)^ and those Pelasgi (r. Tlklayo;^) were the Noachides 

 who came from the antediluvian to the postdiluvian world by 

 "shipping." The same we read in vSyncelTs Chronogr. p. 40, ed. 

 Goar. Par. 1652. 



Cadmus, i.e. the ancestor (r. mp, kadam), the mythologists 

 report, invented the letters by sowing the teeth of the heavenly 

 dragon (the Zodiac), and from these teeth. 50 giants originated, 

 i.e. 35 letters running from the left to the right hand, and 25 oth- 

 ers being transverted {^ouaipoip-qobv). These 50 heros reduced 

 themselves to 5 (the labiales, linguales, dentales, nasales, guttu- 

 rales), by whom the ancestor constructed Thebes, the ancient 

 emblem of science. The same Cadmus was the first planter of a 

 vineyard, like Noah. Remember, moreover, what Strabo (x. 3, 

 p. 474) says, " the ancients veiled their physical conceptions by 

 riddles, and added myths to their scientific contemplations." 



This Cadmus, it is true, was, according to the ancients, a Phoe- 

 nician, but do not forget that Pliny distinguishes the Phoenicians 

 near the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and those "• ab aeterno," 

 who are the Noachides, the ancestors of all nations. For this 

 name refers to the root nj3 (banah), progenitor. See Eusebe 

 Praep. Ev. ii. p. 39, ed. Vig., where Noah is called Tzpcoro^ 

 0oivcxio^. 



The same invention of the alphabet the Parsees referred to 

 Kaiomorts, the ancestor of the human race. According to the 

 Indians, Menu, the ancestor of all nations, wrote a book. The 

 Chinese report that Tohi, in whose days " the wells of the depth 

 opened and the columns of heaven broke down," who was "saved 

 together with his seven saints," and after the deluge lived 150 

 years more, invented both the alphabet and astronomy. 



rix clearest tradition in the same respect, however, is that of 



