p A ht 
A RETROSPECT AND A FORECAST. 25 
the discovery or wise adaptation was first applied. Dr. Davis, in his interesting work on 
“ Carthage and its Remains,” gives an engraving of a Punic inscription found at Pula, in 
Sardinia, the letters of which resemble those of the Hebrew alphabet, and the words of 
which (as interpreteted) are also Hebrew. The first part of the Corpus Inscriptionum 
Semiticarum of the French Academie des Inscriptions, that which relates to Phœnician and 
Punic inscriptions, has recently been published. It contains fifty Phœnician inscriptions, 
of which forty were discovered in Cyprus. Some of them are bilingual—Greek and 
Phenician—and the resemblance of the latter to Hebrew is close throughout, making it 
certain that, whatever was their race, the Pheenicians were Semites and almost Israelites 
in language. * If we include in the estimate the career of both motherland and colonies, 
the sway of the Phœnicians endured for at least fifteen hundred years. They are especially 
interesting to us as to them, of all the nations of antiquity, the world was most indebted 
for what it knew of that other world that lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Whether 
they ever touched these shores is doubtful, though M. Paul Gaffarel has collected no 
slender evidence in favour of that hypothesis. That they had dealings with the tribes on 
the Gold Coast, would appear from the statement of Herodotus (Herod IV., 196.) 
Whatever side we take in the controversy as to the classification of the ancient 
Egyptian language,f there is no branch of study more interesting or variously fruitful than 
that which concerns the early dwellers on the banks of the Nile. In any estimate of the 
causes which contributed to human progress, they must have a leading place. Whether, 
as some argue, to them belongs primarily the credit for the moral and intellectual 
conquests of the Israelites, we cannot venture to affirm, but they undoubtedly had no 
small share in the training of the Greeks for the part they were to play, in turn, as teachers 
of mankind. How far their language, as an instrument for the communication of thought, 
contributed to that result, cannot be stated with confidence ; but in that respect they were 

*The Punic scene in the Penulus of Plautus (Act. V., Sc. I) has never been satisfactorily deciphered but there 
is no doubt of the kinship of the language with Hebrew. 
7 Some philologists look upon the ancient Egyptian as representing a stage of transition from Turanian to 
Semitic. M. Alfred Maury considers it allied to the Berber whose domain once extended even to the Canary 
Isles. At the same time he finds in it, as in all the languages of the Eastern side of Africa, traces of Semitic 
influence. (Indigenous Races of the Earth, pp. 56,57.) Champollion-Figeac says that the ancient Egyptian, resem- 
bled in stature, physiognomy and hair the best constituted nations of Europe and Western Asia, only differing 
from them in complexion, which was tanned by the climate. In this view he is supported by his illustrious 
brother. (Egypte Ancienne, p. 27.) Canon Rawlinson expresses the following opinion as to the Egyptian language : 
“ Although in some respects it presents resemblances to the class of tongues known as Semitic, yet, in its main 
characteristics, it stands separate and apart, being simpler and ruder than any known form of Semite speech, and 
haying analogies which connect it on the one hand with Chinese and on the other with the dialects of Central 
Africa.” (The Origin of Nations, Part IL. chap. 3.) Dr. Birch writes as to the whence and how of Nilotic settle- 
ment: “The race of men by whom the Valley of the Nile was tenanted was considered in their legends to have 
been created by the gods out of clay ; a legend closely resembling the Mosaic account of the creation of man. 
Modern researches have, however, not as yet finally determined if advancing from Western Asia they entered the 
alluvial land bringing with them an already developed civilization ; or if ascending from Ethiopia they followed 
the course of the river to its mouth; or if they were aborigines, the date of whose appearance is beyond the know- 
ledge of man and the scan of science. On the earliest monuments they appear as a red or dusky race, with features 
neither entirely Caucasian nor Nigritic, more resembling at the earliest age the European, at the middle period of 
the Empire the Nigritic races or the offspring of a mixed population, and at the most flourishing period of their 
Empire the sallow tint and refined type of the Semitic families of mankind,” (Egypt, in the series of “ Ancient 
History from the Monuments.”) 
Sec. II., 1882. 4. 
