27 
modérn Coptic vernacular, which ceased to be spoken in Egypt about 
the seventeenth century alter Christ, it reveals much concerning the 
origin of language, and explains as ‘“‘ survivals” many apparent anom- 
alies in linguistic stocks of later growth. It has been said that the 
ancient Egyptians had many ideas but few words, but the present 
degenerate inhabitants of that eventful land, if modern travellers may 
be believed, have but one idea, and express that in the Persian word 
* backsheesh ”—adopted into the Turkish language. (Zend baksh, to 
distribute ; Sanskrit, bkaj, to divide.) The Coptic, which differed as 
much from the hieroglyphical language as modern English from the 
parent Anglo-Saxon stock, has become a sacred and dead language and 
Arabic, a Semitic tongue, now prevails throughout Egypt. It has 
been, perhaps, too hastily assumed that no neolithic man knew how to 
write, but it seems as though we could never reach back to an age 
when the Egyptians were ignorant of that art. Nor is it possible to 
tell exactly when the stone ages ended, and the historical period 
dawned in Egypt. Stone implements unpolished, and, therefore, true 
paleoliths derived from the breccia from which the “tombs of the Kings” 
were hewn at ancient Thebes, are full of significance, telling of the 
existence of palzeolithic man and of the great antiquity of the human 
race on the black soil of Egypt, long, long anterior to the development 
of the hieroglyphical system of writing, which we know had been per- 
fected nearly six thousand years ago. This must necessarily have been 
long after the spoken tongue had become sufficiently fixed in sound 
and sense to permit of its being recorded by pictured word, ideogram, 
and hieroglyphical phonetic symbol. It is at present impossible to 
arrive at even the approximate date when the rude hunters of the 
“yiver drift epoch” lived on the site of ancient Thebes, or to measure 
the lapse of time between their day and that of the full attainment of 
the splendour of the civilization of the ancient Chemi, or Black Land. 
Menes, of the so-called first dynasty, ruled about 4400 B.c. A first 
' examination of the hieroglyphical language suggests that every word 
had every meaning, or that every meaning was expressed by every 
sound. In fact, as Dr. Abel tells us, we seem to have before usa 
language almost presenting the phenomenon of unintelligibility. It is 
this very condition—which necessitated the continuous employment of 
tone and gesture as determinants in the spoken language, and of the 
added object pictures in the literary form—that has rendered possible 
the decipherment of the hieroglyphical inscriptions. 
The same word or sound had several meanings. There are many 
words evidently formed by the mere reduplication of the primitive 
syllable, such as: sensen, to breathe, etc., senken to strike; men, to 
stand, became menmen to move, after the same fashion. On the other 
hand we get several words for one idea. Thus an, ten, tem, temi, mtes, 
sa, sat, and many others all meant “to cut”; and karo, bari, kaka, 
haku, kek, kebn, kebni, sehir, and. full twenty more were used for “ ship.” 
Many instances occur of inversion of sound as well as of inversion of 
sense and often sense and sound were inverted at the same time, ab 
reversed becomes ba both signified “wall” as well as “stone” ; am 
meant to come and so did ma ; ar was “to make” and so was 7a, as or 
as alike signified both beautiful and miserable, and a woman with 
_ dishevelled hair was the pictorial determinant for grief; sef to wash 
