90 ON THE DATE AND ORIGIN 
seem as a dream of infancy, with which we are still willing to amuse 
our second boyhood. The histories, however, of Egyptian and Chal- 
dean, of Etruscan and Roman, of Carthaginian, Samaritan, and Phee- 
nician, phonetic letters, are in probable keeping with the supposition, 
which, if it be impossible to prove it, affords at least a plausible solu- 
tion of the question in hand. 
Ist, The policy of the Egyptian hierarchy had early taught the 
people to hold all seafaring persons and shepherds (the wandering 
and commercial Arabs) as impious and profane ;5‘ and the same 
policy may have consistently operated in the exclusion of the phonetic 
letter from that oppressed race of men. The Bonzes of China and 
the Brahmins of India? have, by like means, held an absolutism 
over the masses of their respective countries ; and it was not till the 
middle of the third century before christianity that the first Egyptian 
writer, Manetho, a priest of the temple of Hierapolis, edited, in the 
phonetic alphabet and in the Greek language, an indigestible mass of 
mythologies, alike indicative of his own and his people’s ignorance of 
all useful learning. Mr. Wise (in his Inquiry, &c.) is of opinion 
that that people (the Egyptians) was unacquainted with the phonetic 
letter till the introduction of the coptic under the Macedonian dynasty 
51 Diodorus Siculus, lib. 1, and Grnests xlvi, 34, “for every shepherd is 
an abomination unto the Egyptians.” Manetho (according to Eusebius, a 
father of the christian church) mentions a very ancient conquest of Egypt 
by the shepherd kings of Arabia, who cruelly entreated the Egyptians, and, 
after having ruled over the country 259 years, were induced to emigrate; 
and hence, perhaps, as well as from the apprehension of foreign communica- 
tion, might arise that prejudice against the shepherds which, from the time 
of Joseph, continues (probably from like causes) to this day to prevail in 
Egypt.—Neibuhr and Burckhardt. 
82 The Brahmins not only adopted a peculiar letter, but a separate language 
—an ingenious but base policy that was adopted by the christian priests of 
the middle ages and the catholic church, whence has been retained, by some 
of our ecclesiastics, their admiration of dead languages. The Egyptian priests 
had two kinds of dogmas, the one vulgar, dnuwes, and the other secret or wn- 
speakable, éxcgenrov, not to be divulged or made vulgar ; and as they had two 
kinds of doctrine, so had they also two sorts of letters; Aipeoioios 3: yeduwacs 
Hesuvrel, xa re mev avrav Ven, ru de Snuorinu xwrterai—< They,” speaking of 
the Egyptian priests, “ use two kinds of letters, one sort called sacred, the 
other, the people’s.”—Herodotus in Euterpe. Diodorus attests the same more 
fully :—TMaidevios de ras vids 01 fev segers yoummura Oirra, Te MEV Lege KUARMEVEL, ECL 
Te xoworsouy exovTa Thy mabnciy.—~ The priests teach their sons two kinds of 
letters, one sort sacred, the other for the use of the vulgar doctrines.” The 
present equal progress of knowledge and morals shows us that the conceal- 
ment of truth is a dangerous as it is a base and unprofitable policy. 
