OF THE PHONETIC ALPHABET. 91 
of the Ptolemies, or of Psammeticus or Amasis Egyptian or Perso- 
Egytian princes. It seems, however, improbable that a character so 
nearly resembling the Grecian should have been adopted by native 
princes of Egypt; and that very similarity is a strong presumption 
that it was introduced by the Ptolemies, whose Grecian partialities 
may be supposed to have descended with the power they enjoyed from 
the Macedonian hero; and the introduction of a phonetic letter 
into Egypt may be dated in the end of the third or beginning of the 
fourth century before the christian era. 
2nd, The dissemination of letters amongst a people who could pa- 
tiently witness or clamorously demand the sacrifice to their national 
idol of three learned Jews, may be doubted ;53 and history is unac- 
quainted with a literary production®+ of the Chaldees before the 
Greek works of Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus at Babylon, 
538 It must, however, be confessed that a history of the unhappy men who 
have died or suffered, since the invention of letters, in attestation of their 
religious convictions, from the christian to the atheist, through the thou- 
sand creeds and delusions that have bewildered mankind, would occupy as 
many tomes as perished in the two literary desolations of Alexandria, and 
ought to start the reason and excite the humanity of civilized legislators. 
54 T am not ignorant of the astronomical observations of the Babylonians, 
said to have been sent by Calisthenes (time of Alexander) to Greece, and 
which embrace a period of 1900 years—they were preserved as monuments ; 
or of the passage in Pliny which states that Epigenes (whose date is un- 
known) knew of Babylonian observations of 720 years prior to his time, “ coc- 
tilibus lateritiis inscriptas ;” and that Berosus was acquainted with some of 
488 years before his time. These passages at least do not corroborate each 
other; and the burnt tiles and monuments on which these observations were 
said to have been kept, rather than otherwise negative the existence of a pho- 
netic alphabet in those days, as does most strongly the fact that the Persian 
Daric, the first coin issued in Persia, was without a phonetic letter, though 
struck by Darius Hystaspes so late as about 480 B.c. So great a king issuing 
the first coin in the east stamped with his head! Is it not to be supposed 
he would have inscribed his name on it? The concurrent testimony of coins 
is most valuable to our conclusion. The Assyrians, Medes, Babylonians, 
and Egyptians, had no coins. In the mouths of the mummies are thin, un- 
stamped, and round pieces of gold, to pay Charon’s fare. The most ancient 
Greek coins have no letters on them; those of later date have AIr and 
AITEION on them, the latter of which are very scarce, and, Mr. Pinkerton 
thinks, may belong to AZgium in Achzea; but the former, he thinks, were 
from the mint of /Zgina, ‘* perhaps the most ancient in Greece,” and of about 
the date 600 n.c. ‘To ascend higher, the Lydians invented coinage, but the 
Lydian coins have no legends. Indian and Chinese coins are of very recent 
date. The admission of a Jewish shekel into a cabinet would disgrace it, 
says the same author, 
