278 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



what arts they had, they may have got from the Egyptians, and a- 

 mong others, the art of language. That they were intimately con- 

 neded with the Egyptians, and had adopted many of their cuftoms 

 and manners, and particularly their religious cuftoms, is evident 

 from fundry fads recorded of them; particularly Porphyry tells us, in 

 his book De Abfiinentia *, that they had the fame veneration for the 

 Cow that the Egyptians had, and would not on any account eat of 

 her flefh. idiy^ Herodotus informs us f, that the image which the 

 Phoenicians had upon the prow of their galleys, and which they cal- 

 led n«Ta'/;4o?, was very like to the ftatue of Vulcan in Egypt. Now, 

 this fo great refemblance could not have been accidental ; and the 

 probability is, that they had taken from Egypt this tutelary god of 

 their velTels. 3^^j In Tyre, the capital of Phoenicia, there was, as 

 Herodotus informs us, a temple of Hercules, as old as the city ; 

 that is, 2300 years old, in the days of Herodotus, and which, there- 

 fore, muft have been of the Egyptian Hercules, as the fame author 

 rightly concludes; and in the fame pafTage he tells us, that the Phoe- 

 nicians built a temple to Hercules in Thafus, a colony of theirs, 

 five generations before the fon of Amphytrion:):. And, lajily^ we 

 are told by Jamblichus, in his life of Pythagoras i| , that the Hiero- 

 phants and Myftagogues of Biblos and Tyre got all their religion 

 and philofophy from the Egyptians. It is, therefore, evident, that 

 the Phoenicians had their religion and myfteries from Egypt ; and 

 if fo, I think, we may conclude, that they had their language and 

 other arts from the fame country. 



Thus I think I have {hown, that language was invented in Egypt, 

 and in no other country; for, if it was not invented by the Phoenici- 

 ans, 



• Lib. 2. cap. II. 

 t Lib. 3. 

 t Lib. 2. cap. 44, 

 It Cap. 3. 



